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I also offer personally-tailored, individualized English conversation practice (including etiquette) and coaching in writing techniques. Finally, I edit texts such as magazines, business proposals, memorandums, emails so they are presented in English which does not embarrass you or your organization. For further details, please mail me at: language.etiquette@gmail.com

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13 January 2014

The Financial Times needs me (or some competent proof-reader)



What is going on? Is this Dave’s bank or has Dave devised a slogan for use as the name of a bank he has started (quite a good idea, I think)? I honestly do not know. Yet this is one of the headlines on the home page of today’s edition of the Financial Times. It is not some sleep-inducing story about economic theory in the back of the paper, or a piece of life-style flannel designed solely to bring in advertising without being read by anyone able to tell the difference between a name and a command. It is in the shop window of an important international word vendor. So the words should have been carefully checked. Clearly they weren’t.
     It is a sad reflection of modern times that so prestigious a paper as the Financial Times makes so many mistakes (see previous posts passim, including 5 January 2014). There is nothing which lets a publication, be it newspaper or company report or business proposal, down so much as illiteracy, comically inept phrasing or serious “typos” like the one pictured. Yet I am available to help at the mere click of an email Send button! 


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