SMH [sic]

Not bad for the front page of a leading Australian paper's website.

Misuse of question marks?

I've noticed an annoying misuse of the question mark recently, and its becoming more ubiquitous. It seems many people are using it in place of an exclamation mark. I'm not sure if this is being done on purpose or whether it's just a sign of the illiterate times. And it surely can't be by accident as the respective keys on the keyboard could hardly be further apart from each other. But, maybe it's an Australian thing; we have been known to inflect the ends of our sentences to sound like we're asking a question. In any case, this misuse in writing reaaally pisses me off.

Time to book a konference [sic]...

The is an advertisement for the 'Australian fine dining' restaurant called Reef n' Beef which is found in Copenhagen.


My friend was recently in Copenhagen and spotted this ad on the back of a bus. In the larger version you can see that the glass of red wine has been doctored into the Aboriginal man's hand.

Okay, I'm not even sure if I want to comment...it's pretty obviously wrong. It's culturally insensitive and ignorant, not to mention they may have used an image of a deceased person...then they've slapped it on the back of a bus to promote a restaurant!?

Ridiculous

'English'

I was browsing through the website for the local publication 'The Baltic Times' (which I was considering writing for on my arrival here in Riga) and found an article about the Latvian-Hong Kong co-production film 'Amaya'.

The article, with the terrible title of 'Lithuanian and Latvian movie from Hong Kong', is so badly written I had to laugh. Here's an example of the wonderfully pithy and coherent writing:

The movie tells a story about a man whose life-style many normal human beings would like to enjoy, in case there would not be obstacles in terms of financial issues and personal obligations to other people.

I've heard from several sources that the quality of the periodical has deteriorated from what it used to be, and I understand that the writer is not a native speaker of English, but that level of English is simply unacceptable.

Oh, and please feel free to criticise my writing, I am aware that sometimes I find myself in a glass house too.

Yes please!

Reading The Australian this morning I noticed this ad in the side-bar.


Looks like I have no choice...