Thank you, @mbrockenbrough, for word that the new edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage is forthcoming.
The third edition, due out this month from Oxford University Press, includes a language change index, which, the publisher says, “registers where each disputed usage in modern English falls on a five-stage continuum from nonacceptability (to the language community as a whole) to acceptability, giving the book a consistent standard throughout.”
Mr. Garner is of the tribe of reasonable prescriptivists. His advice is clear and sensible, though you are, of course, not bound by it. You should, however, pay attention to what he says before you disagree.
This is one of the reference books than any editor serious about the craft should have near at hand.
A disclosure: I was one of people from whom Mr. Garner solicited comments on portions of the new edition.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Making distinctions
Part of the copy editor’s responsibility in achieving clarity and precision of prose is to honor nuances of meaning. The trick is to know which nuances are meaningful and which are not — especially as usage shifts over time. Things that you were taught at the beginning of your career may no longer be valid.
Here is a guide to distinctions of usage that are worth preserving, and some that are not. You disagree with me, you know what comments are for.
DISTINCTIONS WORTH PRESERVING
adverse/averse
affect/effect
amount/number
between/among Provided that you understand that between can be legitimately applied to more than two parties in some contexts.
capital/capitol
criteria Plural only.
elicit/illicit
eminent/imminent
explicit/implicit
imply/infer A writer who does not understand that these are opposite actions should be set straight.
its/it’s Observing the distinction remains a mark of literacy and attention to detail.
lead/led
phenomena Plural only.
plus As a conjunction it still sounds colloquial.
principal/principle
raise/rise Former transitive, latter intransitive.
than/then
unique For one of a kind, not merely rare.
who’s/whose
your/you’re
DISTINCTIONS THAT ARE DISSOLVING
Since the easiest thing for the author of a usage manual or textbook on copy editing can do is to copy what was in a previous edition, fossilized preferences last a long time. But sometimes it is most prudent to conclude that nothing is to be gained by fighting lost battles.
anxious/eager
can/may
career/careen Career, for moving recklessly at high speed, has just about vanished.
compare to/compare with
data Increasingly common a singular.
different from/different than
disinterested/uninterested To my profound regret, this one has largely gone away.
due to For because.
everyone/their Prohibition probably best abandoned altogether.
farther/further
finalize For to complete.
graduate As a transitive, e.g., She graduated high school.
hanged/hung
lie/lay Stand firm if you must, but the language is moving away from you.
media Increasingly common as a singular.
shall/will The former is slowly vanishing from both speech and writing.
that/which Could go in the following category. You may well want to use that only for restrictive clauses and which only for nonrestrictive clauses, but that is a personal preference, not a rule of usage.
BOGUS DISTINCTIONS
No one cares that Mrs. Poindexter humiliated you in class in the sixth grade over
using none with a plural verb. She was dead wrong then, and probably dead now.
could care less/couldn’t care less The former is an idiom that no one misunderstands.
hopefully Perfectly idiomatic as a sentence adverb.
however Perfectly acceptable at the beginning of a sentence.
none As a plural. Can be either singular or plural, depending on context.
over/more than
since Acceptable for because. See the comment at the beginning of DISTINCTIONS THAT ARE DISSOLVING. If it didn’t bother you there, it shouldn’t bother you anywhere.
that Can be used in place of who without doing violence to the language.
Here is a guide to distinctions of usage that are worth preserving, and some that are not. You disagree with me, you know what comments are for.
DISTINCTIONS WORTH PRESERVING
adverse/averse
affect/effect
amount/number
between/among Provided that you understand that between can be legitimately applied to more than two parties in some contexts.
capital/capitol
criteria Plural only.
elicit/illicit
eminent/imminent
explicit/implicit
imply/infer A writer who does not understand that these are opposite actions should be set straight.
its/it’s Observing the distinction remains a mark of literacy and attention to detail.
lead/led
phenomena Plural only.
plus As a conjunction it still sounds colloquial.
principal/principle
raise/rise Former transitive, latter intransitive.
than/then
unique For one of a kind, not merely rare.
who’s/whose
your/you’re
DISTINCTIONS THAT ARE DISSOLVING
Since the easiest thing for the author of a usage manual or textbook on copy editing can do is to copy what was in a previous edition, fossilized preferences last a long time. But sometimes it is most prudent to conclude that nothing is to be gained by fighting lost battles.
