Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Stickin' It To The Man...Again

Once again, the Proofreader has discovered a job posting tarnished by sloppy copy, this time a glaring headline blunder. Wow, how'd that mistake slip by? According to an ad posted on Mediabistro.com a few weeks ago, the Hachette Filipacchi Media-owned Woman's Day magazine is looking to add an "Associte Online Editor" to its staff, as you can see in the highlighted screen shot below.

The job posting lists several qualifications "the ideal candidate" is expected to possess, though, interestingly, accurate spelling and competent proofreading skills are not among them. "The man" in this case is Hachette Fillipacchi Media, a Frenchman to be precise, and the world's largest magazine publisher. You'd think with those kind of credentials, despite being French, someone would know the proper English spelling of "associate." As an employer, you just can't make mistakes like that in this economy. Well, actually you can, but at least the Proofreader isn't going to let you get away scot-free. Technically, as a job applicant you can't make mistakes like that.

But wait, did the Proofreader miss another mistake in the headline? What about the apostrophe in woman's? Yeah, it looks like a mistake, but some slack has to be cut because the job is for "WomansDay.com" and there's no apostrophe in that Web address.

If you're one of the many unemployed and disenfranchised people looking for gainful employment, you should check out Pink Slips are the New Black, a blog written by and for people who've been laid off. They're disgruntled and doing some funny stuff over there, sticking it to the man, that will make you feel better about not having a job for a few minutes. And they were nice enough to pick up one the Proofreader's previous posts. Be sure to check them out and thanks to Pink Slips are the New Black for linking to that post.

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