Impeccable texts, well written and without spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. This is what, logically, La Vanguardia readers expect when they are ready to browse the newspaper or consult it in its digital edition. Subscriber Lluís Salvador, however, wrote to us this week to warn that “too often, reading his articles, many misspellings and disconnected phrases appear.”
Their impression is that we do not give these errors the importance they deserve because we believe that “at the end of the day, [the articles] are read quickly and the reader does not seem to notice.” "I'm sorry to tell you," he adds, "that we do realize it and that those of us who are already of a certain age, when reading certain articles, make our teeth grind."
Like him, another reader recently wrote developing this same complaint: “Years ago it was practically impossible to find spelling mistakes in an article. But today you find so many in all the digital newspapers that it even hurts your eyes.” And he continued: “If I wrote a text, before sending it I would look at it a thousand times and much more if I know that so many people are going to read it.”
In recent days, readers Andreas Manz, Amaya Garraga and Antoni Godino have also sent messages to warn of errors or typographical errors that they have detected and took advantage of to request greater attention. From these messages and others received over time on this topic, I believe that the vast majority of readers understand that it is inevitable that some error will escape in a printed newspaper that is written every day from scratch and in a digital edition. in constant rewriting. But they rightly claim that these errors are occasional.
Certainly, the demand in this sense on all fronts of the newspaper – from the journalist who writes the first version of the news to the following review phases – must be maximum, since linguistic correction, quality and precision are one of our first Cover letters as a means of quality communication.
It is no coincidence that the first chapter of the La Vanguardia Editorial Book begins with 18 guidelines that establish the importance of the language that should be used in the newspaper and that remain in force despite the changes in the profession and the habits of readers that they imply. the digital revolution and the acceleration of information.
