BBC ‘News’

Ever since Ben started pointing them out, I’ve become aware of the frequent superfluous quotation marks in BBC News headlines. (For example: ‘Hundreds’ killed by Haiti storm.) But just how prevalent are they? By way of an answer, I present BBC ‘News’.

BBC ‘News’ is a lot like BBC News, except that it just shows the latest articles with quotation marks in the headline. It’s updated every couple of hours.

2008-09-07 14:33 UTC. Comments: 4.

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  1. Stu

    Wrote at 2008-09-07 19:39 UTC using Firefox 3.0.1 on Windows Vista:

    I noticed this a few months ago. I could never really understand why they appeared everywhere, whether needed or not.

    I never would have thought to write a script to aggregate them all though. :)

  2. schopenhauer

    Wrote at 2008-09-13 10:20 UTC using Safari 525.20.1 on Mac OS X:

    Hi Paul,
    Weirdly, that makes the articles much more interesting too me – creates a kind of cynical vibe that suggests they will have a critical insight rather than a uncritical gloss.

    I wonder if there is a market there for automated POV detection, with grammatical markup to reflect objective, subjective, and irrelevant comments?

    For instance: Asked whether the new easier-exams policy would raise future incomes for deprived children, the minister said valued outcomes[non-responsive] for the most needy [non-quantified quantifier] should[non-binding] flow[ambiguous] in years to come[like jesus].

    Perhaps with a rewrite link taking into account the speakers motivation. So the above might rewrite as ” ‘In all honesty, no’ (based on failure to make strong claim despite motivation)”

    :-)

  3. Paul Battley

    Wrote at 2008-09-13 14:49 UTC using Firefox 3.0.1 on Linux:

    That would be excellent. It seems quite tricky, though: off the top of my head, I can’t think of a strategy to identify that kind of language automatically.

  4. Alex MacCaw

    Wrote at 2008-11-08 18:38 UTC using Firefox 3.0.3 on Mac OS X:

    Just seen “Indonesia ‘executes’ Bali bombers” – they were either executed or they weren’t – there’s no quotation marks needed. It’s probably the beebs lawyers at work. One wonders why they don’t put quotes round the whole news articles – that way, if they get it wrong, they can say it was just opinion and be safe from legal action!

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