Diction

"Skedule" instead of "shedule"-- the former is the American pronunciation. People using "disconnect" as a noun; it should be "disconnection", the verb is "disconnect".

"Beg the question" does not mean raise a question: "Begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true-- without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.

People using "disinterested" to mean "uninterested". A particular annoyance is people using "infer" when they mean "imply": A speaker implies, a listener infers. Also people not realising that really "enormity" means the 'evilness' of something-- rather than the large size or significance of something! Perhaps Orwell had a point with Newspeak

Ramble ends.

PS: A prize for anybody who hears a Radio 2 traffic-reporter, who pronounces "Alfreton" correctly

Don't get me started on "refute"...

Who cares how it's said? Personally I'd prefer everyone making these little mistakes/variations than every voice we hear on the broadcast airwaves deliberately made to sound the same. So long as we can understand what they're saying.

After all, it's only how the plebs on the street talk innit.

Think there is a difference between dialect and accent, and incorrect usage and sloppy pronunciation. Of course language evolves - but many of the examples quoted in this thread are downright wrong...

How about... "50 people are killed". Surely that should be either "50 people have been killed" or "50 people are dead"? Being killed isn't a continuous state.

I was going to say...

That's just the de facto standard way of reading summaries - "Obama signs new peace deal", "Brown quits" - as used by street urchins selling papers in Victorian-era London

...but that just got me thinking, why do they do it like that? Is there a word for it?

Edit to answer my own question: sort of - it's called the historical present tense.

David

My guess (and it is only a guess) is that it makes the news sound more urgent/immediate. "Brown quits" is more hard-hitting for a headline than "Brown has quit". Putting it in the past tense makes it sound like old news.

I'd say that guess is right-- the practice dates back to Roman times. Most stories/tales in Latin were written in the present tense, for dramatic effect.

Ah yes... good one. Just to clarify, it does not mean to "deny"-- but to "prove something to be false".

I agree language does evolve. It's likely that we will lose the word "whom" from English by the end of the century, will it be a great loss to English? I don't think it will.

However not all change is good, if it makes the language less clear. "Refute" is a useful word, and English would be poorer if it is allowed to be become just a synonym for "deny" instead. Conversely in "imply" and "infer", we have two words with two usefully separate meanings. It would be another disadvantage to English if we lost "imply" and ended with "infer" having an amibuguous meaning-- simply through through laziness.

Regional accents or speech tics are one thing, but 'affected' sloppy pronunciation indicates a sloppy mind-- not a desirable quality in somebody deliver the news-- just undermines their credibility to me.

I hate this, not really diction but:
Starting every news story with "Now," and a question.
"Now, what do you get if you cross X with Y?"
I believe that breaches the BBC News Style guide.

Yes - I'm all for broadcasters having a range of accents and people with a range of backgrounds. However that doesn't mean that poor grammar and using words incorrectly is acceptable. What next? Will poor spelling on astons and tickers be tolerated?

English is a rich language that evolves - but we are in danger of losing some usefully precise words just because more and more people don't understand their true meaning. (I'm learning Swedish, which has a significantly smaller number of words - and far less subtlety and nuance as a result. My Swedish teacher - who is Swedish - says she loves English because it is both more precise and more expressive than her native tongue in some situations)

Whenever weather forecasters, and some travel show presenters refer to the the Balearic Islands, using "Bally Arix"
as the pronunciation. Very annoying indeed. Saying "Bally Arix" makes it sound like they're referring to a quaint
little village in the Republic of Ireland, rather than a group of Spanish islands popular with British tourists!

The correct pronunciation is with three syllables rather than four, and as it is spelt ... Balearics or Balearic Islands.