Because the American Dialect Society is meeting in Baltimore this week, along with the Linguistics Society of America, I drove down to the Hilton and paid its extortionate garage fee to attend the cutthroat Word of the Year event.
The linguists were out in force* and had a grand time. Not to keep you in suspense, as you can see from Ben Zimmer’s account in Visual Thesaurus, tweet (v., to post an update on Twitter; n., such an update) won as Word of the Year, and in the exciting additional contest, google was voted Word of the Decade.
It was, however, the secondary contests that captured my interest. I was delighted to be in the majority — yes, they let the rabble in and allowed us to vote — for fail in the Most Useful category. Noun, verb, and interjection, it is, as someone mentioned, the apt word for the recent past. When the votes for the runner-up, the suffix –er, were announced, a glad shout of “FAIL!” went up.
Sea kittens, the inane substitute for fish proposed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was the Most Unnecessary winner, and was enthusiastically proposed from the floor in other categories.
Hiking the Appalachian trail coasted to victory in the Most Euphemistic category, and death panel commanded a similar majority among the Most Outrageous nominees.
And, fortunately, Naughties, Aughties, and the other terms proposed for naming the first decade of the current century were the logical choices for Least Likely to Succeed. As someone pointed out during the discussion, people struggled to come up with a suitable term in advance of the decade and debated it during the decade; if there is no consensus now, there is unlikely ever to be one. My view: let’s just be glad it’s over.
It was a damn fine bunch of people crammed into a room much too small. In addition to Mr. Zimmer, I got to meet Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large for the Oxford English Dictionary and author of the F Word**; Grant Barrett of Wordnik and the Double-Tongued Dictionary; Mark Liberman of the University of Pennsylvania and Language Log; and Arika Okrent, whose In the Land of Invented Languages I reviewed here in May. It was a rare treat to meet people I hold in high esteem but had previously encountered only electronically.
And not just people previously known. I got to meet Richard W. Bailey of the University of Michigan, who is delivering an address later today on “H.L. Mencken and the American Language.” Mencken was a gifted and diligent amateur student of American English, and The American Language, though dated, has much interesting matter, vigorously expressed.
Professor Bailey also mentioned that the Library of America is bringing out Mencken’s Prejudices collections. Pray don’t allow yourself to be trampled in the rush to the bookstores.
*To the disappointment of my stereotypes, there was no crowd of older gentlemen with bow ties in evidence. Alas.
**Mr. Sheidlower’s tweet on the article in The Washington Post about the Word of the Year event: “WaPo article on #woty gets title of my book wrong, misquotes me, mistakes OED for Oxford UP. Damn MSM.” That’s why you should read Mr. Zimmer’s account instead.
I believe that The Baltimore Sun was not represented at the event. I'd check, but my search at Baltimoresun.com has been hung up for more than ten minutes.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Pick up after yourself
Responding to yesterday’s “Turn out the lights” post, Doug Fisher of Common Sense Journalism commented thus:
Most interesting from the Strib editor's memo, of course, is this:
“This will also require more individual responsibility: Reporters cannot turn in stories without running a basic spell check. Editors should have reporters read over every story they have edited. Photographers must turn in accurate cutlines that adhere to AP style. More staffers will need to be flexible about the work they do, meaning some reporters might serve a shift as a copy editor or line editor in any given week.”
I hope they sell tickets. Promises to be great entertainment.
The civilians among you may find this difficult to credit, but there are indeed professional journalists at major newspapers who do not routinely spell-check their own work before submitting it for publication. They are under time pressure, poor dears, and besides, they have been accustomed to the idea that some anonymous drudge on the copy desk will clean up after them. (Incidentally, any number of assigning editors don’t bother to run a spell-check either.)
It’s not just spell-checking — though that would tend to catch when they spell proper names inconsistently — but a host of other matters usually left to the copy desk: Fact-checking. Establishing conventional grammar and syntax. Locating the focus, if any, in the article. Cutting padding and irrelevant material. Restraining ill-advised self-indulgence.