anxious/eager
can/may
career/careen Career, for moving recklessly at high speed, has just about vanished.
compare to/compare with
data Increasingly common a singular.
different from/different than
disinterested/uninterested To my profound regret, this one has largely gone away.
due to For because.
everyone/their Prohibition probably best abandoned altogether.
farther/further
finalize For to complete.
graduate As a transitive, e.g., She graduated high school.
hanged/hung
lie/lay Stand firm if you must, but the language is moving away from you.
media Increasingly common as a singular.
shall/will The former is slowly vanishing from both speech and writing.
that/which Could go in the following category. You may well want to use that only for restrictive clauses and which only for nonrestrictive clauses, but that is a personal preference, not a rule of usage.
BOGUS DISTINCTIONS
No one cares that Mrs. Poindexter humiliated you in class in the sixth grade over
using none with a plural verb. She was dead wrong then, and probably dead now.
could care less/couldn’t care less The former is an idiom that no one misunderstands.
hopefully Perfectly idiomatic as a sentence adverb.
however Perfectly acceptable at the beginning of a sentence.
none As a plural. Can be either singular or plural, depending on context.
over/more than
since Acceptable for because. See the comment at the beginning of DISTINCTIONS THAT ARE DISSOLVING. If it didn’t bother you there, it shouldn’t bother you anywhere.
that Can be used in place of who without doing violence to the language.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The AP Stylebook: Repository of extinct rules
A correspondent with a stronger stomach than mine follows the AP Stylebook’s “Ask the Editor” feature, where she found this exchange:
Q. I've found that the online version of the AP Stylebook frequently does not adhere to AP rules regarding "over" and "more than." For example, on your home page for subscribers, there's a reference to "over 450 entries." I've seen this type of error several times in your online stylebook. The printed version always is accurate, however. What gives? – from Salem, OR on Thu, Jul 02, 2009
A. The home page now says: More than 460 pages, updated annually. Thank you for the reminder.
[Sound of steam escaping under pressure]
If the editors of the stylebook choose to waste their time on this, well, I have no authority over them. But their devotion to time-wasting non-rules — I won’t call it obstinacy — has unfortunate effects on the craft.
Somewhere today, one of our last surviving copy editors, a species more endangered than the Javan rhinoceros or the Kemp’s Ridley Turtle, is changing an over to more than and imagining that that constitutes editing. It is not. It is rather an adherence to what Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage calls “a hoary American newspaper tradition” dating back to William Cullen Bryant, despite over and more than having been used interchangeably in English since the fourteen century.
Merriam-Webster’s concludes: “There is no reason why you should avoid this usage.” There is also no reason that the AP should continue to trot put this pointless dictum. And there is absolutely no reason that a hard-pressed copy editor should pay any attention to it.
Q. I've found that the online version of the AP Stylebook frequently does not adhere to AP rules regarding "over" and "more than." For example, on your home page for subscribers, there's a reference to "over 450 entries." I've seen this type of error several times in your online stylebook. The printed version always is accurate, however. What gives? – from Salem, OR on Thu, Jul 02, 2009
A. The home page now says: More than 460 pages, updated annually. Thank you for the reminder.
[Sound of steam escaping under pressure]
If the editors of the stylebook choose to waste their time on this, well, I have no authority over them. But their devotion to time-wasting non-rules — I won’t call it obstinacy — has unfortunate effects on the craft.
Somewhere today, one of our last surviving copy editors, a species more endangered than the Javan rhinoceros or the Kemp’s Ridley Turtle, is changing an over to more than and imagining that that constitutes editing. It is not. It is rather an adherence to what Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage calls “a hoary American newspaper tradition” dating back to William Cullen Bryant, despite over and more than having been used interchangeably in English since the fourteen century.
Merriam-Webster’s concludes: “There is no reason why you should avoid this usage.” There is also no reason that the AP should continue to trot put this pointless dictum. And there is absolutely no reason that a hard-pressed copy editor should pay any attention to it.
What comes after plagiarism
The Colorado Springs Gazette has dismissed a student intern, Hailey MacArthur, after determining that she plagiarized material from The New York Times in four articles published by the Gazette. The examples that Jeff Thomas, the editor, quoted in his public apology to readers are blatant and damning.
One has to wonder whether this intern was uncommonly bold or uncommonly stupid. To lift material from any source in the Internet age is risky; to do so from The New York Times virtually invites discovery.
