Imagine a map of Britain the exact same size as Britain, showing every branch of Greggs, every nail bar, every Vape shop in detail.
Data, analysis, no spaces or free air, matches that are just schematised movement.
Let Max Dowman exist, breathe, bloom in the shadows.
3 sentences from our version of the report,
chosen to cover it. Nothing here is written; every line is in the article below.
How
Summarized version
In Borges’s story the land soon begins to decay beneath the large map and left to rot in the desert. Let Max Dowman exist, breathe, bloom in the shadows.
The report’s most important sentence, shortened and in plain words. How
Headline check
One of the two things this headline claims did not turn up in the report.
“Barney Ronay” is named in the headline. We could not find it in the report.
Figures, names and quoted words in the headline, looked for in the report itself — not in the summary above. Names are matched as they are spelled, so a report that says “New South Wales” where the headline says “NSW” is queried here when it should not be. How this is checked
The article, shortened and in plain language
This most modern and well-honed of footballers will not be able to escape the spotlight in an age of constant scrutiny but looks equipped to handle it.
T he poet Jorge Luis Borges wrote a famous short story about a society that had become so good at making maps, so obsessed with capturing every detail, that its rulers decided the only way to do the job right was to make a lifesize map of its entire empire, which could then be laid out across the actual land from coast to coast. Imagine a map of Britain the exact same size as Britain, showing every branch of Greggs, every nail bar, every Vape shop in detail.
Borges was writing in the 1940s, at a time when people were fascinated by the mechanised future, with its new forms of measuring out the world: the wireless, the 30mph motorcar, the rise of Big Tape Measure.
“Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular,” he wrote, which probably seemed a statement at the time. Data, analysis, no spaces or free air, matches that are just schematised movement. At times it can feel like football is out there laying a lifesize real-time map on top of itself.
In Borges’s story the land soon begins to decay beneath the large map and left to rot in the desert. Let Max Dowman exist, breathe, bloom in the shadows.
Dowman shows for a pass, sees it’s going elsewhere, changes his mind, and makes a three-yard sprint to create space.
Shortened to 1 minute
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You are reading our version, not theirs.
This is The Guardian Australia (Sport)'s report shortened to its most important sentences, in plainer words, with
verdicts and loaded words taken out. Plain description stays, and so do adjectives
that carry a fact, such as "former" or "federal". The reporting, the facts and the quotations
are theirs — quotations are never edited — and the indicators beside it measure
this version. Hover or tap Adjectives to see every one left in the text.
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