Stop the urban legend sprawl

Gotta love XKCD.

It’s the sort of thing that makes me want to reconsider giving out my email.

A few times a week, a message pops into my inbox – usually from certain retired relatives of mine – that claims reading it will save my life, or it’ll be the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard, and if I send it to 15 of my closest friends plus the person who sent it to me within the next hour something spectacular will happen to me in five days.

The dreaded hoax email.

I’ve received so many of them over the years that it’s come to be like the boy who cried wolf – eventually, I stop paying attention – so much so that these days I won’t even look past the subject line. If it starts with FWD and continues with a phrase like “YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS!!!!” it’s gone without a second glance. Should it have any amount of truth in it that’s worth my worrying, I have enough faith in the CBC that I’ll hear about it from them.

Which brings me to the last assignment of my Editing Print and Online Media course, where we’re looking at urban legends and the ways that editors can determine whether or not someone’s trying to pull our leg.

However, just because you’re not an editor, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. As soon as you type in a name in the addressee box, you’re directing your message to an audience, and, just like an editor, you have the responsibility of A) making sure what you’re sending out is newsworthy, not a waste of their time, and B) that it’s true.

You don’t have to become a human lie detector. There are quite a few great websites dedicated to debunking urban legends and Internet hoaxes which are kept rigorously up to date, Snopes being one of the best, about.com another.

Even a quick glance through the top 10 on these sites shows the range of these stories – from the moderately believable to the downright obscure (Lady Gaga amputates leg for fashion!)

Whether meant as a joke or intended to cause alarm, both me and my inbox agree, things are getting just a bit ridiculous.

So save your friends and relatives both time and frustration and do a little fact checking of your own. Together, maybe we can stop this madness.

Voulez-vous parlez francais?: A resource list for learning French online

The incentive

People learn French for many reasons: they love the language; they’re going to France in a few months; they’ve chosen it as their college thesis.

Well, maybe that last one just applies to me.

Actually, all of them apply to me: Near the end of this past semester, my parents surprised me with summer vacation plans: we’re going to Paris (volcano permitting)!

It was a bittersweet moment. It’ll be my first trip overseas, and will add some real French flavour to my audio documentary. It also means I’m starting my project three months early so I can have something to show when I step onto French soil.

But that’s step one: you need an incentive.

The Search

When it comes to online resources for learning French (and other popular languages), quantity certainly isn’t a problem, but you will need to spend a good amount of time researching and narrowing down your choices.

The easiest (and most important) way to do so if by being attentive to what your needs are.

For instance, how much time are you willing to devote to the task?

Learning to speak French is not instant. Many of these resources are intended for daily use, but the actual length of time you spend with it varies. Michel Thomas’ audio lessons are one hour per CD; Pimsleur CDs are organized around 30 minute lessons; while Coffee Break French podcasts are kept around 20 minutes each, designed to fit nicely (as the name suggests) within your office coffee break.

Another important need to consider is where you’ll be learning French.

If you’re on a computer (or iPod) with Internet, the sky is pretty much the limit in terms of podcasts, videos, games, and learning communities. If you plan to learn during your commute, you’re a bit restricted as driving limits you to audio (podcasts, CDs) played through your car stereo or iPod. If you want to learn on the move, or in small bites, and have an iPhone or iPod Touch, there’s numerous French language apps.

For the purposes of my project, I’ll be trying a wide variety of resources so I can get an accurate take on whether or not new media is an effective way of learning a language.

I’ve listed the materials I’ve chosen to work with below, along with my timeline, to give an idea of the work involved and where you might look to get started if you’re interested in learning French online.

