Abstract

Despite the fact that the incorrect use of English is condemned squarely by major news organizations, it has come to be used with impunity. This paper attempts to study the extent of the incorrect use of English language in newspapers and magazines.
This paper focuses on two expressions that are commonly used incorrectly: “compare to” which has come to be employed when juxtaposing two or more items to explain similarities and/or differences, and “another” which has come to be used as a synonym for “additional.” Data obtained by on-line and print versions of English newspapers and magazines show that there was a non-negligible percentage of cases where incorrect use of the two expressions was found. It was also found out that there was a fairly large difference in the correctness of the usage between the news organizations. Moreover, even some dictionaries and grammar books seem to be nonchalant about such distinction.