Plain talk about plane trees
The Bristol Post is not particularly renowned for the quality of its journalism.
This point of view was borne out by its report today on public works in Weston-super Mare, which features the following paragraph:
The species to be planted include silver birch, hazel, Scots pine, Himalayan plain, London plain and common alder. Work on removing the trees is due to start this week.
Himalayan plain? London plain? The Post should be sent to sit in shame in homophone corner until it learns the difference between a plain tree and a plane tree and promises not to make such elementary sub-editing errors in future.
However, the Post is not only guilty of falling victim to homophony and failing to do a bit of basic sub-editing. Indeed it is also guilty of churnalism – “a form of journalism in which press releases, wire stories and other forms of pre-packaged material are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media in order to meet increasing pressures of time and cost without undertaking further research or checking”.
Checking back on the source of the story in question, one arrives at a North Somerset Council news item of 20th February 2013, where – lo and behold – the following sentence appears:
The species to be planted include silver birch, hazel, Scots pine, Himalayan plain, London plain and common alder.
Thus the anonymous Post hack quoted initially has merely repeated the error of the original author of the news in North Somerset.
This blog has pointed out before that North Somerset is a strange place (posts passim), but having an illiterate write news on the council website is just plain perverse.