Wasted words: New initiative

It appears to be lost on many that an initiative is something that is being started, and thus new. The word derives from the Latin initiare, to begin. It is related to initiate, to take the first steps, initiation, and initial, all of which share the sense of a beginning.

New initiative is usually a cant phrase favored by officials trying to dress up some proposed action for the public. It is defensible only in the context of comparison with a previous initiative that went nowhere, as so many do.

Testing, testing

Tonight is Quiz Night at Memorial Episcopal Church, an event for which I prepared a few questions, and the occasion brought up recollections of what I fondly called “our brutal applicant test” at The Baltimore Sun.

The test I took in 1985 when applying to the copy desk* at The Sun was several pages of questions on general knowledge. Later, when I had become a manager, Andy Faith, then chief of the desk, greeted me one afternoon by muttering, “The test has been compromised.” Someone had gotten hold of it and handed out copies at a job fair. Andy invited me to revise it, and I made it mine.

For most of the past fourteen years, copy desk applicants who got past the first stage of scrutiny were invited to come to Calvert Street for a series of interviews and the test, which, in its final version, comprised two sections:

General knowledge: Ten questions each in twelve categories: arts, business and economics, current events, English, geography, history, law, literature, mathematics, religion, science and medicine, and sports.

Editing: A set of ten short passages presenting various problems of grammar, usage, clarity, and taste, followed by two short articles presenting a range of editing issues — all taken, mind you, from in-house copy.

Over the years, the general knowledge portion proved to be a reliable indicator of performance, within limits. That is, applicants who scored low tended not to carry enough furniture upstairs to be effective editors. People who scored well might or might not be successful — only one applicant ever scored above 90 percent on the general knowledge segment, and I subsequently fired her because she was an abrasive know-it-all who alienated her colleagues on the desk.

The general knowledge questions** were a mixture of the reasonably easy and the fairly recondite, but it was the former items that always surprised. There are things you would think that everybody knows. You would be mistaken. Perhaps shocked, particularly by the answers, or lack of them, by recent college graduates. (The eye-opener for the applicant was the editing portion, which revealed just how badly one could write and still be employed by a major newspaper.)

I toyed once with adding a bogus question for fun: “List the pharaohs of Egypt’s XVIIIth Dynasty, according to height,” but decided, especially after a couple of applicants left the building in tears, that the test as it stood was already cruel enough. Besides, Tutankhamun never really got his growth.

So if any of you out there would like to set up a test to torment potential employees, or run a quiz night for fun or to raise funds, it should be clear by now that I’m your man.



*At one time, reporters were also required to take the test, but by the 1980s the management had apparently decided that it was not important for reporters to know things. Now, of course, as newspapers have decided to do without editors, it is no longer important for anyone to know anything.

**I am reluctant to disclose details of the items on the test, even though the prospect that The Sun will ever hire another copy editor seems as remote as the restoration of the Hapsburgs.

Wasted words: Ongoing

In almost all contexts, it is clear when some action, effort, or program is continuing, which renders the word ongoing superfluous.

What I think it is intended to mean is that we are really, really, really trying to do this. But I expect that nearly all readers skim right over it without paying much heed.

That, incidentally, is why you should avoid cliches and stock phrases, not because they offend our fastidious aesthetic sensibilities (though they do), but because they have been worn so smooth through overuse that readers do not even register what they say.

Slow down or pay up

I blame the TV commercials for automobiles.

They all show an individual car — your dream car, your elegant personal machine, your guarantee of synthetic masculinity — roaring along the highway in solitary splendor.

In reality, of course, you will be driving on an interstate at 20 mph, hemmed in by equally frustrated fellow motorists. But the commercial, the dream, tells you that because you own a machine that can do better than 90, you have a right to do so.

So when you do get a chance, you rev up to 60, 70, 80, 90, veering from one lane to another to whiz pass the slowpokes because the machine is yours and so is the road.

