No this isn't one of those random phone calls from some anonymous person who wants to ask you a series of questions on some topic or about a person... The good old "Can I ask you about this issue?" or the "What do you think of this person's decisions?" or the classic "Have you decided who you're going to vote for?"
Definitely not. Usually I don't answer the caller's questions. I simply tell them I'm not interested, it's none of their business and/or please take me off your calling list.
The polls I'm talking about here are the ones where a news outlet asks viewers or readers one specific question on a certain topic.
This can be done on the organization's Webpage or on a social media page like Facebook.
When it's an actual poll, you want the question to be fairly simple, something with a yes/no/maybe or agree/disagree/neutral sort of answer.
Something people need to remember is that polls posed by a news organization are not scientific, unless it's done in association with a research center like Pew or Gallup. Even then, I probably wouldn't count them as all that reliable.
Most news polls are not somebody wearing a lab coat gathering data from a massive sampling of the population to reach some conclusion about a medicine or an idea of how the wind is blowing with regards to a given issue.
Not at all. These kinds of polls often have a very low response rate because it is not only voluntary, but the person looking to respond must seek out the question to answer it. That means going to the news organization's Webpage or social media page in order to vote.
Thus, only the most passionate people or the ones who really feel strongly about the topic of the question will go through that effort. For a lot of such polls on smaller market station Websites, 200 responses is a lot!
So a lot of these questions are about things that get people's ire up: abortion, gay marriage, the economy, debt, etc.
News organizations want to know what local people think about a given issue, so they ask a question.
However, because of the low response rate, these kinds of things are about as reliable as a broken gyroscope.
Only those who are genuinely interested in, or very passionate about the topic, will respond and they will most likely be very much for or against a given issue, especially when dealing with ones that cause such powerful responses as gay marriage or abortion.
These "hot button" issues are called that because of the vehemence with which people respond to them. And they have very vocal sides, for and against.
Like the more scientific polls, there are limitations to what kind of information can be gathered through such questions. The wording is one of the most important factors because the question may roil people's opinions, depending on the words used to ask it.
Something simple like "Are you for or against gay marriage?" may or may not get much of a response. It's pretty straight forward with responses limited to for, against and undecided.
But if you reword the question, you might get flack for it. Even writing it "Do you support gay marriage?" can completely change the kind of response a poll can get. While the choices would be yes, no or undecided, the simple fact that it's asking if you "support" something may mean the response will be slanted.
People may read the second version of the question to mean that the organization itself supports the issue involved. That may anger people and send more to vote, but it may also backlash in that people won't vote at all. They may also call or e-mail to complain.
There are some less scrupulous pollsters out there who seem to specifically word questions to get a certain answer.
There was even a political cartoon about that a while back, when George W. Bush was still in office, showing a poll taker asking questions at a person's door. The potential answers were Bush as president or some very weird, very extreme and nasty scenario. That's an outlier as an example, but they do seem to want certain answers, which is why I rarely take polls, especially political ones.
So the questions have to be very carefully worded to aim for that journalistic ideal: objectivity. No matter how impossible that ideal is to reach.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write these questions in such a way that they do not show any slant on the part of the news organization?
From experience... It's nuts!
Even when you spend a long time working on the wording, it's still possible people will respond to it negatively based on a presumed bias. This may not be a fault of the poll at all, but a fault of the story to which the poll to tied.
To continue with the potential poll involving gay marriage, say the story is talking about a state that has just voted to allow it. Then ask the poll. Because of the story, potential voters may assume the news organization supports gay marriage because it's asking the question with a story in support of it.
I know that sounds somewhat confusing, but some decisions made by people are confusing and not even made consciously. It just clicks somewhere in the mind. Explainable or not, people may react and vote with their guts, not their conscious minds.
Sometimes questions asked by a news organization involve how a person would handle a given situation. Think of the sometimes controversial show "What Would You Do?" That's basically what it's doing.
The show creates a situation in which people who don't know the scenario is fake must decide how to react. They can take action, do nothing, wait until they feel safe enough to do something or any other number of potential reactions.