It doesn’t matter. The people at the higher levels making these decisions to eliminate copy editors don’t understand what copy editors do. They think they can just tell reporters to pick up the slack. It is as if a teenager whose entire wardrobe lies in heaps on the floor, who has never carried a dirty plate or glass from the living room to the kitchen without prodding, and who leaves the bathroom in a shape not fit to be described here, will instantaneously — at a mere word — make everything shipshape and Bristol fashion.
Thus Mr. Fisher’s well-founded expectation of amusement to come.
I do feel a pang for the people at working level, the supervisors whose task is to carry out imbecilic directives. They must feel as General von Paulus did on his promotion to field marshal.
(Hitler’s thinking, with the Sixth Army collapsing under the Soviet counterattack at Stalingrad, was that no German field marshal had ever surrendered. Von Paulus surrendered the day after his promotion. Examples of wishful thinking are not limited to the Nazi high command. )
The new era arrives and will not be denied. So. Let the corrections column expand. Let the crash blossoms flower. Let even more readers seek their information elsewhere.
Most interesting from the Strib editor's memo, of course, is this:
“This will also require more individual responsibility: Reporters cannot turn in stories without running a basic spell check. Editors should have reporters read over every story they have edited. Photographers must turn in accurate cutlines that adhere to AP style. More staffers will need to be flexible about the work they do, meaning some reporters might serve a shift as a copy editor or line editor in any given week.”
I hope they sell tickets. Promises to be great entertainment.
The civilians among you may find this difficult to credit, but there are indeed professional journalists at major newspapers who do not routinely spell-check their own work before submitting it for publication. They are under time pressure, poor dears, and besides, they have been accustomed to the idea that some anonymous drudge on the copy desk will clean up after them. (Incidentally, any number of assigning editors don’t bother to run a spell-check either.)
It’s not just spell-checking — though that would tend to catch when they spell proper names inconsistently — but a host of other matters usually left to the copy desk: Fact-checking. Establishing conventional grammar and syntax. Locating the focus, if any, in the article. Cutting padding and irrelevant material. Restraining ill-advised self-indulgence.
It doesn’t matter. The people at the higher levels making these decisions to eliminate copy editors don’t understand what copy editors do. They think they can just tell reporters to pick up the slack. It is as if a teenager whose entire wardrobe lies in heaps on the floor, who has never carried a dirty plate or glass from the living room to the kitchen without prodding, and who leaves the bathroom in a shape not fit to be described here, will instantaneously — at a mere word — make everything shipshape and Bristol fashion.
Thus Mr. Fisher’s well-founded expectation of amusement to come.
I do feel a pang for the people at working level, the supervisors whose task is to carry out imbecilic directives. They must feel as General von Paulus did on his promotion to field marshal.
(Hitler’s thinking, with the Sixth Army collapsing under the Soviet counterattack at Stalingrad, was that no German field marshal had ever surrendered. Von Paulus surrendered the day after his promotion. Examples of wishful thinking are not limited to the Nazi high command. )
The new era arrives and will not be denied. So. Let the corrections column expand. Let the crash blossoms flower. Let even more readers seek their information elsewhere.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Turn out the lights
When a notable actor expires, they dim the lights on Broadway in a brief tribute.
It was confirmed yesterday that Media General will consolidate the copy editing of its newspapers in Tampa, Richmond, and Winston-Salem — the chain’s three largest papers. You may be sure that this does not mean an enlargement of the copy editing staff, but a reduction in both the staff and the quality of editing.
To his credit, Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at Winston-Salem, resigned. One reason was his disagreement over this measure.
Also yesterday, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis announced that it is reducing the news staff by thirty positions, more than half of them from the ranks of copy editors. The memo says that the paper will not sacrifice quality. Uh-huh.