I believe that you may be the audience for an article in The Washington Post by Neely Tucker, whom an editor has evidently encouraged to write with Attitude. The article describes, indulgently, your rage at those speed cameras municipalities put up to fine you for driving at 50 mph past a schoolhouse. The impertinence, the gall of these bureaucrats to limit your freedom to treat a city street as an autobahn, and the greediness to make you pay when you do.

For my part, fussy old bourgeois that I am, driving a mere Chevy and pretty much staying within a few of miles of the speed limit, I wouldn’t mind seeing more cameras. I would have liked to see the driver who sailed through a red light at Hamilton and Harford while gabbing on a cell phone, nearly striking my son and me,* pay a fine. I think that the driver in the black Mercedes who sped down Virginia Avenue in Towson and ran the stop sign as I was making a turn one Sunday ought to have to write a check.

The interstate is worse, with all the cowboys and cowgirls whose lives are so much more important than mine going 20 and 30 miles above the speed limit on their urgent errands. There is no chance that the state will ever be able to hire enough police officers to curb them. Better to put up cameras.

Oh, and the objection that municipalities make money off those fines? Don’t you think that maybe people who break the law are an apt source of revenue?



*And I had observed the standard Baltimore pause after my light changed to green to avoid that very hazard.

The march to trivia

Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press.

Lessee, now. CNN’s lead items: “Loss of softball teammates called ‘devastating’ ” and “Neda’s mother: ‘She was like an angel.’ ” So we conclude that when people die young and tragically, those left behind grieve. Got it. Looking forward to stories on the tenth anniversary of their deaths to see it confirmed that people are still sad.

Over at MSNBC, “Long-term jobless running on empty.” Not quite fair for me — unemployed for six months — to guess, but I think maybe that things get bad when you’re out of a job and have exhausted your resources.

Also on MSNBC, “Glenn Beck is new Oprah.” Let’s just shudder and move on.

Moving quickly to CBS News — you remember, Walter Cronkite’s old outfit — we find “Cops Find Missing Fla. Baby Under Sitter’s Bed.” You can click on the option to share the story on Facebook.

Maybe there’s something locally. WMAR in Baltimore has “Erase Embarrassing Photos from Facebook.” Can’t argue with that.

Dare I try Fox News? Ah, there’s that infant from under the bed. And some stuff about how the Democrats are all wrong about health care.

Yesterday the Associated Press discovered a man in Tennessee who says an image of Jesus keeps reappearing on the window of his pickup truck. This led “fev” at HeadsUp to offer advice that I fear will not be heeded: “No deities on foodstuffs, kitties, load-bearing surfaces, windows, motor vehicles or ancient mysterious medieval cloths. Ever. Period. It isn't news. You can't make it news. Don't try.”

I like Utz potato chips and Five Guys french fries and the beer-battered onion rings at the Hamilton Tavern. But I don’t make an exclusive diet of them. Years ago, when I worked as wire editor at The Sun, I always looked for an offbeat story or two to put on the budget, but I would never have dreamed to make them the lead items.

U.S. troops are coming back from Afghanistan in coffins. Millions of Americans are unemployed. Millions more lack medical insurance. And our political discourse has descended to name-calling while our newspapers, our television news operations, and our Internet news sites feature a steady diet of pap. I don’t know what an anthropologist would make of it, but surveying the offerings of our news media suggests to me that they are playing to an audience that they expect to be easily distracted and not serious.

Dr. Maddow, stick to politics

Over at Wishydig, Michael Coavarrubias catches Rachel Maddow in a false correction that expands the erroneous understanding of the split infinitive. She said of Sen. Joe Lieberman, “[H]e is biting the hand that inexplicably feeds him. Pardon the split infinitive.”

It is not a split infinitive, and it is not even wrong. (Dr. Maddow’s D.Phil. is in political science, not linguistics.)

Dr. Maddow is not alone.*

Over at Language Log, Geoffrey K. Pullum has discovered that Justice Anthony Kennedy “doesn’t know his passive voice from a hole in the ground.”

