It’s my own fault.
When The New York Times called to ask for my views on the sale of The Baltimore Sun to David Smith and Armstrong Williams, I was less than enthusiastic.* When Mr. Williams disparaged the singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at public events, I pointed to some deficiencies in his argument.
So perhaps I should not have been surprised when, looking for some past post, I clicked on the link to You Don’t Say at baltimoresun.com, I got “Oops! That page can’t be found.”
Now The Sun owns the blog posts I wrote as an employee and published on its website for more than fifteen years.** And if the management chooses to be petty and vindictive, it can do as it pleases with its property, including deleting it.
But not all is gone; a search on the website, for example, turned up a handful of posts from 2019, and there may be more. Some posts that were picked up by Google News can still be found on search, but that search is also spotty.
Those posts enabled me to say nearly everything I know about writing and editing, and the tens of thousands of page views they got indicated that some readers found them of value. To my knowledge, two or three people actually subscribed to The Sun to be able to read them.
So now I make this offer: Bring to me any question you have about writing, editing, or English usage, and if I think I can offer a useful answer, I will give one. Never mind that it may be something that I already wrote about.
I have never been shy about repeating myself.
*”I think it will mean disaster.”
**The blog you’re currently reading I created in 2009-2010 when I was laid off and have maintained since.
Commas before "too," "as well," "either," etc. at the ends of sentences: yea or nay, and why?
ReplyDeleteThanks!
That’s galling, and you have my sympathy.
ReplyDeleteHere’s a question about newspapers and editing and corrections. The 1/14 New York Times obituary for Joyce Randolph
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/obituaries/joyce-randolph-dead.html
still has an error of fact. Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton did not invent a kitchen tool. In the episode “Better Living Through TV,” Ralph tells Norton that the brother of a bus driver has a Bronx warehouse in which someone left 2,000 of the gadgets. The relevant dialogue is at about the 4:00 mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJSnmlamIeY
Yes, I have years of late-night Honeymooners in my past.
I wrote to the Times on 1/14, 2/3, and 3/5 about the mistake and received nothing more than a form reply. I wrote to the obituary’s writer on 4/7 and received no reply.
Should I consider the non-responses and absence of a correction standard stuff? Should I expect better from the Times? I know that if it were my writing, I’d be making a correction immediately, if not sooner.
An awful lot of your old columns seem to be available to me at https://www.baltimoresun.com/author/john-mcintyre/
ReplyDeleteIf you know any URLs, https://web.archive.org/ might also be helpful. I recommend saving here any of the ones you found at my first link.
1. What's an easy way to remember the proper times to use a semicolon versus a period?
ReplyDelete2. When are sentences in parentheses in sentences appropriate?
Yes, many of my Sun posts can be found thus:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.baltimoresun.com/author/john-mcintyre/
When should one use a comma before "like" and "such as?"
ReplyDelete