These are the false economies by which publishers are steadily degrading the quality of what they offer readers, by destroying a craft.
In sympathy with colleagues incontinently turned out of their jobs, and in sorrow over the devastation of the craft of editing, You Don’t Say will go dark for twenty-four hours.
Posting and approval of comments will resume tomorrow.
It was confirmed yesterday that Media General will consolidate the copy editing of its newspapers in Tampa, Richmond, and Winston-Salem — the chain’s three largest papers. You may be sure that this does not mean an enlargement of the copy editing staff, but a reduction in both the staff and the quality of editing.
To his credit, Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at Winston-Salem, resigned. One reason was his disagreement over this measure.
Also yesterday, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis announced that it is reducing the news staff by thirty positions, more than half of them from the ranks of copy editors. The memo says that the paper will not sacrifice quality. Uh-huh.
These are the false economies by which publishers are steadily degrading the quality of what they offer readers, by destroying a craft.
In sympathy with colleagues incontinently turned out of their jobs, and in sorrow over the devastation of the craft of editing, You Don’t Say will go dark for twenty-four hours.
Posting and approval of comments will resume tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
What, me wordy?
Sometimes patience gives way.
There is a commenter — I can’t say who, since the s.o.b. writes anonymously — who has come to this blog repeatedly to advise me to cut the posts by thirty to forty percent.
Such advice is not helpful. First off, these posts tend to run plus or minus 350 words, a length that does not suggest logorrhea. And second, the question is always which words should be cut, and the Anonymous One has never troubled himself to offer specifics about his objections.
I have suggested that Twitter might be a better fit for his capacity, and most recently he responded:
Length is not at issue. It's word choice, usage, and diction.
The text can be pared by 30%. Try it. Think less like a panjandrum and more like someone I'd want to talk to over a beer.
Damn, he wants a chum, and I disappoint him. But I’m disappointed, too, because now that it’s apparently tone and diction that he objects to, I still don’t have any details. Usage? Usage? So, patience snapped, and I have cut him off.
For the rest of you, if you find my digressions tedious, or my diction florid and affected, your comments will be welcome and approved, so long as there is any substance to them. You know, the sort of comment an editor or an informed reader would make.
Along the same line, Michael Kinsley has come in for a bit of smirking over his recent article in The Atlantic arguing that newspaper stories are too long: his essay runs to 1,800 words.
I have read multi-page articles in The Baltimore Sun that were like cruising down an interstate highway — no stoplights. And I have read stories with single paragraphs that would make Job curse God.* It’s worth looking at what Mr. Kinsley has to say about the latter category, the solid-mahogany paragraph that buries the focus under non-idiomatic newspaperese lumber.
For I have known them all already, known them all:— not just the hopelessly clotted opening paragraph, but also the introduction that runs for a dozen paragraphs before the writer bothers to indicate what the story is actually about, the article whose only organizing principle is randomness, the article that rehashes background information interminably, the article that thinks that the writer is more interesting than the subject.
Perhaps you, like America’s publishing executives, think that these deficiencies will be remedied by reducing the number of editors.
Hah!
* Women’s rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union yesterday took the first step toward appealing a ruling that overturned a landmark law denying city liquor licenses to private clubs that discriminate.
There is a commenter — I can’t say who, since the s.o.b. writes anonymously — who has come to this blog repeatedly to advise me to cut the posts by thirty to forty percent.
Such advice is not helpful. First off, these posts tend to run plus or minus 350 words, a length that does not suggest logorrhea. And second, the question is always which words should be cut, and the Anonymous One has never troubled himself to offer specifics about his objections.
I have suggested that Twitter might be a better fit for his capacity, and most recently he responded:
Length is not at issue. It's word choice, usage, and diction.
The text can be pared by 30%. Try it. Think less like a panjandrum and more like someone I'd want to talk to over a beer.