Professor Pullum has also discovered that the Collins Good Writing Guide, published by HarperCollins, is rife with ludicrous errors about grammar. He quotes the author’s explanation of the grammatical defect in the sentence Ask Tony and I for any further information you need: “To correct this you need to recognise that Ask is the subject and the phrase Tony and I is the direct object, because Tony and I are receiving the action as the result of the verb ask.” Yes, ask is both subject and verb. The author’s explanation of the phrase My word! is that My is the subject and word the predicate.

I think I am beginning to understand the difference between the teaching of English and the teaching of mathematics. Both are done wretchedly, but the outcome varies. Innumerate people are obscurely casual — point out an error in basic computation to a journalist, and you are likely to hear the explanation “Oh, I was never any good at math.” But people who have less grasp of grammar than of quantum mechanics set themselves up as authorities and chide the rest of us for our supposed lapses.

I saw it too

Thanks to the readers who have pointed out the column by Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander about the error-ridden baseball article by Tom Boswell. Sadly, Mr. Alexander’s explanation makes all the sense in the world. Newspapers have not only reduced the size and number of their pages, but have also adopted other cost-cutting measures that result in ever-earlier deadlines. What happened at The Post also happened at The Sun in my time there. The earlier deadlines make it difficult to get any late news into the paper, and readers the next morning wonder why they don’t have the scores of games. Or articles are railroaded into print right on deadline, with regrettable consequences.

What subscribers might also keep in mind as they wonder how shoddy copy gets into print is — c’mon, you knew this was coming — that the evisceration of newspaper copy desks leaves fewer people available to handle late or troublesome stories. With regrettable consequences.



*I have campaigned against this simple-minded and pointless transition for years, but it is harder to eradicate from journalism than Clinton jokes from a Letterman monologue. Fortunately, @FakeAPStylebook, which, to my glee, has more followers on Twitter than @APStylebook, ruled yesterday: “If the second paragraph of your story begins with ‘He/she isn't the only one,’ don't come back to work on Monday.”

Hahahahaha

According to Wired.com, which ferreted out the identities of the authors of @FakeAPStylebook* on Twitter, the satirical site has quickly overtaken the straight one, with 35,455 followers for @FakeAPStylebook to 24,022 for @APStylebook. Or, if you prefer, the intentionally funny one is more popular than the unintentionally funny one.

This goes a long way toward restoring my faith in the public’s judgment.



*Ken Lowery of Dallas, Texas, and Mark Hale of Louisville, Kentucky, who are reportedly at work on a book proposal. And thanks to Susan Z. Swan for the tipoff to the article.

Before the urchins come clamoring for candy

Item: Wishydig’s recent post, “The English language in America is not threatened,” a point frequently made on these premises, quotes the text of a 1987 resolution adopted by the Linguistic Society of America saying that efforts to make English an official language are misguided and potentially harmful. It will repay your attention.

Item: At Language Log, Arnold Zwicky goes into the peculiar hostility to quotative inversion. At his own site, he examines the peevish hostility to the word blog. For the record, no objection to it here; You Don’t Say appreciates useful monosyllables.

Item: In a weak moment, I succumbed to the temptation to set up a Twitter site, @FakeWardCleaver. Thoughts?

Item: The article on Halloween mentioned in the earlier post “Is that a demon at the door?” has generated a vast number of comments, many of them amusing and some of them intentionally so. The ensuing uproar has moved the editors of Charisma to post a second article defending a Christian’s celebration of Halloween. The comments on the anodyne article are predictably less amusing.

Item: A well-wisher’s anonymous letter today — the one calling me “a thief and a liar” — celebrates the belated discovery of my having been laid off by The Sun six months ago and kindly suggests that as an alternative to eating canned dog food, I might buy a gun and kill myself. Actually, and thanks for thinking of me, I have other plans.

Item: Remember that you can use the GoodSearch engine to find things on the Internet while, if you make the ACES Education Fund your designated cause, funneling pennies to that worthy endeavor.

Is that a demon at the door?