The List

1. (June) Michel Thomas: Speak French (for Beginners):

• 10 CDs, 1 hour each
• MP3 format, downloadable to iPod
• classroom style (you’re taught along with two other students)
• Grace Kelley, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, and other celebrities were taught through the Michel Thomas method.
• not free (unless you borrow from the library, like I did)

2. (July) Coffee Break French & Walk, Talk, and Learn French:

• audio podcast and video podcast from the popular Radio Lingua Network
• 80, 20-minute lessons (audio), and 10, 7-9 minute episodes (video)
• audio podcast is informal classroom style (one other student)
• video podcast focuses on French grammar in the “real world”: straight from the streets of Paris, but in an entertaining style (complete with Scottish accent)
• both downloadable to your iPod

BYKI (Before You Know It):

• flash card program for learning French vocabulary
• ”Lite” version is free
• recommended by about.com and my high school French teacher. ‘Nuff said!

3. (in Paris) Twitter and iPod Touch apps: for me, work doesn’t stop when I’m on vacation! I’ll be testing out the on-the-go effectiveness of the various iPod Touch/iPhone apps and Twitter pages devoted to learning French.

4. (August/September) French in Action OR Ma France:

• FIA (52 half-hour instructional videos) to improve fluency and introduce French culture (con= c. 1987).
• Ma France from the BBC (24, 8-minute clips) focus on scenarios (shopping, eating out, dating). For the post-beginner.

French for Beginners (link will open iTunes):

• 200+ 5-10 minute podcasts spoken entirely in French focusing on “real life” conversations spoken at a more closer-to-normal pace.

Skype language groups: the best way to learn French is to practice with other people. If you don’t know any francophones who could help you in person, Skype offers an alternative. Sign up for an account and make a post in the online forums requesting to chat in French. Also recommended by about.com

I’ll be posting my experiences with each of these resources as I use them.

Have any tips or suggestions? Leave a comment below!

A word on screwups

In my Editing Print and Online Media course, we’re encouraged to look for “screwups”, or editing mistakes, in published material and boy you’d be surprised how many you can find if you set your mind to it. But if there’s ever a place to avoid them...

it's in the lone headline on a front page:

... and in the Canadian Press Stylebook (i.e. the journalism rulebook).

Oops.

From print to screen: five ways to please your readers

The shift from sitting stationary in front of a paper or book, to sitting stationary before a glowing screen changes many aspects of your readers’ behaviour. They’re more impatient; more easily distracted; and aren’t as comfortable reading big blocks of text, to name a few.

Taking all of this into account and adjusting your content to make it easier for your readers to engage is what editing online media is all about.

This Tuesday, the online editor for the Winnipeg Free Press - Wendy Sawatzky - will be visiting our class to talk about what her duties involve (and, I also suspect, the need for newspapers to go online).

In preparation, I’ve done a Glenda Ollero and compiled my own list five of online editing/website principles:

1. Use PDF for downloads, not .doc files. Many websites allow you to download documents from their computer to read; for example, restaurants may upload their menus online. For sites like these which are open to the general public who use a variety of word processors and operating systems, use a format like PDF that is compatible across the board. Lots of websites still use .doc for their files, which is inconsiderate to those who don’t use Microsoft Word, or use a newer/older version of it. Trying to then read these files, with all their odd spacing and alignment issues, is frustrating and a waste of the reader’s time.

The guilty party: Dessert Sinsations. (Even more frustrating is they’ve taken the time to convert their dessert menu into PDF, while everything else is a .doc file. All or nothing!)


2. Avoid heavy graphics, or provide a “skip” option. This one also falls under the category of being considerate to your audience. While online text can be improved with interactive graphics, not everyone has lighting speed broadband or a computer with a large graphics card. This doesn’t mean you have to avoid all those fancy effects altogether: provide visitors with an option to skip past the graphics, or have it require the user to press play to activate them (especially video).

The guilty parties: Data Just Data Inc. Albeit an extreme example, but they take the prize not only for the worst flash intro, but for blatant spelling mistakes.


3. Ensure hyperlinks work. This one is in the CP Stylebook for a reason, and it’s summarized quite eloquently: “Test links regularly to make sure they still work. If it doesn’t work, readers will be annoyed.” Even better, the technology is out there so you don’t have do check links manually.