But the questions don’t end there. Hailey MacArthur is a student in the University of Florida’s School of Journalism and Communications. Today, Mindy McAdams, who is on the faculty at Florida, retweeted this question: “Should j-school allow plagiarist to return to school?”
This is both a technical and philosophical question.
The school’s policy on plagiarism resembles the codes at many colleges and universities. It includes this warning: “Failure to uphold the standards of academic honesty will result in a failing grade for the course and, potentially, other serious disciplinary action up to and including expulsion.”
But unless Ms. MacArthur was receiving college credit from the internship, she was working outside the university. Does this policy — can this policy — be applied to a student’s actions off campus?
Apart from whatever disciplinary action the school may or may not see fit to carry out, it is not just Ms. MacArthur who has a problem. So does the School of Journalism and Communications. If it is reluctant to ruin a student’s career, if it does not want to say that youthful mistakes are final, if it finds a promise of contrition and reform persuasive and allows her to continue toward a degree, a shadow will linger over its programs.
Expulsion is the nuclear weapon at a university, and it is always a difficult matter to decide whether to use it. Happily, it’s not my case to adjudicate. Or yours. But you should feel free to express your sentiments on the matter.
*Plagiarism, of course, has been a perennial college problem. In 1978, when I was assigned as a teaching assistant to a professor in a large lecture section of the sophomore survey of British literature, a dubious paper turned up. We didn’t have time to run down sources, so we announced to the class that there would be a delay in returning that set of papers because we were investigating a potential case of plagiarism. By the next class session, five students had dropped the course.
The extent to which theft is commonplace at publications great and small is indicated by Craig Silverman’s annual plagiarism roundups at Regret the Error. Here’s the collection for 2008.
One has to wonder whether this intern was uncommonly bold or uncommonly stupid. To lift material from any source in the Internet age is risky; to do so from The New York Times virtually invites discovery.
But the questions don’t end there. Hailey MacArthur is a student in the University of Florida’s School of Journalism and Communications. Today, Mindy McAdams, who is on the faculty at Florida, retweeted this question: “Should j-school allow plagiarist to return to school?”
This is both a technical and philosophical question.
The school’s policy on plagiarism resembles the codes at many colleges and universities. It includes this warning: “Failure to uphold the standards of academic honesty will result in a failing grade for the course and, potentially, other serious disciplinary action up to and including expulsion.”
But unless Ms. MacArthur was receiving college credit from the internship, she was working outside the university. Does this policy — can this policy — be applied to a student’s actions off campus?
Apart from whatever disciplinary action the school may or may not see fit to carry out, it is not just Ms. MacArthur who has a problem. So does the School of Journalism and Communications. If it is reluctant to ruin a student’s career, if it does not want to say that youthful mistakes are final, if it finds a promise of contrition and reform persuasive and allows her to continue toward a degree, a shadow will linger over its programs.
Expulsion is the nuclear weapon at a university, and it is always a difficult matter to decide whether to use it. Happily, it’s not my case to adjudicate. Or yours. But you should feel free to express your sentiments on the matter.
*Plagiarism, of course, has been a perennial college problem. In 1978, when I was assigned as a teaching assistant to a professor in a large lecture section of the sophomore survey of British literature, a dubious paper turned up. We didn’t have time to run down sources, so we announced to the class that there would be a delay in returning that set of papers because we were investigating a potential case of plagiarism. By the next class session, five students had dropped the course.
The extent to which theft is commonplace at publications great and small is indicated by Craig Silverman’s annual plagiarism roundups at Regret the Error. Here’s the collection for 2008.
Watching our language
If you have not heard Geoffrey Nunberg’s commentaries on language at NPR’s Fresh Air or read his op-ed essays in various newspapers, you can now catch up: He has collected more than fifty of them in The Years of Talking Dangerously (Public Affairs, 265 pages, $18.95).
Professor Nunberg, who teaches linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, is a refreshingly direct and clear writer with sensible and straightforward views about the ways we write and talk. His writing is so irresistible that I am resorting to the lazy reviewer’s expedient of simply quoting him extensively.
Much of the book is given to a discussion of political language.* “[M]y guess is that when people look back on the language of the early years of the twenty-first century, the first thing that will come to mind is the political vocabulary—well, that and the language of real estate—just as the sixties evoke the language of rock, drugs, and disaffection; the seventies evoke the language of disco and New Age; the eighties evoke management jargon and Valley Girl slang; and the nineties evoke techno-talk and fit-speak.”
