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Saturday, June 28, 2008

You write good English then send over please 

Pure irony.

Sent in by a Chaptzem reader

From the Jewish Press

Comments:
Some dictionaries consider well-written to be a perfectly good word.

 

The problem is not the word "well-written".

The problem is that it is an ad placed by the Jewish Press editors encouraging teen readers to submit "well-written" articles.

Ironically, this very same ad was not well-written.

There is a sentence "Whether its about fashion..." The word "its" should be spelled "it's" since it is a contraction of the words "it is".

(A brief English lesson: The only time it is spelled "its" without the apostrophe is when the word is possessive, i.e. "the horse shook its tail".)

Misprints are understandable and acceptable, but if there was ever one place where a misprint is prohibited, it is in an ad encouraging "well-written" material.

 

The bottom line is, you could have just circled the "its" and had a less sensational story. But you wouldn't have ever thought of that, would you?

 

Big deal- ONE TYPO???!!!???!!!

 

well-written Definition

* (s) knowledgeable about literature; "a literary style"

 

One might argue whether starting a paragraph with "Whether", the subsequent clause requesting "simply anything" through to the "we look forward to printing it" represents several stylistic failings in literary English.
Overall, though, the ad represents reasonably good "Henglish", though the current frumspeak, as developed through Artscroll, would mandate at least six or seven superlatives per clause.

 

there have been two very noticeable typo's that i can remember in the jewish press from years ago. ironically they were both small articles about the pesach menu at levana's in NYC. these 2 incidents took place about 5 years apart.

in the early nineties they raved about the ribeye sauteed in S$%T mushrooms, they meant to write shitake mushrooms.

5 years later they were raving about the pan roasted duckling, but they mispelled it and substituted an "f" with the "d"

i still have both of these articles cut out and saved.

my point it that typo's happen

 

"Well-written" in this case is a compound adjective--that is, a single modifier of the noun "articles" made up of more than one word--and,because it PRECEDES the noun,is correctly hyphenated.If it came AFTER the noun--i.e. "The article is well writen"--it would not be hyphenated. Compare: "She has a three-year-old child" and "Her child is three years old."

 

7:44, I think he highlighted "well-written" to emphasize their error in writing "its" instead of "it's."

 

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