While it may not be necessarily good to compare this show to a poll, it is in essence a poll of emotions. Will people be mad enough, brave enough, crazy enough to do something to fix a given situation?
And they often pick things that are bound to get at least a few people's gorge, such as polygamy, child abuse, drunk driving, racism and many others.
Like the unconscious connection between the news organization's question and support for a controversial issue, it all plays on the emotions of the potential voter or actor. And emotions have never been called rational.
In these kinds of situations, and especially when asking a question on social media, you will get opinions.
On occasion, a news organization will want to run some of those comments, in print or on air. However, the organization has to be careful in doing so.
It has happened when someone will actually take offense at having his or her comment used without "asking permission" first, even if the comment is positive. However, the news organization will most likely respond that the person made the comment in a public forum (on the organization's Website or Facebook page), which means it can be used without specifically contacting the commentator and asking permission.
Or perhaps a viewer posted a very long, in-depth comment that is too much for the entirety to be republished. So the news organization will use part of it. This may result in complaints of taking something out of context by the person who made the comment.
Commentators, like people who vote in the polls, tend to be very passionate about a topic, and if they feel they have been slighted in any way, they will react just as quickly to protect themselves from any "taint," even if that taint is only perceived.
All in all, when you hear about a poll and a news organization, you simply cannot take that poll to be a cross-section of the general population. Only those who feel they have to respond will do so, which will probably slant the results in one direction or another.
It all depends on the poll, the topic, the wording, the passion of the responders.
In the end, a poll is a slice of the whole. Just not a perfect slice.
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Oh the Marvelous, Myriad Morass of Malaprops!
Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are just dumbfounding. But these mistakes, if you catch them, might just strike one of those chords.
And no, I'm not pulling a V with that title. (By the way, I'm also not referencing the weird TV series about the aliens with this comment. It's from a comic that was made into a movie in 2006.)
But first, you might be wondering what exactly a malapropism is. Well, there are two ways to find out. You can go read the play "The Rivals" by Richard Sheridan and intuit it from the text, or you can just look it up, which isn't as much fun.
In the end, a malapropism happens when a person says or writes a word correctly but uses it in the wrong context. My copy of the "Webster Contemporary Dictionary" says a malapropism is "an absurd misuse of words that sound somewhat alike."
One of my favorites from the play will always be the "allegory on the banks of the Nile." Though being a "progeny of learning" is something else entirely, and you had better watch out for those "contagious countries" in Europe.
By the way, "The Rivals" isn't a new play by any means. It was written in the 18th century. I believe it was first performed in the mid-1770s.
On a personal note, I had the pleasure of playing this role in high school, in 1999.*
In an earlier post, I mentioned President "Back" Obama and all the things we take for "granite."
One word: Oops.
So if the number of traffic "fatties" is going down, someone is graduating with a "bachelorette" degree, a teenager has been arrested and charged with "passion" of a controlled substance, or you ask for forgiveness saying you will go "flatulate" yourself... Well I think those speak for themselves.
And before you accuse me of making any of those up, I have to say no, I'm not. Every single one of those is a malapropism I have seen or heard. And they are only a few, choice picks, of the mass of such mistakes I have seen.
These may seem like fairly obvious mistakes, but, as I stated in that aforementioned earlier post, you won't catch them unless you proofread. And even then, some might get through.
Still, even in a potentially serious situation, you can find a moment of hilarity. For instance, near the beginning of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, my mother and I accompanied my father to the emergency room after he had fallen one night. While there, I noticed a sign posted on one of the cabinets about hand washing when entering and "existing" a room.
I would certainly hope a person would be existing when entering such a place. And remaining that way upon exiting would be a plus.
Especially for all those drug "attics" who just have to get their fix, ranging from oxycodone to "plackebos." I couldn't figure out any other way to write that one to show how the person mispronounced it...
Enough with the examples for while.
Even though these mistakes can be funny, just like bad writing and grammar, they reduce the credibility of the writer. That is if a reader even notices the mistake.