The “collapse of the language of the right” by the time of the 2008 election, he says, resulted from “a kind of structure fatigue, brought on by the strain of spanning the increasing distance between its literal and symbolic meanings.”
Take torture, which Professor Nunberg wrote about in 2004 after the Abu Ghraib revelations: “Torture is torture is torture, as Secretary Powell put it. If you find yourself having to draw fine semantic distinctions here, you’re already way over the line.”
Political commentary has given us a group of stock figures who turn out what Professor Nunberg calls political smut, “malicious aggression that pretends to be mere naughtiness.” “When you think of the most successful practitioners of the genre, whether Coulter or O’Reilly, or James Carville, there isn’t a one of them who couldn’t be the model for a recurring character on Cheers or Drew Carey—the waspish virago, the bombastic blowhard, the sly yokel.”
But it’s not all about politics:
On spelling bees: “The national Spelling Bee is one of those odd competitions that turn an ordinary activity into a high-performance event, like extreme ironing.”
On blogs: “[T]he blogging world sounds less like a public meeting than the lunchtime chatter in a high-school cafeteria, complete with snarky comments about the kids at the tables across the room.”
On electronic books: “Reading Proust in a browser window, I once observed, is like touring Normandy through a bombsight.”
On Wikipedia: “...what most journalists and scholars regard as a guilty secret, which is that they rely on Wikipedia all the time. By ‘rely on,’ I don’t mean just for doing ‘preliminary research,’ which is how academics always say they use Wikipedia, in the same tone they adopt when they cop to glancing at People in the dentist’s waiting room. I mean using Wikipedia as a primary source of information.”
More on Wikipedia: “Reading the entry on the English language, for example, I think of what the physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said about a paper submitted to a journal: ‘This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.’ ”
On teens and new writing technology: Newspaper articles combine “three themes that have been a staple of feature writing for 150 years: ‘the language is going to hell in a handbasket’; ‘you’ll never get me into one of those newfangled things’; and ‘kids today, I’m here to tell you. . . .’ ”
On moralistic pronouncements: “If intelligence consists in being able to make fine distinctions, then it stands to reason that moral absolutism tends to make you stupid.”
No fear of stupidity in this book. It is worth your time.
*I do not want to turn this into a political blog, but political discourse is not only widespread, but it also leaks into other areas and cannot be ignored. That much of Professor Nunberg’s commentary is on the language of the right reflects, as he says above, how pervasive conservative speech and thought were during the years these essays were written.
Professor Nunberg, who teaches linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, is a refreshingly direct and clear writer with sensible and straightforward views about the ways we write and talk. His writing is so irresistible that I am resorting to the lazy reviewer’s expedient of simply quoting him extensively.
Much of the book is given to a discussion of political language.* “[M]y guess is that when people look back on the language of the early years of the twenty-first century, the first thing that will come to mind is the political vocabulary—well, that and the language of real estate—just as the sixties evoke the language of rock, drugs, and disaffection; the seventies evoke the language of disco and New Age; the eighties evoke management jargon and Valley Girl slang; and the nineties evoke techno-talk and fit-speak.”
The “collapse of the language of the right” by the time of the 2008 election, he says, resulted from “a kind of structure fatigue, brought on by the strain of spanning the increasing distance between its literal and symbolic meanings.”
Take torture, which Professor Nunberg wrote about in 2004 after the Abu Ghraib revelations: “Torture is torture is torture, as Secretary Powell put it. If you find yourself having to draw fine semantic distinctions here, you’re already way over the line.”
Political commentary has given us a group of stock figures who turn out what Professor Nunberg calls political smut, “malicious aggression that pretends to be mere naughtiness.” “When you think of the most successful practitioners of the genre, whether Coulter or O’Reilly, or James Carville, there isn’t a one of them who couldn’t be the model for a recurring character on Cheers or Drew Carey—the waspish virago, the bombastic blowhard, the sly yokel.”
But it’s not all about politics:
On spelling bees: “The national Spelling Bee is one of those odd competitions that turn an ordinary activity into a high-performance event, like extreme ironing.”
On blogs: “[T]he blogging world sounds less like a public meeting than the lunchtime chatter in a high-school cafeteria, complete with snarky comments about the kids at the tables across the room.”
