We watched a wonderful compilation of performances of Stephen Sondheim songs on BBC4, coupled with excerpts from interviews, where his love of language was a dominant theme. It was therefore utterly depressing to read the captions which the BBC placed under the songs as they were totally illiterate: full of errors of grammar and punctuation, spelling mistakes, factual errors, and all written by someone who was clearly tone deaf as to how language works. One particularly egregious example was the claim that Sondheim disliked his own lyrics for I feel pretty (West Side Story) because they were too simple. In fact, he said the opposite: he felt they were too complicated for the characters of the young Puerto Rican women singing them. In another, Coconut Grove was spelled Cocoanut Grove. There were numerous mistakes and inconsistencies of style and punctuation, and two uses of the wretched "of course" which is both redundant and patronising. Surely someone at the BBC should have assumed responsibility of ensuring that these captions were worthy of the subject of the programme?
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