What makes malapropisms so very tricky is the simple fact that the word IS similar even though it's incorrect. Take the "bachelorette" degree for example. The correct word would be baccalaureate or maybe bachelor's. But if you weren't sure how to spell the correct word, you might take a guess and then use spell check. That might bring up the other, like the horror story I was once heard about a graduate student writing his thesis on Madame "Ovary."
I've mentioned before that sometimes my brain will simply not a register a mistake because to me, it looks correct. But then fresh eyes find problems.
For example, in my post about the spelling and grammar problems in text language, I accidentally wrote something was "detonating" rather than denoting. My sister caught that one, so I'm just as likely to make these mistakes as anyone else.
I have never claimed that I don't make mistakes when it comes to my writing, but that's why, in my proofreading post, I talked about having fresh eyes look at something I write to make sure it's correct.
In the same way, other people may be reading so quickly, they will simply breeze over a mistake like a malapropism and their brain will read it the way it's supposed to be.
Just like this line a co-worker sent to me once - "Too bee, ore naught (knot) two bee." All those words are spelled correctly and the line still reads correctly, but if you've ever read "Hamlet," you'll know it's wrong. Heck, even if you haven't read "Hamlet," just about everybody knows that line and would recognize it (even in Klingon).
In the end though, it all comes back to looking over the words on the paper or on the screen.
Probably the biggest problem with malapropisms is the simple fact that, for many, spell check won't catch them.
So back to proofreading.
Please, I don't want to be "scent" to jail for pointing out these glitches, but still, nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing replaces proofreading as a way to prevent them.
* Funny story related to my playing Mrs. Malaprop... I was out visiting a university in Arizona, auditioning for music and theater. On the flight back to Virginia, my mother was helping me rehearse my lines. She had the script and was giving me my cues. After the plane landed and we were preparing to disembark, I was surprised to get a Standing O from the other passengers, some of whom told us they spent the whole flight listening.
In the end, I didn't attend that university. I got a better offer from the University of Missouri. I happen to be the sixth member of my family to attend Mizzou, and the fourth to graduate.
And no, I'm not pulling a V with that title. (By the way, I'm also not referencing the weird TV series about the aliens with this comment. It's from a comic that was made into a movie in 2006.)
But first, you might be wondering what exactly a malapropism is. Well, there are two ways to find out. You can go read the play "The Rivals" by Richard Sheridan and intuit it from the text, or you can just look it up, which isn't as much fun.
In the end, a malapropism happens when a person says or writes a word correctly but uses it in the wrong context. My copy of the "Webster Contemporary Dictionary" says a malapropism is "an absurd misuse of words that sound somewhat alike."
One of my favorites from the play will always be the "allegory on the banks of the Nile." Though being a "progeny of learning" is something else entirely, and you had better watch out for those "contagious countries" in Europe.
By the way, "The Rivals" isn't a new play by any means. It was written in the 18th century. I believe it was first performed in the mid-1770s.
On a personal note, I had the pleasure of playing this role in high school, in 1999.*
In an earlier post, I mentioned President "Back" Obama and all the things we take for "granite."
One word: Oops.
So if the number of traffic "fatties" is going down, someone is graduating with a "bachelorette" degree, a teenager has been arrested and charged with "passion" of a controlled substance, or you ask for forgiveness saying you will go "flatulate" yourself... Well I think those speak for themselves.
And before you accuse me of making any of those up, I have to say no, I'm not. Every single one of those is a malapropism I have seen or heard. And they are only a few, choice picks, of the mass of such mistakes I have seen.
These may seem like fairly obvious mistakes, but, as I stated in that aforementioned earlier post, you won't catch them unless you proofread. And even then, some might get through.
Still, even in a potentially serious situation, you can find a moment of hilarity. For instance, near the beginning of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, my mother and I accompanied my father to the emergency room after he had fallen one night. While there, I noticed a sign posted on one of the cabinets about hand washing when entering and "existing" a room.
I would certainly hope a person would be existing when entering such a place. And remaining that way upon exiting would be a plus.
