Days: it’s a blog thing
Since August, 2001. Surely it can’t last…
Sunday, November 17, 2002 ↓
GRRRR!
File under “those thoroughly inconsequential little things that bug you…”
I wonder how many people like me get irritated by reading an article on a topic of which they have particular knowledge (like their home town, perhaps) and finding basic errors that simple fact-checking could have avoided?
Being a capital city, architectural jewel, home of the world’s largest international arts festival, yadda yadda yadda, my home town of Edinburgh gets written about a lot. And a lot of nonsense gets written about it. Amongst the minor-but-unforgivable-because-it-is-published-in-an-“authoritative”-source types of errors is in a piece on the BBC web site:
The Royal Mile, or to Edinburgers, the high street, runs from the castle down to the Palace of Holyrood.
Actually, as any citizen of Edinburgh (we don’t commonly call ourselves “Edinburgers”) will tell you, the terms Royal Mile and High Street are not synonymous. The Royal Mile is the name given to the route from the Castle right down the ridge to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and takes in Castlehill and the Lawnmarket, the High Street, and Canongate — all streets in their own right.
I’ve come across some hilarious boobs in the past, such as the travel site (unfortunately, I can’t find the link now) which completely confused Mons Meg and the One O’Clock Gun, reporting that Mons Meg was fired every day from the Castle ramparts at 13:00 hours. The thought of firing a 500-year-old cannon (that would blow itself to bits in the process) is funny enough, but the picture it conjured in my head of a 300 pound projectile being lobbed over Princes Street Gardens and through the windows of Marks and Spencer…
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