There’s Editing and Then There’s Editing
Posted on December 1st, 2009 in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Study Says Being Lonely Maybe Contagious
—From the Harvard Alumni Affairs and Development website.
(That should read, of course, “Study Says Being Lonely May Be Contagious.”)
5 Responses
12/1/2024 12:24 pm
It seems that the content on the HAA website is wholly automatically generated (through the Yahoo Pipes application), so I’m not sure the finger pointing is warranted.
12/1/2024 2:30 pm
Fair enough. But it’s odd that a Harvard alumni website should be automated so that it looks as if it can’t spell!
12/1/2024 2:44 pm
Silly scientists! If being lonely were contagious, how could you possibly spread it?
12/1/2024 6:16 pm
I can’t get excited about this one. The “and 94 more” makes it clear this is automated, and also, by the way, is an indicator of how much worldwide interest there is in this story. Would you have preferred a Harvard editor to rewrite the headline of the story, so when you clicked on it you were taken to the real, ungrammatical headline — with the costs and time delays that sort of editing would require? Or do you think the reputational risk to Harvard in this automated harvesting is so great that Harvard shouldn’t do it at all if it can’t do it by hand? Frankly, I’d rather keep this latest-news feature as is, and spend any excess editorial dollars on making sure the things that our various leaders put out over their signatures are both grammatical and graceful.
12/1/2024 8:11 pm
I think that’s a fair point, Harry. Okay, Harvard Alumni website, I take it back. Keep on keeping on.