Good Bye, Tasmanian Living!

I have just had my fourth, and final ever, article published in Tasmanian Living. I think most people know that I have been a proud contributor to the magazine since its first edition. However, I no longer feel that I can write for them, given that one of their editors has seen fit to re-punctuate my work with humiliating results. 

Anyone who knows me will understand how absolutely mortifying I find it to have school boy errors such as it’s (a contraction of it is) rather than its (the possessive of it) being inserted into my work, as well as the most egregious of errors, feral apostrophes (the plural of Subaru and Nissan being rendered as Subaru’s and Nissan’s). There were other edits that I was less than chuffed with, too.

Why did he or she do it? I am at a loss to understand how anyone with an editorial role could be so ignorant of basic English.

As pretentious - or petty, perhaps - as this may sound, I take my writing too seriously to have it ruined by ill-considered, uneducated attempts at editing. Literacy must be valued and respected. I am embarrassed to have my name associated with the article of which I speak and wish it to be known I am not responsible for the errors detailed above.

Please keep reading this, my Upper Middle Petrol Head 'blog.  I hope that readers will continue to enjoy its car-related content.  Feel free to share it, too, especially those who access it via my Stick Man Facebook account.

Kind regards,

Alastair Watson
Writer and photographer.