Wednesday, May 20, 2009

LicenSe to Spell


This was the caption in a discussion on the Daily Politics about the BBC Licence fee. That's "Licence" with a C. As well as unique funding, it now has unique spelling too. :)

47 comments:

Anonymous said...

"License" is the American spelling variant.

Anonymous said...

Plus the same show used "neither...or" in a caption instead of "neither...nor"

Tony said...

Is William G Stewart a candidate for Mr Angry 2009? On the Daily Politics he went completely OTT in his defence of the licence fee. Can you imagine how uptight he must get about real issues? I wonder, is Willy G angling for the BBC to buy one of his shows? I think we should be told.

Sinbad the sailor said...

More important things to worry about Ian

Anonymous said...

That washed up quiz show host they had on was completely barmy.

Liz said...

License, in British English, is the verb, Anon. Licence is the noun.

Anonymous said...

Sky News has had both of the following on their on screen captions today:

thier

awaiting for

So I don't think it's a BBC thing.

no longer anonymous said...

Illiterate twats.

Dave H said...

And, might I say, what a very neat squiggle you drew around the word.

It looks a bit like a whale; ironically, however, there already was one in the picture.

Lexander said...

This is what comes from having all those double firsts and Oxbridge "assistants". Clever maybe (?) but inclined to be bad spellers! It does matter though and we do not want any more American versions of anything in the UK.

Lexander said...

Thank you Liz

Plato said...

I still think Derek Draper MP was their best recently!

Anonymous said...

They don't give a damn who you spell it. All they care about is that the money arrives every month.

UB41 said...

It is relevant because it is an indication of:

1) The quality of education
of the person who wrote the
caption

2) It reflects how diligent said
person is at carrying out their
duties

Given the "investment" this government has made in education, we should at least expect a basic level of literacy.

I say investment in quotation marks as investment implies a return.

I don't see any returns from this government. Just wasteful expenditure.

Right - I'm sure there are some pedants here who will pick my grammar to pieces lol.

Sorry - just sick of this government.

Sarah said...

BBC News misspelled political as poltical this morning during a discussion with The Sun's political editor.

Tony said...

You can see the same mistake on the front page of the Telegraph website right now.
Drives me mad

Manfarang said...

http://www.spellingsociety.org

judith said...

Both BBC and Ch4 are now using a completely incorrect subtitling format when they interview life peers.

In the overall scheme of things, it matters not one jot, I know, that calling someone Lord Iain Dale when he is not the younger son of a peer is wrong (it should be Lord Dale of Blogging).

It just p****s me off.

There, now I feel a bit better.

@molesworth_1 said...

"Oh, why can't the English teach their children how to speak?" as Coward said.
Mind you, those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. By p.6 of May's TotalPolitics I was e-mailing the editor to see if they had any jobs going as a sub-ed or proof-reader.

Anonymous said...

Iain,

I seems that the Daily Mail link from http://www.iaindale.co.uk/writing.php is now dead.

Do you have any comment?

dizzy said...

Interesting, I was picked up for using this spelling, consistently, I might add, today. The key with americanisms, be they the use of z instead of s or the removal of extraneous u's, is consistency.

John said...

That's quite some jowl.

The Half-Blood Welshman said...

""Oh, why can't the English teach their children how to speak?" as Coward said"

Surely that was Lerner and Loewe after George Bernard Shaw?

On topic, I don't thinkreally matters about the spelling which is probably due to the old spelling chequer [sic], but if William G. Stewart wants some "flab" cutting out, how about a sharp reduction in the £92,000 salaries of certain newsreaders? Although if the spelling's a bit off in the autocue, maybe they regard it as an interpretive allowance.

Anonymous said...

I still think the BBC caption saying that the Queen was " laying a reef " was the best so far.

The Grim Reaper said...

As long as Lord Crony of Pie (better known as Lord Foulkes) wasn't on the programme today, I think we'll live.

Mirtha Tidville said...

This is what happens when you spend 12 years dumbing down an education system...

James Sutherland said...

I really don't care how they spell it, as long as they end it pronto! Never mind S vs C, it's still a ludicrous anachronism. They're welcome to continue existing, if they can persuade their claimed millions of loyal fans to continue coughing up without coercion, as long as they stop demanding money from me for a service I neither want nor use.

Thats News said...

Or is that Unneek, in the case of the BBC?

Anonymous said...

BBC's very own attempt at Newspeak.

Shakassoc said...

'License' is the correct way to spell the verb. The noun (which is the one they meant) is 'licence'.

This is a standard rule in English usage; see, for example:

prophecy (noun)/prophesy (verb)

advice (noun)/advise (verb)

Simples...