On electronic books: “Reading Proust in a browser window, I once observed, is like touring Normandy through a bombsight.”
On Wikipedia: “...what most journalists and scholars regard as a guilty secret, which is that they rely on Wikipedia all the time. By ‘rely on,’ I don’t mean just for doing ‘preliminary research,’ which is how academics always say they use Wikipedia, in the same tone they adopt when they cop to glancing at People in the dentist’s waiting room. I mean using Wikipedia as a primary source of information.”
More on Wikipedia: “Reading the entry on the English language, for example, I think of what the physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said about a paper submitted to a journal: ‘This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.’ ”
On teens and new writing technology: Newspaper articles combine “three themes that have been a staple of feature writing for 150 years: ‘the language is going to hell in a handbasket’; ‘you’ll never get me into one of those newfangled things’; and ‘kids today, I’m here to tell you. . . .’ ”
On moralistic pronouncements: “If intelligence consists in being able to make fine distinctions, then it stands to reason that moral absolutism tends to make you stupid.”
No fear of stupidity in this book. It is worth your time.
*I do not want to turn this into a political blog, but political discourse is not only widespread, but it also leaks into other areas and cannot be ignored. That much of Professor Nunberg’s commentary is on the language of the right reflects, as he says above, how pervasive conservative speech and thought were during the years these essays were written.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Other voices
Item: If yesterday’s post about the increase in errors attendant on the reduction of copy desk staffs interested you, then you should certainly pay attention to the additional insights at Words at Work and Headsup.
Item: If you were intrigued yesterday that Peter Bronson of The Cincinnati Enquirer posed a bogus photo of Sen. Al Franken and, after being informed that it was a clumsy fake, left it on his blog while saying that it looked like something Franken would have done, you will like today’s report from the Cincinnati Beacon.*
Mr. Bronson has somewhat belatedly issued an apology, and the offending photo and the entire post it accompanied have been deleted from The Enquirer’s Web site. Either publicity of the matter has awakened Mr. Bronson’s latent scruples or someone at The Enquirer is concerned about the publication’s integrity. Either would be a welcome development.
Item: Achievement is all well and good, but it is failure that sticks in the mind. If you want a headline to be memorable, get it spectacularly wrong (“DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”). If you want to be remembered as a copy editor, insist on something really stupid. Language Log, where there is glee at the excesses of the copy desk, presents a classic case today. Perhaps the story is even true. But even if not, the reputation will stand.
Item: Mighty Red Pen has discovered a generation gap, two spaces wide. If you put two spaces after a period, you almost certainly developed the habit on a typewriter. If you put one, you swim in the current of the electronic era.
Item: The Education Fund of the American Copy Editors Society has linked with GoodSearch, a search engine powered by Yahoo that donates half its advertising revenue to worthy causes, of which the Education Fund is emphatically one. Since you were going to look for things on the Web or shop anyhow, you might as well do so on GoodSearch, identifying the ACES Education Fund as your preferred charity.
*I was not aware of the Beacon until yesterday and have no knowledge of its authors or connection with them. Their irreverence toward The Enquirer is pronounced.
Item: If you were intrigued yesterday that Peter Bronson of The Cincinnati Enquirer posed a bogus photo of Sen. Al Franken and, after being informed that it was a clumsy fake, left it on his blog while saying that it looked like something Franken would have done, you will like today’s report from the Cincinnati Beacon.*
Mr. Bronson has somewhat belatedly issued an apology, and the offending photo and the entire post it accompanied have been deleted from The Enquirer’s Web site. Either publicity of the matter has awakened Mr. Bronson’s latent scruples or someone at The Enquirer is concerned about the publication’s integrity. Either would be a welcome development.
Item: Achievement is all well and good, but it is failure that sticks in the mind. If you want a headline to be memorable, get it spectacularly wrong (“DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”). If you want to be remembered as a copy editor, insist on something really stupid. Language Log, where there is glee at the excesses of the copy desk, presents a classic case today. Perhaps the story is even true. But even if not, the reputation will stand.
Item: Mighty Red Pen has discovered a generation gap, two spaces wide. If you put two spaces after a period, you almost certainly developed the habit on a typewriter. If you put one, you swim in the current of the electronic era.
Item: The Education Fund of the American Copy Editors Society has linked with GoodSearch, a search engine powered by Yahoo that donates half its advertising revenue to worthy causes, of which the Education Fund is emphatically one. Since you were going to look for things on the Web or shop anyhow, you might as well do so on GoodSearch, identifying the ACES Education Fund as your preferred charity.