Especially for all those drug "attics" who just have to get their fix, ranging from oxycodone to "plackebos." I couldn't figure out any other way to write that one to show how the person mispronounced it...
Enough with the examples for while.
Even though these mistakes can be funny, just like bad writing and grammar, they reduce the credibility of the writer. That is if a reader even notices the mistake.
What makes malapropisms so very tricky is the simple fact that the word IS similar even though it's incorrect. Take the "bachelorette" degree for example. The correct word would be baccalaureate or maybe bachelor's. But if you weren't sure how to spell the correct word, you might take a guess and then use spell check. That might bring up the other, like the horror story I was once heard about a graduate student writing his thesis on Madame "Ovary."
I've mentioned before that sometimes my brain will simply not a register a mistake because to me, it looks correct. But then fresh eyes find problems.
For example, in my post about the spelling and grammar problems in text language, I accidentally wrote something was "detonating" rather than denoting. My sister caught that one, so I'm just as likely to make these mistakes as anyone else.
I have never claimed that I don't make mistakes when it comes to my writing, but that's why, in my proofreading post, I talked about having fresh eyes look at something I write to make sure it's correct.
In the same way, other people may be reading so quickly, they will simply breeze over a mistake like a malapropism and their brain will read it the way it's supposed to be.
Just like this line a co-worker sent to me once - "Too bee, ore naught (knot) two bee." All those words are spelled correctly and the line still reads correctly, but if you've ever read "Hamlet," you'll know it's wrong. Heck, even if you haven't read "Hamlet," just about everybody knows that line and would recognize it (even in Klingon).
In the end though, it all comes back to looking over the words on the paper or on the screen.
Probably the biggest problem with malapropisms is the simple fact that, for many, spell check won't catch them.
So back to proofreading.
Please, I don't want to be "scent" to jail for pointing out these glitches, but still, nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing replaces proofreading as a way to prevent them.
* Funny story related to my playing Mrs. Malaprop... I was out visiting a university in Arizona, auditioning for music and theater. On the flight back to Virginia, my mother was helping me rehearse my lines. She had the script and was giving me my cues. After the plane landed and we were preparing to disembark, I was surprised to get a Standing O from the other passengers, some of whom told us they spent the whole flight listening.
In the end, I didn't attend that university. I got a better offer from the University of Missouri. I happen to be the sixth member of my family to attend Mizzou, and the fourth to graduate.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Oddities of Inspiration
I recently noticed something about my blog that somewhat displeases me.
My last three posts all say they went up November 1.
The truth is, quite simply, they didn't. Each post went up a couple of weeks apart.
However, I did create multiple posts all on the same day, November 1.
I was inspired by numerous topics on which I felt I might expound. In an attempt to not forget any of them, I created multiple posts with notes in the drafts to remind me of those topics about which I wanted to write.
I would then work on the posts as the thoughts struck me, sometimes very late at night or even hopping out of the shower and grabbing a towel in order to write something down I considered witty or well worded before it flitted from my mind, never to be written...
I have actually done this several times and am currently working on multiple posts that will eventually go up. Unfortunately, they will not truly represent the work that went into them because they will be posted by their creation dates, not their actual posting dates.
Unless someone out there knows a trick around that little problem? If you do, feel free to let me know. I would like to have my posts reflect the actual work they entailed...
As I wrote in my one post, I proofread like crazy. Very rare indeed is it that I put up a post the very day I created it because I want to make sure it reads well, is well written and doesn't contain mistakes if I can avoid them.
I will sometimes spend weeks on a single post, polishing, reworking, editing or just plain rewriting the whole thing.
As a journalist, that isn't always possible, at least not in my particular field. Each day is a new effort with new stories and more issues. You can't sit and work on a single story for days on end, unless it's for a sweeps period. Then you can sometimes work on one story for weeks, but those are not as common and you still have to work around that daily load.
