I'm watching the news tonight and see this incredible TYPO...

[cin]

Interviewing a band...the trailer says: John Smith *Base* player....:rolleyes: It doesn't help that right now I'm reading Eats Shoots and Leaves....

[mcconnellboys]

LOL! One day, we were eating lunch in a restaurant that had tv's playing the news. There was text scrolling across the bottom of the screen and I don't know who they had drafted to type it, but it was so rife with errors I couldn't even make out what was being said! This was not something local, either, but network news coverage.....

Regena

[j.griff]

LOL, maybe they were trying to avoid confusing other people who would be thinking of fish if they typed it correctly. ;)

[Beth in Central TX]

You know, that's exactly why I stopped subscribing to our local newspaper. The grammar and spelling mistakes drove me crazy, and I really didn't even know much grammar back then...

[Friederike in Persia]

We were watching a film once, where Napoleon conquered Borneo in the subtitles!:rolleyes:

[Colleen]

I'm a copy editor at heart. Reading most newspapers is just too taxing.;)

[Karenciavo]

LOL! One day, we were eating lunch in a restaurant that had tv's playing the news. There was text scrolling across the bottom of the screen and I don't know who they had drafted to type it, but it was so rife with errors I couldn't even make out what was being said! This was not something local, either, but network news coverage.....

Regena

I think that this should be excused. I believe speech-to-text reporters are typing as the anchor is speaking, something like 200 wpm. I know I have a hard time just typing on this little ole forum. :o

[Frankie]

LOL! One day, we were eating lunch in a restaurant that had tv's playing the news. There was text scrolling across the bottom of the screen and I don't know who they had drafted to type it, but it was so rife with errors I couldn't even make out what was being said! This was not something local, either, but network news coverage.....

Regena

What you were watching was more than likely being done by a court reporter doing real time closed captioning. That's very big on the national level. If a lot of it looked like "gunk" or not even words, it was probably stenography that the reporter had not entered into her computer. And if it was really a mess, the reporter was probably very nervous.

I left the court reporting world 10 and a half years ago just as that was getting very big. Now I can read the text and I know what it should be just because I can read their steno.

Typists can't do real time captioning like that because they cannot type that fast. People speak on average 180-225 words per minute -- much faster when they're emotional, up to 280 wpm.

So anyway, it was more than likely a bad case of nerves and the reporter's fingers weren't working right, which is why what you saw looked like Greek.

wupb one tkaeu day rbgs ,waoe we wr were aoet g eating lufplunch in a in a staurpbtrestaurant thathat dhad t v ae sTV's phraeug playing t thetphaouz newsfpltperiod

There, that's what a little steno looks like. :p

[Jean in Newcastle]

Actually when a closed caption typing comes out all gobbledy-gook (or at least much of it does), you need to move the antenna or tune it better. A family friend whose dh is deaf told me this and it really works! The signals are just not coming in right.

[sdWTMer]

I've been known to call companies when I see typos in advertising. :eek:

[Frankie]

Actually when a closed caption typing comes out all gobbledy-gook (or at least much of it does), you need to move the antenna or tune it better. A family friend whose dh is deaf told me this and it really works! The signals are just not coming in right.

Really? Do people even have antennas anymore? None of my TVs can be tuned. We live in the boonies and if we didn't have cable, we'd have NO tv, so I'm out of touch on that subject -- everyone here has at least basic cable.

It must be 50/50 then, because when I watch something that is closed captioned, I can read the errors that come up. They're in steno, a language of its own. and I know what it's supposed to be.:o

[Jean in Newcastle]

We have an old t.v. and rabbit ears! So I do move the antennae around and the words come in better. Now, the ones I've done this on are regular network shows that are shown nation-wide so the text is all pre-typed. I'm not sure about local t.v. where it would be much more likely to be typed by a human being "live".

[Plaid Dad]

You know, that's exactly why I stopped subscribing to our local newspaper.

Heh. I used to mark up newspapers in St. Louis and San Francisco as an editing exercise. ;)

[mcconnellboys]

No, it wasn't that. It was that the person doing the typing was typing in what they thought they were hearing the people say. You could tell that the words they were choosing sounded like, were homophones for, the actual words they should have been using. But it had some pretty comical results and made it hard to follow the story, since the sound was off..... So I guess I can agree with the other posters that it must have been someone new and/or nervous. But I'm afraid they may have been fired after that incident, LOL, because it was really, really bad.....

Regena

[mcconnellboys]

Now wait a minute, maybe he DID escape his island of exile and sail the high seas for a while, LOL......

Regena

[Mamagistra]

Really? Do people even have antennas anymore?

Oh. yeah...towering outdoor 'tenny and a flat screen wall mount here. ;) Satellite's our only other option, and we don't like tv enough for that.