*I was not aware of the Beacon until yesterday and have no knowledge of its authors or connection with them. Their irreverence toward The Enquirer is pronounced.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Might be imagined by some people to be true
Peter Bronson, a writer at one of my former employers, The Cincinnati Enquirer, has published on his blog, Bronson Is Always Right, a photo of Al Franken, the new junior senator from Minnesota, in diapers, hugging a teddy bear. This illustrates, Mr. Bronson suggests, what the nation can expect from Mr. Franken on health care.
One problem: The photograph is a fake, clumsily doctored. Another problem: That the photograph is a fake has been documented in Mr. Bronson’s own newspaper. (Thanks to The Cincinnati Beacon and Romenesko for the information.)
Mr. Bronson has responded on his blog:
Yes, the photo of Franken in a diaper was apparently altered. But it’s not exacly a big reach to believe it could have come from one of his SNL skits. It resonates because people find it easy to see Franken that way.
When I was a brown-haired lad first learning the copy editor’s craft at The Enquirer, the paper did have some peculiarities — it once gave its editorial endorsement to a communicable disease — but those of us in its employ were expected to publish things that were, so far as we could determine, true.
Publishing something demonstrably false with the feeble explanation that it’s the sort of thing that some people might well imagine to be true lacks — what do you want to call it? — journalistic integrity.
The bogus photo is still featured on the blog.
Surely it can't be that difficult to discover genuine photos of Mr. Franken looking ridiculous.
One problem: The photograph is a fake, clumsily doctored. Another problem: That the photograph is a fake has been documented in Mr. Bronson’s own newspaper. (Thanks to The Cincinnati Beacon and Romenesko for the information.)
Mr. Bronson has responded on his blog:
Yes, the photo of Franken in a diaper was apparently altered. But it’s not exacly a big reach to believe it could have come from one of his SNL skits. It resonates because people find it easy to see Franken that way.
When I was a brown-haired lad first learning the copy editor’s craft at The Enquirer, the paper did have some peculiarities — it once gave its editorial endorsement to a communicable disease — but those of us in its employ were expected to publish things that were, so far as we could determine, true.
Publishing something demonstrably false with the feeble explanation that it’s the sort of thing that some people might well imagine to be true lacks — what do you want to call it? — journalistic integrity.
The bogus photo is still featured on the blog.
Surely it can't be that difficult to discover genuine photos of Mr. Franken looking ridiculous.
We told you so
Andrew Alexander, ombudsman at The Washington Post, conceded ruefully in a column over the weekend that reduction of the number of copy editors has materially increased the number of errors in The Post, some of them really embarrassing. “A story on Arlington County's plans for the old Newseum building misspelled Rosslyn as ‘Rossyln’ four times. ... Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter was described as a ‘ferocious’ (instead of voracious) reader.”
You may recall some of the claptrap leading up to this New Media Age — that employing copy editors for multiple checks of stories was an outmoded industrial process, that without copy editors reporters would become more accurate because they would be more responsible. Now you are beginning to perceive one of the realties of the New Media Age — a proliferation of errors in text, some of them minor, some of them egregious, all of them irritating to readers. (Mr. Alexander takes their calls.)
What may be a less readily apparent is a deeper degradation of quality. With the reduction of the number of “touches” by originating editors and copy editors, articles are not getting the attention they need. Stories that lack clear focus or betray slipshod structure are getting through to the reader because they are not being adequately challenged by editors.
It would not be surprising to register increases throughout the business in plagiarism and fabrication as well, because some of that used to be caught by editors whose functions went beyond mere spell-checking and formatting.
Mr. Alexander’s explanation is commendably candid: The Post, like virtually every other metropolitan daily newspaper in the United States, is suffering financially and has reduced costs by cutting employees. He doesn’t pretend, in the cant spooned out by apologists, that eliminating those “touches” in editing will somehow improve the quality of the product.
He quotes Chris Wienandt, president of the American Copy Editors Society: “If readers can't rely on our accuracy, why should they even pick up the paper?” That is the problem that haunts the industry, which is asking its customers to buy a product with reduced scope and reduced reliability. I have no better idea than the people who still have offices how journalism will proceed, but I don’t think that what comes next will be worth much if it continues to devalue editing.