Thanks to @word_czar on Twitter, I have had the opportunity to read what the Rev. Kimberly Daniels of Jacksonville, Florida, has to say about the dangers of Halloween. It is, she asserts, a pagan witch festival, a day devoted to Lucifer. Halloween candy has been prayed over by witches. Opening the door to trick-or-treaters invites demons into your house. There are things going on tonight beneath your awareness:

Sex with demons
Orgies between humans and animals
Animal and human sacrifices
Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
Revel nights
Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
Release of “time-released” curses against the innocent and the ignorant

(Revel nights? Revelry?)

Though you might have expected this to be the work of those scamps at The Onion, the Charisma Web site on which this article appears does not seem to be a satirical production. We are evidently meant to take this straight.

Therefore I will have to check back in a couple of months to see the Rev. Mrs. Daniels expose the Luciferian nature of Christmas.

Baby Jesus almost certainly did not enter the world on December 25 (or at Bethlehem, but that’s a different argument); the early Church appropriated the pagan solstice festival of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus) for itself. And everyone knows, or should be warned, that the Christmas tree, popularized in the English-speaking world by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s German consort, is a relic of Teutonic tree-worship. You know that nasty things went on in those forests.

The Old One has his snares everywhere. (Could it be that Beelzebub planted this very article to make Christianity look ridiculous?) Watch your step.

Hungry for brains

My son has been inspired to trick himself out for Halloween this year as the title character from Shaun of the Dead, a 2004 zombie comedy whose charm has entirely eluded me. J.P. has acquired a cheap white short-sleeved shirt and a garish polyester necktie. He has lovingly reproduced the red ink stain on the shirt pocket and manufactured a prop cricket bat. A home hair dye job has been accomplished. He’s good to go.

It seems entirely apt, amid this seasonal enthusiasm for the undead, that the Audit Bureau of Circulations should have just released the latest depressing figures for the circulation of American newspapers. San Francisco Chronicle down a staggering 25 percent. The Baltimore Sun down about 15 percent from something that could not be described as a peak. Many others in bad shape. Our metropolitan newspapers increasingly look like our native zombie class, lurching down the street, searching — vainly — for brains.

Some of the drop may be temporary. Newspapers have always labored to manage a huge churn of subscribers, wooing readers with short-term, reduced-rate deals in hopes of retaining them. It would not be surprising that in the middle of a severe recession, with multitudes newly unemployed, customers trying to manage their finances would give up newspaper subscriptions.

But I fear that the decline represents something far more dangerous. As newspapers have frantically cut back on space and coverage and decimated their staffs to achieve savings, they have offered their readers less and less. And as they have also intentionally compromised standards of editing, what they do offer is often shoddy — slackly written and riddled with errors of fact. Manic efforts to redesign and repackage print editions appear in many cases to have alienated traditional readers without attracting new ones.

It has long been clear that demographics are running against newspapers: As readers of the older generations that still have the print habit relocate to celestial addresses, the rising generations won’t touch a daily paper with a bargepole. But the acceleration of the decline just recorded by the ABC suggests that newspaper management has contrived to cheese off many of the dwindling loyalists.

Whistling past the graveyard — also seasonally appropriate — some newspaper executives point proudly to increases in readership of their electronic editions. But Web advertising brings in only a fraction of what print advertising does, and it is far from clear that multitudes of hits on Web stories lead to the kind of return visits and reader loyalty that advertisers would find compelling.

Moreover, I’ve looked at a number of newspaper Web sites, wondering whom the management imagines they attract. Newspaper Web sites often look cluttered. Many are baffling to navigate if the reader is looking for a particular story, and on some I’ve given up even attempting to use the inadequate search function. You might think, with all their cant about forging closer ties with their communities, that they would make it easy to get in touch with members of the staff by providing both e-mail addresses and telephone numbers — but that would be naive.

I would not advise you to be concerned about any danger of attack by zombie newspapers this Halloween. They are mainly a danger to themselves. Though their need for brains is compelling and obvious, they don’t appear to recognize when you have any.