To show that good writing really matters, and that bad writing really stinks, I
have this example for you. This is a piece of signage from the Napier
aquarium in New Zealand, and we can do this little exercise --I think this will
be kind of fun -- where you can test yourself. Just read through this
signage piece. This is from the aquarium. It describes an alligator, and you can
pause the video wherever you like, just to see if you can spot mistakes. Look
for mistakes of all kinds. So you can look for a punctuation error, spelling
errors, whatever you can find. So just pause the video wherever
you like and see if you can spot mistakes, and then after that we will go
through it and I'll point out as many mistakes as I could find. Now I should be
a little bit generous in the sense that even though this is from the Napier
aquarium, pretty much all of this is copied word-for-word from an online
source and I'm not sure actually if it's okay to do that in this case. I'm not
going to accuse them of plagiarism, but it does strike me as as perhaps somewhat
problematic, and it also raises this question: who's
responsible for the mistakes? Because some of them have been introduced after
the copying, and some are in the original text. So there are mistakes upon
mistakes, which also creates a bit of a problem here because people keep telling
me in New Zealand that their fellow countrymen (and countrywomen I suppose)
are terrible spellers and terrible writers, and, you know, I'm not sure what
to think now because who's responsible for these mistakes? Okay, so let's go
through this now, and we'll start with the title. First of all there is some
really random capitalization in these passages. In this case we have
"alligator" ... not capitalized here, but is capitalized there, and then "earth" is
capitalized, which is kind of bizarre. We have "lakes" and "marshes" ... are capitalized.
It's just all over the place. Then we have the Latin name, and you
might not have actually looked at this closely, but if
you know the little little kid thing, with Mississippi, where it's m-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i [spelled out],
and you're supposed to remember that,
or somebody asks you, "do you know how to spell Mississippi -- do you know how to
spell it? And then you are supposed to say "i-t" -- because
the answer is "it." Do you know how to spell "it"? But anyway, the point is that
there's a "p" missing here. And you would know that from that little saying.
Then we get to this: "Southern States, U.S. A." It's bit funny because there's
already the word "states" in here of course.
So "Southern States, United States of America." That's not a terrible problem,
but just something to note. Then we have this funny line here: "Females average 2.5
meters to 3.0 meters. That doesn't strike me as an
average. That strikes me as a range actually, which is kind of bizarre. And
then we have "rivers systems" -- should be just "river systems" of course. And then
we'll go down a little bit further here. There's this odd kind of space over here.
I'm not sure why that is there. Let's see here -- so we've talked about the random
capitalization. Then [in] the next sentence here we read, "One American alligator
reached a length of 5.84 meters and 1,000 kilograms," which
sounds funny because it sounds like this is a length of 1,000 kilograms ... [continues reading] "which
made it not only the largest alligator ever recorded, but almost the largest
crocodilians on record." I'm not sure why this is in the plural, but there you go.
"Often confused with various crocodile species, the American Alligator can be
identified by its rounded snout" -- that should be, of course, without the
apostrophe. There's another "it's" like that further on. [continues reading] "and by the fact that
when the jaws are closed none of the lower teeth are visible. Typically found
in freshwater swamps and marshes, their eyes and snout are positioned on the
tops of their heads." Not sure if their snout is really on the top, but okay. Now
notice that this is a dangling modifier, this opening bit here, because the implication
is that their eyes and snout are typically found in freshwater swamps and
marshes -- not the rest of them. Although I suppose it if that's all that you're
seeing, then maybe there's some truth to that. "... enabling them to breathe and watch
for prey while the rest of the body is submerged." Technically you don't need a comma
here, because this last information is kind of crucial to what came before. It's
basically essential information. So here we have our second "it's" -- the wrong
"it's" -- and this is a rather cumbersome sentence. It's copied word-for-word by
the way. So it says here, "While the American alligator is notorious for its
potential dangers to humans, attacks are very rare." "Potential" of
course is rather redundant, because danger is always somewhat
potential. and you could just simply say, "The American alligator is dangerous"
or "it's dangerous to humans" -- maybe you want to keep this bit
in -- and that would be a lot quicker. Alright, so they do some weird things in
terms of courting including ... some "complex body
postures," whatever that means. And that's always the trouble with just
borrowing this information. There's no interrogation of what this actually
means. It's just one fact after another and somehow we're supposed to make sense of
this and find something interesting in here. We have some references to their
eggs ... Okay, let's jump down a little bit here. And then we have this description
of how these hatchlings "graduate." Kind of a weird word. And then it says [that]
they take "fish, frogs, and snakes." I'm sure they do much more than "take" fish frogs
and snakes. Kind of a weird weird choice here. And then we end with this
weird extra colon. It's not really necessary because our
introduction should just merge with the list that follows. Lots of weird things.
Oh, I even didn't even notice the semicolon here:
"Alligators are found in the south-east of the United States of America; in the
states of." So we have a semicolon that just functions as a longer pause
apparently. This is a terrible piece of writing. I'm thinking about sending the
aquarium a note perhaps. But it is something that should concern us because
if people don't learn to write properly then we end up with this kind of garbage.
And most people don't even notice it because they're just looking for the
information and they're not looking for stylish and effective writing. But if
you are trained to write effectively, then you might be pained by seeing this.
And you might also think about whether we can tell a more attractive story,
whether we can tie the facts together somehow and make this an
interesting piece of signage that's not riddled with mistakes.