You may recall some of the claptrap leading up to this New Media Age — that employing copy editors for multiple checks of stories was an outmoded industrial process, that without copy editors reporters would become more accurate because they would be more responsible. Now you are beginning to perceive one of the realties of the New Media Age — a proliferation of errors in text, some of them minor, some of them egregious, all of them irritating to readers. (Mr. Alexander takes their calls.)
What may be a less readily apparent is a deeper degradation of quality. With the reduction of the number of “touches” by originating editors and copy editors, articles are not getting the attention they need. Stories that lack clear focus or betray slipshod structure are getting through to the reader because they are not being adequately challenged by editors.
It would not be surprising to register increases throughout the business in plagiarism and fabrication as well, because some of that used to be caught by editors whose functions went beyond mere spell-checking and formatting.
Mr. Alexander’s explanation is commendably candid: The Post, like virtually every other metropolitan daily newspaper in the United States, is suffering financially and has reduced costs by cutting employees. He doesn’t pretend, in the cant spooned out by apologists, that eliminating those “touches” in editing will somehow improve the quality of the product.
He quotes Chris Wienandt, president of the American Copy Editors Society: “If readers can't rely on our accuracy, why should they even pick up the paper?” That is the problem that haunts the industry, which is asking its customers to buy a product with reduced scope and reduced reliability. I have no better idea than the people who still have offices how journalism will proceed, but I don’t think that what comes next will be worth much if it continues to devalue editing.
They're so ignorant they bore me to death
One of my correspondents is irked by the word ignorant as it is used in Baltimore:
People in Baltimore, and perhaps elsewhere, have a habit of using “ignorant” when they mean “mean” or “rude”. I don't know if you have ever addressed this. It drives me crazy.
Example: Monica slapped her in the face. That was just ignorant.
I content that Monica knew what she was doing and ignorance was not a factor.
I can’t speak to the Baltimore version, but I can describe a parallel regional usage.
We expect our pejoratives to carry a good deal of freight on board. They have to work for a living. In Kentucky, when my grandmother, Clara Rhodes Early, remarked in one of her characteristic expressions that someone was “just as ignorant as a hog” — what, you thought I got to be captious apart from family influences? — she did not mean that the person was uneducated or stupid. Or rather, not merely uneducated or stupid. “Ignorant as a hog” came with class connotations as well. It suggested a lack of initiative or responsibility. It suggested lack of respectability. It suggested “not our sort.” It suggested, without quite specifying, “poor white trash.”
Another of my grandmother’s regional expressions in which a pejorative shifted its root meaning was “bored to death.” But “bored me to death” had nothing to do with tedium. It meant public embarrassment: “When Danny Ray let out that belch in the middle of the pastoral prayer, it just bored me to death.”
To round things out, the use of just in such cases as an intensifier of emotion, meaning “certainly,” is also common in the Commonwealth.
People in Baltimore, and perhaps elsewhere, have a habit of using “ignorant” when they mean “mean” or “rude”. I don't know if you have ever addressed this. It drives me crazy.
Example: Monica slapped her in the face. That was just ignorant.
I content that Monica knew what she was doing and ignorance was not a factor.
I can’t speak to the Baltimore version, but I can describe a parallel regional usage.
We expect our pejoratives to carry a good deal of freight on board. They have to work for a living. In Kentucky, when my grandmother, Clara Rhodes Early, remarked in one of her characteristic expressions that someone was “just as ignorant as a hog” — what, you thought I got to be captious apart from family influences? — she did not mean that the person was uneducated or stupid. Or rather, not merely uneducated or stupid. “Ignorant as a hog” came with class connotations as well. It suggested a lack of initiative or responsibility. It suggested lack of respectability. It suggested “not our sort.” It suggested, without quite specifying, “poor white trash.”
Another of my grandmother’s regional expressions in which a pejorative shifted its root meaning was “bored to death.” But “bored me to death” had nothing to do with tedium. It meant public embarrassment: “When Danny Ray let out that belch in the middle of the pastoral prayer, it just bored me to death.”
To round things out, the use of just in such cases as an intensifier of emotion, meaning “certainly,” is also common in the Commonwealth.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The chattering classes
A holiday weekend bonus post: People need to shut up.
Last night Kathleen and I went to Oregon Ridge Park for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Fourth of July concert and fireworks display.* No one would expect people sitting on folding chairs or lying on blankets on a hillside to observe the same decorum as in a concert hall, but still. . . .