For those who are not in the television field, a Sweeps Period is for the Nielsen Ratings system. Such periods occur four times a year for about a month at a time. During those periods, viewers are polled through various means to see what they are watching and when. Then the TV station gets the crunched numbers from those polls on which the station can then base its advertising fees.
Of course, this is only the most basic explanation of a Sweeps period... You would have to know more about it than I do to go even deeper...
For a news station, these periods mean reporters work on special segments, or even series, of stories that are longer, more in depth and of wider ranging topics than stories seen on the usual day.
It's a bit of a juxtaposition, but as a person of varied interests and just as varied knowledge, I'd like to include, and indulge, that knowledge and my interests in each post if I can.
I'm also a researcher, of a sort. You have to be able to do research to get any sort of post-graduate degree. What that means is I will often look up something to make sure I have it correct.
So whether I'm checking to see if I have something spelled correctly, or I'm making a correct reference to a given work, or I'm looking up a historical/scientific/literary point to support my views, I will take that time and look it up.
So, sorry about the clump posts. I do spend some time on each one. Honor the Muses for their gifts, but beware for they do strike, it seems, in sets.
My last three posts all say they went up November 1.
The truth is, quite simply, they didn't. Each post went up a couple of weeks apart.
However, I did create multiple posts all on the same day, November 1.
I was inspired by numerous topics on which I felt I might expound. In an attempt to not forget any of them, I created multiple posts with notes in the drafts to remind me of those topics about which I wanted to write.
I would then work on the posts as the thoughts struck me, sometimes very late at night or even hopping out of the shower and grabbing a towel in order to write something down I considered witty or well worded before it flitted from my mind, never to be written...
I have actually done this several times and am currently working on multiple posts that will eventually go up. Unfortunately, they will not truly represent the work that went into them because they will be posted by their creation dates, not their actual posting dates.
Unless someone out there knows a trick around that little problem? If you do, feel free to let me know. I would like to have my posts reflect the actual work they entailed...
As I wrote in my one post, I proofread like crazy. Very rare indeed is it that I put up a post the very day I created it because I want to make sure it reads well, is well written and doesn't contain mistakes if I can avoid them.
I will sometimes spend weeks on a single post, polishing, reworking, editing or just plain rewriting the whole thing.
As a journalist, that isn't always possible, at least not in my particular field. Each day is a new effort with new stories and more issues. You can't sit and work on a single story for days on end, unless it's for a sweeps period. Then you can sometimes work on one story for weeks, but those are not as common and you still have to work around that daily load.
For those who are not in the television field, a Sweeps Period is for the Nielsen Ratings system. Such periods occur four times a year for about a month at a time. During those periods, viewers are polled through various means to see what they are watching and when. Then the TV station gets the crunched numbers from those polls on which the station can then base its advertising fees.
Of course, this is only the most basic explanation of a Sweeps period... You would have to know more about it than I do to go even deeper...
For a news station, these periods mean reporters work on special segments, or even series, of stories that are longer, more in depth and of wider ranging topics than stories seen on the usual day.
It's a bit of a juxtaposition, but as a person of varied interests and just as varied knowledge, I'd like to include, and indulge, that knowledge and my interests in each post if I can.
I'm also a researcher, of a sort. You have to be able to do research to get any sort of post-graduate degree. What that means is I will often look up something to make sure I have it correct.
So whether I'm checking to see if I have something spelled correctly, or I'm making a correct reference to a given work, or I'm looking up a historical/scientific/literary point to support my views, I will take that time and look it up.
So, sorry about the clump posts. I do spend some time on each one. Honor the Muses for their gifts, but beware for they do strike, it seems, in sets.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Introduction
In the field of journalism, words are life and being able to play with those words, mold them for various uses, is a handy skill. The phrase, Journaliste Sagace, is actually a play on words that crosses three languages. Journaliste is the easy part. It’s the French word for journalist; what I am. Sagace is also a French word. This one means sagacious or wise. That is what my name, Klug, means in German. In other words, it’s who I am. It’s just a little twist of the tongue, one of those clever puzzles that can be solved with the right code. I am Sharra Klug and I am the Journaliste Sagace.
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