Thursday, October 2, 2014

Better know a newspaper: Bayernkurier and the joy of automatic hyphenation

As the 2014 Oktoberfest is winding down in its home state of Bavaria, Germany, we went to have a look at the newly online-only version of the weekly Bayernkurier. Published under the auspices of the conservative CSU, the paper has been an institution of German public discourse.

Our interest in the paper is unrelated to politics, we simply wanted to get an idea of how they embraced the change from cellulose pulp and inky bits to plain screen bits.

Better in some articles than others. 

Notably, this excerpt from an article about the right to a homeland:
Dieses Bekenntnis sind wir Ihnen, den vertriebenen Deut-schen schuldig. Ihr Schicksal und Ihre Lebensleistung sind Auftrag und Erbe für die Zu-kunft. Sie haben nach Krieg und Vertreibung beschlossen: Nie wieder! Nie wieder Entrech-tung, nie wieder Gewalt. Sie haben die Hände ausgestreckt. Seit jeher lautet Ihr Credo: Versöhnung statt Vergeltung.“

Automatic hyphenation is not for everyone it would seem. The words Deut-schen, Zu-kunft, Entrech-tung should not have a hyphen. The rest of the piece on the right to a homeland in the context of Germans who lost theirs as a result of World War II is fine hyphen-wise.

The Bayernkurier web site also ventures into the online shop world with books, for instance, a guidebook section.

The section had books on care of elderly and disabled people, on sports, and on dogs.

No cats?

Where are the cats? **

Not a single book on cats.

Now, this fact has huge significance.

OMG ***

** Status of the site as of the middle of September 2014.
*** Acronym of Oh My God (in most previous posts is was short for Old Mustached German)

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