S.C.O.S.E Reorts

[TheMan]

Greetings readers,

At my workplace, the beautiful and industrious Australian Broadcasting Corporation, we're very good at maintaining standards and as a National Broadcaster that standards we maintain in the Australian Speaking English. It's no surprise then that we have an internal organ that works towards improving, rectifying and addressing issues like pronounciation & grammer in an ever changing environment.

SCOSE is the ABC's Standing Committee on Spoken English. It's a department run by one person who has the arduous task of kicking some arse within the Corp..

With no futher fuss....to be published once a month, I'll be no doubt breaking some sort of ABC policy in bringing you the Reports. Which will no doubt be of interest to not only the linguists here at the pit but to anyone interested in how we do things down under when it comes to talkin' and such.

------------------------------------------------JUNE 2014 REPORT-------------------------------------------------------------------

Westfield Retail Trust shareholders have backed a controversial 70 billion dollar plan to restructure the shopping centre giant at a meeting in Sydney. Around 76 per cent of investors voted in favour of the plan to split Westfield Group and the retail trust into an Australian business and an international operation. That’s slightly more than the 75 per cent required for the deal to get over the line. The vote was abandoned last month after a shareholder revolt, when Westfield founder Frank Lowy revealed a restructure would go ahead even if it was rejected, creating a firm that would compete with Westfield Retail Trust. The plan had failed to get enough votes before the first meeting to succeed.
The last two sentences in this breaking news alert are completely opaque. They seem to suggest that ‘the vote’, though successful, was abandoned (in other words, there was no vote). But they admit that there were votes of some sort, just not enough to succeed. This seems to be connected in some way with a shareholder revolt. And we have a restructure that goes ahead even if it doesn’t go ahead. I won’t attempt to offer a correction.

USAGE

historic and historical

For good advice on the use of historic and historical, study the usage note in the Oxford Dictionary of English:

“Historic means ‘famous or important in history’, as in a historic occasion, whereas historical means ‘concerning history or historical events’, as in historical evidence: thus a historic event is one that was very important, whereas a historical event is something that happened in the past.”

Clearly, these two words are easily confused. In the wrong combinations they can be downright misleading. The word historic has crept into the reporting of the Rolf Harris case, with examples like ‘historic offences’, which actually suggest notoriety. This is a sensitive issue, so when referring to the alleged offences it’s best to be as precise as possible and avoid historic and historical altogether. Instead say things like:

 offences dating back 40 years / four decades / to the 60s.
 a history of child abuse (not ‘historical’ child abuse)

PRONUNCIATION

A corpse /KAWPS/ is a dead body. A corps /KAW/ is always something other than a dead body. Don’t confuse the two pronunciations.

Giro d’Italia /JEE-roh dee-TAL-ee-ah/
Cycling race held in Italy. The ‘g’ in ‘Giro’ is not pronounced /zh/ (as in French), but /j/, as in Italian.

hyperbole /high-PUR-buh-lee/, not /HIGH-puh-bohl/
stevedore /STEEV-uh-daw/, not /STEEV-daw/

GRAMMAR

Restrictive phrases and clauses

• The American DJ, Casey Kasem, has died at the age of 82.

With the commas this says that the one and only American DJ has died. His name, Casey Kasem, is provided as incidental or supplementary information. But, as we know, there’s more than one DJ in America. Casey Kasem was one of them. The statement calls for a restrictive phrase telling us a particular American DJ has died, so the commas must go.

• Fifteen crew members – who were in charge of the South Korea that sunk [sic] and killed nearly three hundred in April – have gone on trail [sic].

If you’re in the sloppy habit of sprinkling dashes around, you will inevitably produce shoddy work like this. This calls for a restrictive relative clause and should read:

 Fifteen crew members who were in charge of the South Korean ferry that sank in April, killing nearly three hundred, have gone on trial.

SYNTAX

• He was married with three children.

You need at least a comma after ‘married’, but it’s best to specify:

 He was married and has [or ‘leaves’] three children.

Put on trial

• Prosecutors have presented enough evidence to justify putting a Congolese militia leader – accused of rape, murder and enlisting child soldiers – on trial.

The phrase ‘put on trial’ has been interrupted by an exceedingly long object phrase (‘a Congolese ... child soldiers’). The resulting sentence is awkward and difficult for listeners to grasp. Easily fixed:

 Prosecutors have presented enough evidence to justify putting on trial a Congolese militia leader accused of rape, murder and enlisting child soldiers.

• The Treasurer Andrew Constance is expected to reveal the state will be back in the black within two years, when he unveils his first budget tomorrow.

Just when will the State be back in the black? Will it be tomorrow (when the Treasurer unveils his first Budget) or just sometime in the next two years? What the writer probably meant is:

 When the Treasurer, Andrew Constance, unveils his first Budget tomorrow, he is expected to claim that the State will be back in the black within two years.

• The textile is woven into a pattern of 32 frames featuring images including condors, frogs, cats, corn in more than 80 tones of blue, green, yellow and red.

This doesn’t make sense without the crucial word ‘and’ before ‘corn’:

 The textile is woven into a pattern of 32 frames featuring images including condors, frogs, cats, and corn in more than 80 tones of blue, green, yellow and red.

• The Socceroos’, Tim Cahill, has refused to say whether he’ll play on for Australia.

More nonsense, and all because of the two superfluous commas around the name. The subject of the sentence is the possessive noun phrase ‘the Socceroos’ Tim Cahill’.

• Mr O’Farrell singled out five key figures who failed to act on the allegations and criticised cover-ups made by the church.

It was not the ‘five key figures’ but Barry O’Farrell who criticised cover-ups made by the church. The ambiguity could be resolved by adding the pronoun ‘he’ before ‘criticised’ and a comma before ‘and’ – a small price to pay for clarity:

 Mr O’Farrell singled out five key figures who failed to act on the allegations, and he criticised cover-ups made by the church.

Lastly, a crawler seen on the bottom of the screen on News 24:

• Girl severely disabled after flu jab wins settlement

Using the preposition ‘by’ instead of ‘after’ might have made this clearer.

 Girl severely disabled by flu jab wins settlement


__________________ A short one this month__________________________________________

[TheMan]

These are, of course, standards that don't apply to plebs like me... and I previewed too. Got the formatting right...that's the main thing. The only thing I have editied out is the name of the person who runs the department. She doesn't want to be flooded with corrections...it's apparantly bad enough as it is.

[Skep tickle]

I love it. Great to see that clarity in communication still matters to some.

And it's good to hear that that one guy didn't have 3 child brides. ;)

[TheMan]

The BBC and I believe CBS are two other brodcasters I'm aware of that have this sort of system in place.

[Opyt]

Yeah, I dunt tink 'Murica has one o' dem dere new-fangled Commitahs on Speakin' the Words Gooder.

It is nice to see at least one (probably all 3, other than the bastard son that is America) of the primarily English speaking countries (or subset thereof) attempting to standardize English as a spoken language. Although I would argue the pronunciation of "Corps" rhymes with door. But that's probably an American thing, and corpse comes across as [COR-puhz] (COR would rhyme with door). I'm new to trying to do phonetic English.

[relevance: "United States Marine Corps"]
[youtube]g2M4ilVaAmI[/youtube]

:think: