Today’s column from Leo McKinstry in the Express is such a shoddy piece of work that it really has to be read to be believed.
As an example, here’s his opening paragraph:
POLITICAL memoirs are notoriously dull. too often they are just exercises in vanity or historical duty, revealing little about the the innermost thoughts of their authors. Nigel lawson’s vast doorstop of an autobiography, for instance, touched on almost nothing outside the arid details of his work as Mrs thatcher’s chancellor in the 1980s, while the book by clement attlee, the post-war labour Prime Minis- ter, could have hardly been more devoid of colour. “This is not so much the picture of a life as a greatly expanded entry in Who’s Who,” wrote one critic.
I count six grammatical errors in that paragraph alone. Read the column in its entirety and see how many you can find.
Mr McKinstry’s main difficulty seems to be remembering when to use capital letters. Someone needs to explain to him that the first letter in a sentence and the first letter in a proper noun need to be capitalised.
As someone who has worked as a journalist for many years and has written several books, Leo should really know this kind of thing already.
It’s very possible that these crimes against grammar weren’t his fault and were instead committed by some sub-editor. If that’s the case then, Leo, I apologise.
But either way, it doesn’t reflect well on the Express (which describes itself, don’t forget, as the “World’s Greatest Newspaper”).
As Atomic Spin discovered this morning, simple English grammar seems to be a particular difficulty for the Express…
