We just wish they bloody well would so we can stop complaining about it!

What are the bitter, washed-up, old hacks who compile this column talking about? The fact that The Sydney Morning Herald and its sister The Sun-Herald continually get themselves into all sorts of trouble because they can’t settle on a standard folioing – page numbering – system.

Let’s use this page from today’s (Saturday’s) SMH to explain the continual cockups at the papers from poorly trained or couldn’t-care-less subeditors.

This is the pretend front page of that edition, inside the fake front page that often “graces” the cover when the paper has a wrap around, often from Hardly Normal.

Today, some editorial wizard at the paper decided to number the page shown here as page 3. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! The trouble arises because there’s never any consistency in this approach. Editions from day to day wander like Brown’s cows between folioing this page page 1 and page 3.

We think that’s pretty stupid but here’s our main beef. Some of the paper’s sub-editors – let’s assume for the same of the argument that they have more than one – never sit their lazy incompetent arses down at the start of a shift and address one simple question: “What the fuck have the powers-that-be decided to number that inside fake front page today?”

And because they don’t do that, we have today’s fuckup. See the two stories that spill from that page 3? The Ice Maiden and Truth bill yarns?

Here’s how those subs handled the spills on pages 4 and 8 respectively.

Well, the MGH supposes it should congratulate one of those subs for getting it right.

At least they didn’t use “From front page” as is sometimes the case, which is just as wrong anyway.

The MGH has on a number of occasions declared we’d give this issue a well-deserved rest.

And then we find we can’t because it gives us the fucking shits.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The From Page 1 blunder was picked up in The Bug‘s home-delivered and obvious early/country hardcopy edition. We can’t vouch for later hard-copy editions but it was corrected for the paper’s online edition but why should we pat them on the backs for that? Just get the bloody thing right in the first place! Accept that these mastheads dislike consistency and deal with it as professional wordsmiths.

Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!

Follow The Bug Online on WordPress.com