There was the woman who conducted a conversation on her cell phone throughout the performance of Charles Ives’s variations on “America.” (She also continued to smoke after the announcement requesting the audience not to.)
There was this penetrating exchange directly behind us:
Voice 1: “I didn’t know you liked popcorn.”
Voice 2: “Love it.”
Voice 3: “You didn’t know that?”
I’m not certain, but it seems likely that Voice 3 was also the source of some impressive percussive effects with chewing gum.**
Of course, people are conducting banal conversations in the concert hall, at the movies, loudly, over cell phones, in the street. And at church.
There used to be a convention that people entering a church before a service would sit down quietly, to pray, to listen to an organ prelude, or simply to settle themselves calmly. No more. I’ve attended services in recent years in Episcopal churches that were noisier than hotel lobbies. And it is by no means the heedless young who are chattering away; the heedless young don’t go to church.
The prospect that someday someone in authority will authorize the use of cell phones on airplane flights leaves me sweaty with fear.
The social and cultural changes that have produced this incessant chin-wagging are probably irreversible, and certainly not by the comments of a lone blogger.
But still, you few who read this, give it a rest. Sit quietly. Listen to the music. Follow the progression of your thoughts inside your own head for a while. Declare your independence from the noisy.
*And on Friday night we had dinner with friends. After spending most Friday and Saturday nights since 1980 producing newspapers, I’m becoming a gadabout.
**I’m aware that the musical content of these concerts is negligible. There were some nice touches: a thirteen-year-old delivering a stunning rendition of the national anthem, the Ives, a couple of Sousa marches. Apart from that, a medley from Carousel, a schlocky arrangement of “America the Beautiful,” and the “1812 Overture” — a work despised by its composer that commemorates the defeat of a totalitarian despotism (Napoleonic France) by a monarchical despotism (czarist Russia) and which has become an American holiday favorite simply because it was written to be accompanied by explosions.
Actually, we enjoyed the concert. I even managed the struggle to get off the grassy field where we and thousands of others parked with greater equanimity and less swearing than you would expect.
Last night Kathleen and I went to Oregon Ridge Park for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Fourth of July concert and fireworks display.* No one would expect people sitting on folding chairs or lying on blankets on a hillside to observe the same decorum as in a concert hall, but still. . . .
There was the woman who conducted a conversation on her cell phone throughout the performance of Charles Ives’s variations on “America.” (She also continued to smoke after the announcement requesting the audience not to.)
There was this penetrating exchange directly behind us:
Voice 1: “I didn’t know you liked popcorn.”
Voice 2: “Love it.”
Voice 3: “You didn’t know that?”
I’m not certain, but it seems likely that Voice 3 was also the source of some impressive percussive effects with chewing gum.**
Of course, people are conducting banal conversations in the concert hall, at the movies, loudly, over cell phones, in the street. And at church.
There used to be a convention that people entering a church before a service would sit down quietly, to pray, to listen to an organ prelude, or simply to settle themselves calmly. No more. I’ve attended services in recent years in Episcopal churches that were noisier than hotel lobbies. And it is by no means the heedless young who are chattering away; the heedless young don’t go to church.
The prospect that someday someone in authority will authorize the use of cell phones on airplane flights leaves me sweaty with fear.
The social and cultural changes that have produced this incessant chin-wagging are probably irreversible, and certainly not by the comments of a lone blogger.
But still, you few who read this, give it a rest. Sit quietly. Listen to the music. Follow the progression of your thoughts inside your own head for a while. Declare your independence from the noisy.
*And on Friday night we had dinner with friends. After spending most Friday and Saturday nights since 1980 producing newspapers, I’m becoming a gadabout.
**I’m aware that the musical content of these concerts is negligible. There were some nice touches: a thirteen-year-old delivering a stunning rendition of the national anthem, the Ives, a couple of Sousa marches. Apart from that, a medley from Carousel, a schlocky arrangement of “America the Beautiful,” and the “1812 Overture” — a work despised by its composer that commemorates the defeat of a totalitarian despotism (Napoleonic France) by a monarchical despotism (czarist Russia) and which has become an American holiday favorite simply because it was written to be accompanied by explosions.
Actually, we enjoyed the concert. I even managed the struggle to get off the grassy field where we and thousands of others parked with greater equanimity and less swearing than you would expect.
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