Wednesday, May 13

Does anyone notice? Or care?

I was reading the San Francisco Chronicle this morning. An article about the city’s cutback on median strip watering claimed, “The city stopped watering the grassy strip to cutback on water consumption.…” Do you see a problem in that sentence? I do. The word cutback should be two words, cut back.

This kind of writing is becoming all too common. Is it a result of ignorance on the part of editors? It certainly shows a lack of education on the part of writers. Should I care? Does any one care? Alright all ready. 

2 comments:

Pete S. said...

You'd think they would run the whole newspaper through a grammar checker. I just pasted that sentence into Microsoft Word. It flagged the word "cutback" and suggested "cut back" in its place.

Avis said...

Using a grammar checker requires one to either pay attention or to care about the results.