Friday, December 11, 2009

Daily Express burglar letter typos

Caught a story in print of the 10-year old's letter to a caught burglar being made into a Christmas Card.

First off I'm not criticising the letter's sentiments, but there are spelling mistakes that I wouldn't expect a 10-year old to make. Now before I get beaten to death she was in distress so I'm not going there.

What I will point out is the Express' transcription of the hand-written letter.

When I found out that I had been burgled I was crying. And I refused to come home so I had to sleep at my auntie’s and I tryed (sic) to make my mum let me stay another night because I was scared to death. Now I don’t like to go past the third lamppost on my street any more because I get really scared and I run as fast as I can back to my house. I feel so so so sad that you did this to me.
 Notice that "(sic)" after "tryed" which is fair enough, except the original letter had "antie's" and "lampost" which they didn't leave misspelt with a sic, but corrected. IOW a lack of consistency, either correct it all (in which case it's not a transcript) or leave them in and use sic to prevent anyone complaining about your spelling.

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