Erros básicos de inglês no New York Times

Olá Pessoal

Vejam alguns erros de inglês que ocorreram no NYTimes, subsequentemente corrigidos por eles mesmo na coluna abaixo. Vários deles já exploramos e discutimos aqui mesmo neste Fórum! Do you feel better now about some of your own mistakes? Nobody´s perfect!!

See http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10 ... s-ready-4/:

1. For the Masteras, the pain and anguish is fading as they watch their boys grow.

Subject-verb agreement. Pain and anguish “are” fading.

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2. It’s not just the enormity of the mission, it’s the familiarity. General McChrystal doesn’t hide the bitterness in his voice as he describes having to take back Helmand Province all over again.

In precise usage, “enormity” means “great wickedness”; that certainly isn’t what we meant here.

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3. The bail payments were evidence of another observation several colleagues made about Mr. Halderman: he was in apparent financial trouble, partly because of obligations from a divorce and child-support payments.

“Apparent” is ambiguous when used this way. Better to say “He was apparently in financial trouble” or “He appeared to be in financial trouble.”

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4. She doesn’t really explore the obvious corollary: extreme frugality implies someone, probably a woman, staying home and spending all their time on it.

Another agreement problem; “someone” is singular. The pronoun “her” would have been apt.

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5. The “early bird” archaeopteryx may not be a bird, after all.

This is a genus, like Homo in Homo sapiens, and should have been capitalized throughout.

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6. Gilberto Zaldívar, a co-founder of the Repertorio Español, New York City’s premiere Spanish-language theater company, died Tuesday at his home in Manhattan.

Make it “premier,” meaning first in importance. “Premiere” means the first performance or showing.

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7. If we can’t rely on the marketers or the government or even the nutritionists to guide us through the supermarket woods, then who can we rely on?

If the correct grammar — in this case, “whom” — sounds stuffy, we should try to find a deft way to rephrase a sentence to make it both fluid and correct.

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8. Mr. Cuomo’s investigation seems to be moving closer to Mr. Hevesi himself and further entangling Hank Morris, Mr. Hevesi’s longtime political confidante, who was charged in March in a 123-count indictment with selling access to the pension fund.

For a man, make it “confidant.”

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9. Today, Dolphus Shields lays in a neglected black cemetery, where patches of grass grow knee-high and many tombstones have toppled.

Make it “lies,” of course. (This was fixed in later versions.)