Americans get it wrong for the same reason they drive on the right and say 'aluminum'.

Anonymous said...

BBC has many spelin mistakes on its website, and they're not the only ones either.
That's what edukayshun edukayshun edukayshun does for you!

Roy said...

I suspect that someone at the Beeb never changed their PC's language settings from the default "English (US)" is all.

Twig said...

I was dissappointed by Eric's lacklustre performance in the debate against Mr.Angry.
He should have raised the issue of waste and overmanning at the BBC, and the general lack of value for money.
For Three and a half BILLION pounds a year I would expect a whole lot more than the garbage they currently serve up.


Why do they need to advertise job vacancies in the Guardian at huge expense? They could have a jobs page on their incredibly expensive website, that would save about a quarter of a million a year.

And I hear they're advertising the BBC in cinemas now too. What's that about?
I'm beginning to feel angrier than Mr.Angry now.

Anonymous said...

Ean,
Its obvyus that nun of thees peeple in the meediaer are educkated - puhapps they shuld be in pollyticks?

RW said...

Blimey, Pickles is a right porker isn't he? If he lost a ton or so he'd be about the size of 25-stone, iron-watch-chained, crag-visaged, grim-booted Alderman Foodbotham.

Anonymous said...

I thought the monthly food claim that they take from pensioners £4,700 annual pension is "only" £400 per month - it's obviously £4,000 per month!
Bet you don't post this one!

Unknown said...

I have noticed an marked increase in spellig mistakes in captions on all TV stations. I guess it reflects the general educational standards of the country.

Anonymous said...

So, wts th issu hr thn? Hsn't nybody hre evr snt a txt msg b4? Th BBC staff r jst kping up wth th times....

Martin said...

The TV tax should be abolished.

Verity said...

Anonymous says 'license' the American variant. So what?

Sinbad The Sailor, who says he has more important things to worry about, if you don't care about the integrity of the language, then you have no interest in the precise expression of ideas.

Grumpy said...

" Roy said...
I suspect that someone at the Beeb never changed their PC's language settings from the default "English (US)" is all."

It would appear that you are unable to use English English - "is all" is a typical Americanism

A right wing non-Tory said...

Extremely Fat and Arrogant Eric Pickles is one of the reasons I became an ex Tory. He is the one that finds it difficult to catch a train from Liverpool Street to Billericay in the evening,unlike those of us that work for a living and don't need or can afford a house in Central London

Werner Patels said...

I hate it too whenever I see traces of American English seeping in.

American spelling today is based on random choices made by Mr. Webster (he of the dictionary) a long time ago and is not the product of a natural evolution.

I, therefore, reject American spelling.

C Hogan-Taylor said...

They also varied between 'MP's expenses' and 'MPs' expenses' at several points today. You'd think given the practise (that's PRACTISE) they've had...

Tubb said...

It's not only the BBC's spelling which is at fault and appears to have been Americanised. Its pronunciation is too. Many of their reporters and presenters appear unaware that there is a difference between INcrease and inCREASE, SURvey and surVEY, PROtest and proTEST etc. i.e. they fail to realise that for many of these words which can be used as both a noun and a verb the first syllable is stressed in the noun and the second syllable in the verb.* It is pretty clear in the following where the stress should fall: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks". If the first syllable of 'protest' is stressed the line becomes singularly ugly.

Ok – this can be viewed as being somewhat pedantic but the spoken word is, after all, central to the business of the BBC and it surely has a duty to promote the use of correct and mellifluous English.

*Yes, there are exceptions such as 'research', but this word, itself, is all too often doubly mangled by being pronounced as 'REEsearch' when it should be 'ruhSEARCH'.

Roy said...

Grumpy: that was probably because I'm married to an American and these things rub off on me. So shoot me, to use another one.

DespairingLiberal said...

Yes, interesting. For once, I feel inclined to join in with the BBC-bashing that happens here. Someone ought to also monitor the highly paid journalists for their apparent inability (now more frequent than ever) to utter even a simple sentence without mangling the English language, failing to understand crucial points in interviews, etc. This blight is particularly apparent on the horribly expensive-to-run "News 24" (should that be Confused 24?!).

All very relevant given the whining apologia yesterday from BBC executives that the inflation increase is justified given the "very high quality of our journalism".

A starting point would be a list of the highest paid talking heads on the news programmes compared to a list of their many gaffes and inabilities.

Oh dear, I am starting to sound like Hitchens. Could it be that Craig Brown's excellent satire of that gentleman in this week's Eye is having undesirable effects?