The guilty party: The Brit Cafe. Their link to view their starters/soup and salads/sandwiches has been broken for at least 3 months (although it’s worth the trip to taste what’s on the menu).


4. Check spelling/grammar before publishing and correct mistakes. Nothings says unprofessional like poor spelling and grammar. Sometimes people underestimate their power but the fact is, your credibility goes way down when it’s obvious you didn’t take the time to proofread.

The guilty party: again, The Brit Cafe. I used their website for one of my “Spot the Screwup” assignments as the spelling and grammar here is really quite atrocious. The best screwup?: favourites is spelled “favorites”, even though the owners are British.


5. Rearrange big blocks of text. Whether it means adding subheadings, a bulleted list, or cutting out sentences, find a way to break up large chunks of text. The CP Stylebook warns that almost 80 per cent of online readers scan pages first, and if they aren’t engaged immediately, 70 per cent will move on. Online editors – especially those putting print publications online – must recognize this change in their readership’s behaviour and adjust accordingly.

The guilty party: Winnipeg Free Press. Organizing a restaurant review like this would make for easier reading, rather than republishing the article from the print edition verbatim.

Want more tips? Check out the World's Worst Website for more what-not-to-dos.

Oh hai - I can has cats in my blog. Read plz!

Lawyers have it, doctors have it, “gangstas” have it, and yep, so do Creative Communications staff and students.

I’m talking about jargon, slang, speak, or any special words or expressions used by a certain group of people that makes sense to them, but is difficult for others outside the group to understand.

If you get accepted into the wonderful world of Creative Communications, or CreComm, you’ll soon pick up on a slew of terms and phrases known only to those special enough to be a part of the “CreComm mafia” – like “streeter”, “auto fail”, “live hit derby”, and “IPP”.

But probably the biggest group of people with their own language are those who text or use the Internet. Both can be convenient, time-savers, and entertaining, especially when used tongue in cheek.

LOLCATS thrives on combining Internet speak with user-submitted cat photos.

But the problem comes when people ignore the usual confines of a particular jargon or “speak” and use it where is it neither appropriate, nor a place where everyone can decipher the code.

In my last post, I mentioned that some people think this less-than-proper use of English is a sign that the language is “evolving”, not “dumbing down”. I beg to differ: when you take jargon and grammatical habits from one environment and use them across the board, it’s just plain inconsiderate.

Over the past few years, for instance, there have been reports from educators of students using text speak and other short hand in formal papers. How about this for an example?:

"My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." Translation here.

Sound extreme? In some schools, it’s becoming so pervasive that New Zealand had to explicitly remind students not to do it, while in the Scotland, other teachers are bowing down to the pressure.

But enough picking on the students. Here’s a news release I used in an assignment for my editing course where we re-wrote bad headlines. (Click to enlarge photo.)

After some serious searching on Google, I think the normal person’s translation should read something like this: “Nortel makes fastest cell phone call with new high speed tech”.

In CreComm (Creative Communications for you other people!) we’re constantly told to think of our audience and the context in which the message will be received, then communicate appropriately. After all, what’s more important than your audience? Whether it’s a professor, a customer, the media, etc., they’re the ones you’re trying to please, so why not speak properly.

To apostrophe, or not to apostrophe:

It shouldn’t be a question, but some grammar unenthusiasts out there are trying to make it a legal one.

Last Thursday, Lindor Reynolds’ column in the Winnipeg Free Press attacked the misuse of apostrophes, and the backlash (as to be expected) was swift.

In the letters to the editor the following Saturday, a picture of the sign in front of St. Paul’s Square (note the unoffending apostrophe) was printed along with this caption:

Photo

“A sign in Birmingham, England, reflects a recent decision to ban apostrophes in street signs because they are considered confusing, old-fashioned and interfere with GPS systems.”

Interesting, I thought. Confusing? Only to those who’ve yet to master grammar. Old-fashioned? So is most of the English language – doesn’t mean we should ban it. Interferes with GPS? (note for the editors: putting ‘system’ after GPS is unnecessary. GPS means global positioning system.)

