Does ET have a copydesk?

by | Jun 8, 2012 | Grammar, Punctuation

Sorry to be blunt, but that was the first question that came to my mind after reading this article in the Economic Times yesterday.

I’m complaining not about the use – rather the misuse – of commas in the text, nor about the sloppy writing. I’m startled by the obvious errors made in the copy. You need samples, right? Here they go:

In an effort to address this situation, the CABE has constituted a committee for assessment and implementation of the comprehensive and continuous evaluation in the contest of the no detention provision of the RTE Act.

“At the stage at which are in at present, we cannot have a system that has no evaluation,” Shahi said.

He explained that the private schools have more evaluation under the comprehensive and continuous evaluation (CCE) system, while children government schools are not evaluated at all.

I almost stopped reading, but went on. I stopped reading when I came across this sentence:

“parents are no longer being strict with the children to study as there is no test in which to score high marks or pass and no student can be detained.”

I just cannot see a sentence beginning with a lowercase letter.

Okay, you may want to give them a chance because the copy was written hastily to publish online. Wrong. The time of publication was shown as 7 Jun, 2012, 08.26AM IST.

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