Saturday, June 30, 2007

New job... maybe not

This is really just an update to my update in my previous post. I thought I'd give it a post of it's own as it's OT from the original. All the press releases on the Democrats’ website are riddled with errors in written expression. I emailed the leader of the Democrats, Lyn Allison and applied for a job as a press release editor:

Dear Senator,

Regarding your opinion piece -
Indigenous Child Abuse: Speak Out and Get the Solutions Right - Press Release Number: sibxsjmu.

I know written expression is not what the subtitle of the piece was referring to, but I was moved to "speak out" and provide some "right solutions" to the frequent errors I noted.

Attached is a word document of the piece with corrections and suggestions. It is not comprehensive by any means, but it is as much as I could bother to do in 20 minutes.

I've had a look at other releases on your website and note that all I have seen contain many of the same errors. This includes Andrew Bartlett's piece on the same topic. Given Senator Bartlett generally has very good written expression on his blog, including correct use of the comma, I assume these errors are added by a well meaning "editor".

Feel free to send me along other work for proof reading before release - your website is the public face of a major Australian political party after all (though I might have to start charging for my services).

All the best,

Theo Clark

I'll let you know if I get it - fingers crossed (or is that finger's crost?).

Update - July 4: Still no reply from any Democrat (I cc'd the email to every Democrat I could find on their website). However, all of a sudden their press releases are using apostrophes correctly. For example:

Democrats' Deputy Leader, Senator Andrew Bartlett, says the federal government...

A plural possessive - correct! Coincidence? I think not. A small thank you email would have been nice...