Glazed and confused

Photo from veryveganrecipes.com

Photo from veryveganrecipes.com

Margaret Holt, standards editor at the Chicago Tribune, kindly responded yesterday to questions about why errors recently have plagued the paper’s weather page.

“The weather page is produced for the Chicago Tribune through a collaborative effort with the WGN-TV news department,” she wrote in an email. The Chicago Tribune owns WGN. “I asked the producer who coordinates the project for WGN about these errors.”

That person, she wrote, “explained that WGN editors had some recent schedule shifts and production issues that, in combination, reduced the amount of editing time on deadline. As a result of these problems, he says, a new deadline schedule has been implemented and he has been working with Tribune editors to give the desk more time on the print product.”

It will be gratifying to see the Chicago Tribune’s weather page meeting professional standards again, but it won’t be as much fun. Each day of reading it was like panning through the usual drab verbiage for gold, and these are the latest nuggets:

On 1/31: “Some lake effect flurries early the mixed sun and clouds.”

On 2/5: “High peak in the middle 30s then slide into the 20s as wind shift into the north and increase to 15-25 mph.”

On 2/6: “Some glazing late and overnight as temps slowly fall below freezing” and “Drizzle and light rain will develop this weekend, resulting in some glazing…”

It’s probably tough on weather-page wordsmiths to confine their writing to the repetitive phrases of forecasting. Boredom must tempt them to liven up the page with an occasional flourish such as “glazing,” which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as, “The action, process or trade of fitting windows with glass.” Not mentioned is this commonly understood meaning: “The process of adding a delicious, sugary coating on doughnuts.”

Readers aren’t likely to think that rain and falling temperatures will cause windows or sugar coating to appear on the landscape. But to eliminate any possible question about the substance, the word “iciness” would do nicely.

 

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Won’t somebody please helps them?

From today’s Chicago Tribune weather page:

“Winds start out from the east then gradually shifts southerly and increases…”

Actually, this is an improvement. During the past week, the weather page has featured two to four errors most days.

Let’s recap. Since Jan. 22, the following errors appeared on the weather page:

“Lake-efect snow”

“Pattern shift suggest temperature downturn late next week”

“Water vapor in clouds hold onto and re-radiates heat”

“Percent of possible sunshine in recent days”

“Fifteen-foot drifts stranded 50,000 cars, making it nearly impossible for snow-removal equipment to traverse the street and expressways…”

“High pressure builds across the Great lakes”

“Clouds dominate area skies early followed by periods of sunshine emerge through the day.”

“Windy snow-maker bring weavy snow totals”

 

 

Typos, cloudy grammar remain well above normal

From today’s Chicago Tribune weather page:

Photo from  nickulivieriphotography.com

Photo from
nickulivieriphotography.com

“High pressure builds across the Great lakes”

“Clouds dominate area skies early followed by periods of sunshine emerge through the day.”

“Windy snow-maker bring weavy snow totals”

Does Tom Skilling, the weatherman whose photo adorns the upper right-hand corner of the page every day, ever read it? Perhaps he makes the reasonable assumption, as do many newspaper readers, that a major news organization like the Chicago Tribune would do all it can to ensure accuracy in basic grammar and eliminate typos before publication. The page this day wasn’t an aberration; it’s one of four weather pages in the past six days to be marred by such flaws.

Skilling has a daily column, “Ask Tom,” in which he answers weather questions from readers. It probably isn’t his job to proofread the weather page, but given his prominence on it, he might like an explanation from the page editor about why these sloppy errors keep occurring. If you’d like to know, too, try contacting him at asktomwhy@wgntv.com.

 

 

News flash: Chicago had only one street in 1967!

Chicago's Lake Shore Drive after the blizzard of '67.

Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive after the blizzard of ’67. Photo from chuckmanchicagonostaliga. wordpress.com.

From today’s Chicago Tribune weather page about the anniversary of the city’s 1967 “Big Snow:”

“Fifteen-foot drifts stranded 50,000 cars, making it nearly impossible for snow-removal equipment to traverse the street and expressways…”