That last point stopped me. Maybe the Birmingham city council did have a valid argument after all.

Not so, a spokesperson for TomTom, a satellite navigation equipment manufacturer quoted by CBS News said:

If someone preferred to use a street name – with or without an apostrophe – punctuation wouldn't be an issue. By the time the first few letters of the street were entered, a list of matching choices would pop up and the user would choose the destination.

In other words, not only is the GPS excuse wrong, but if this so-called interference did – hypothetically – occur, it would be because of user error, ie. someone misusing the apostrophe in the name they’re trying to search.

The justification I’ve come across the most in researching this story is that this isn’t a cop out, it’s not our education system dumbing down, it’s the English language evolving. There’s a euphemism if I ever saw one.

However you want to say it, it all comes back to the human in the equation who doesn’t understand grammar. And that’s okay: grammar is a challenge – but that’s not a reason to give up.

Pick up a grammar book; go online; or take a class with Chris Petty – and get cracking.

P.S. For the record, our province isn’t immune to dropping apostrophes either: Birds Hill (named after Dr. Curtis Bird) should be Bird’s Hill.

Photo

Editor= omnipotent?

How much say should an editor have in correcting another person’s work?

That’s the question I’ve been mulling over for the past week which, ironically, was triggered by my work in the Canadian literature course I’m taking this spring (and not the Editing Print and Online Media course I’m also taking, for which this blog is an assignment).

This course has us analysing text written pre-1914 – many of them pre-Canada – and I’ve been introduced to the shocking amounts of liberties editors and publishers back then took with early Canadian explorers’ journals.

Take, for example, Paul Kane: an artist who spent three years travelling what is now Western Canada to capture the lives of the Aboriginals peoples in the area through a series of paintings, sketches, and careful note taking.

Artist he was; wordsmith he was not. Much of the editor’s work seems to have been putting Kane’s scribblings into actual words, sentences, and paragraphs, but where it gets interesting is that his editor/publisher also took consideration to transform Kane from the uneducated, wild, adventure-man that he was into a prim and proper European gentleman.

Kane’s original text (in all its grammatical glory) about his first buffalo sighting reads as follows:

“I saw a band of about 40 cows and they hunters in full chase they ware they first Buffalo I had ever seene I was not long in turning my horses hed in the derection of thy chase after running about 3 miles I came nere up to a cow my hors became afrade after beating for about 2 Miles more I came close enuff for a shot when I found I had no ball I fired shot but without afect.”

Compare that with the published version, and it’s obvious that not only does Kane become a true gent, but in doing so, the course of events change entirely:

“Next day I was gratified with the sight of a band of about forty buffalo cows in the distance, and our hunters in full chase; they were the first I had seen, but were too far off for me to join in the sport.”

Unlike the real Kane, who in his excitement chases after the buffalo only to discover he didn’t load his gun, the published version of Kane never goes near the buffalo at all. Ian MacLaren, the scholar who studies these discrepancies notes that “this droll event is edited out of the book: presumably, no sportsman worthy of the name would have been so careless” (Creating Travel Literature, 90).

Kane's Assiniboine Chasing Buffalo (courtesy of Google Images)

As MacLaren elaborates further, editors and publishers at the time were very conscious of their readers and what their expectations were. Many of them believed in the four-stages theory which put Europeans like themselves at the highest point of civilization and “primitive” indigenous cultures at the lowest.

Because of this, editors worked hard to both elevate the civilized, gentleman-like qualities of the explorers whose work they were editing, and exaggerate (in some cases, fabricate) the uncivilized, barbaric behaviour of the native peoples these explorers encountered (like cannibalism, which MacLaren also discusses).

It doesn’t seem fair, but then again, they were doing exactly what editors (and students taking editing courses) are being told today: make corrections to the text that are appropriate for the target audience.

But when have they crossed the line? Is there a line, or does it fluctuate depending on the editor and the context? How much power can or should an editor wield over your written word?