There is it was, right before my eyes, in The Daily Telegraph.
The story was about an artist who was accused by being a copycat.
Two of her prize-winning paintings, the story said, had a very close resemblance to paintings by better and more famous artists.
Each painting was said to ‘bear’ a close resemblance to its more famous source.
But they wanted to say it in the past tense, so they wrote about ‘…a painting that beared striking similarities to an artwork by a revered international artist.’
Eh? ‘Beared?
Where did they get that from?
The verb ‘to bear’ (which means ‘to carry’) is construed in the following way: ‘bears’ (present tense). ‘bearing’ (present continuous), and ‘bore’ (past tense).
They should have said that it ‘bore’ striking similarities.
At the head of the article were names of three journalists.
I will allow them to remain anonymous to hide their shame.
But how could they get this simple piece of English grammar so wrong?
There are two answers to that.
(1) They probably belong to the generation failed by the education system which, for 40 years, failed to teach correct grammar to school children.
The educators thought they were being smart implementing the trendy ‘whole language’ system (don’t learn real spelling or grammar, just look at the ‘shape’ of the word).
Those chickens are now coming home to roost.
(2) With newspapers under financial pressure (from online news and social media) many are cutting back on people called sub-editors.
Subs are the people who went through every word of every story—fixed them up, gave them headlines, and laid them out on the page.
Clearly this story had never been subbed at all!
One more word: why is this author called a ‘copycat’?
The word arose in America in the late 1800s, supposedly from the way that domestic cats will sometimes imitate each other’s behaviour.
It caught on, and stuck, because of the alliteration between the two hard Cs.
But back to this butchered grammar.
Two lessons: schools, get your act together! Newspapers: run the spellcheck more often!
For Perth readers -- today I will be talking words and language with Tod Johnston on 'The Long Lunch' (at about half past twelve).
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