TheMediaOnline’s eagle-eyed proofreading and plain language expert, Caryn Gootkin, spotted this poster while driving around Cape Town in the aftermath of the Proteas defeat in the Cricket World Cup at the hands of New Zealand. “Dear Independent Newspapers. I will give you choked; I agree they shocked us, but the one thing they most certainly did not do was ‘chock’. Need a good proofreader?”
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4 Comments
Simon
I didn’t read it, but it is the article therein not a play on how chockingly South Africans spell? To my knowledge, “chockers” was a trending topic on twitter in the aftermath of the SA loss against New Zealand.
(See what I did there? It was also a play in words)
in other words
Even if it was following on the twitter trend, chock means “to block the movement of” and that is precisely what the Proteas did not do!
Christina
That’s nothing. I received an email last week promising that “our currier will probably come today but, if not, defiantly tomorrow.” A defiant carrier of curries at the doorstep. Now that’s something to worry about.
Another simon
Whoops – That page was not found!
the statement above is cut and paste after clicking on two of the authors profiles listed on the right… I take it you mean oops? Because whoops are not the same thing … despite the fact that you no doubt had longer than 5mins to come up with accurate and correctly spelt wording, as opposed to the poster creators…. parables of splinters and logs come to mind!