Wednesday, April 16, 2008

This program is closed captioned by the spelling impaired

Okay, so I'm watching TV with mom the other day, and the closed captioning is always turned on since she's very hard of hearing. I couldn't help but laugh at the numerous misspellings during a local newscast. Some result in really creative double entendres, others can turn a great story into something stupid.

Yes, I know that I often spell phonetically on this blog with words like "thru" and "nite" but seriously, please hit spellcheck before sending your script to the prompter.

When closed captioning first came to our station in the early 90's, we invited members of the deaf community to our station about a month after we started. One woman came up to me and, thru an interpreter, said, "Can't you news people spell?"

Anyway, take a minute. Lots of people will appreciate it, and you'll appear smarter.

Okay, I'm thru for tonite.

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