Damn, he wants a chum, and I disappoint him. But I’m disappointed, too, because now that it’s apparently tone and diction that he objects to, I still don’t have any details. Usage? Usage? So, patience snapped, and I have cut him off.
For the rest of you, if you find my digressions tedious, or my diction florid and affected, your comments will be welcome and approved, so long as there is any substance to them. You know, the sort of comment an editor or an informed reader would make.
Along the same line, Michael Kinsley has come in for a bit of smirking over his recent article in The Atlantic arguing that newspaper stories are too long: his essay runs to 1,800 words.
I have read multi-page articles in The Baltimore Sun that were like cruising down an interstate highway — no stoplights. And I have read stories with single paragraphs that would make Job curse God.* It’s worth looking at what Mr. Kinsley has to say about the latter category, the solid-mahogany paragraph that buries the focus under non-idiomatic newspaperese lumber.
For I have known them all already, known them all:— not just the hopelessly clotted opening paragraph, but also the introduction that runs for a dozen paragraphs before the writer bothers to indicate what the story is actually about, the article whose only organizing principle is randomness, the article that rehashes background information interminably, the article that thinks that the writer is more interesting than the subject.
Perhaps you, like America’s publishing executives, think that these deficiencies will be remedied by reducing the number of editors.
Hah!
* Women’s rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union yesterday took the first step toward appealing a ruling that overturned a landmark law denying city liquor licenses to private clubs that discriminate.
Crash blossoms, y'all, and Jan Freeman
While I was paying attention to other matters, things developed:
Crash blossoms blossom
Last summer the Testy Copy Editors weighed in on a common problem in headline writing: the headline that appears to proceed in one direction but turns out to have a completely different meaning, or, because of ambiguity in the words, a completely opaque meaning. The example, “Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms,” led commenters to embrace “crash blossom” as the generic term for such botched headlines.
The term was quickly taken up on Language Log and other sites, and “crash blossom” has become a candidate for the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year. The society, which opens its annual meeting in Baltimore tomorrow, will vote on the Word of the Year late Friday afternoon.
Whether or not it wins, copy editors have added a fresh and needed term to the technical vocabulary of journalism. See the original Testy Copy Editors post and the subsequent examples here.
What do y’all think?
You might want to look in on the debate at Language Log over whether y’all can ever be or has even been used legitimately as a singular. Many Southerners claim never to have heard such a usage from a native Southern speaker. Suspecting Yankee ignorance or even dark plots, they bristle as Georgians would at the mention of General Sherman.
For my part, I have known native Southerners, and I have been addressed, solitarily, by them as “y’all.” However, should I be called up before HUAC (the House Committee on Un-American Conversation), I will refuse to name names.
Jan Freeman’s back
The Boston Globe’s estimable language columnist, having recovered from the labor of producing her book on Ambrose Bierce’s idiosyncratic diktats on language (the book having been noted in these precincts), has launched a fresh blog, Throw Grammar from the Train.
You will want to bookmark it.
Poof!
Sometime within the past few weeks, Baltimoresun.com made a software adjustment that renders the 700-plus posts on the previous version of You Don’t Say inaccessible. If you click on the old address, you will be transferred to the current one.
I regret that, because the old site continued for most of 2009 to have regular traffic, drawing readers who found the old posts of continuing value. As time permits, I may revisit those previous topics — all the original texts are in my possession — to update and repurpose the information. If there are any such topics that you would like for me to address, please send me a note.
Good searches
And finally, because I know you are good people, I commend to you again a simple action that will serve your purposes and do good at no cost to you.
Go to GoodSearch.com, and choose as your designated cause the American Copy Editors Society Education Fund. Then, whenever you would use Yahoo’s search engine, use the GoodSearch version of it; each time you do so, a small amount, about a penny, will be designated for the education fund. That brought in more than $70 in 2009, and we should be able to do much better this year.
Crash blossoms blossom
Last summer the Testy Copy Editors weighed in on a common problem in headline writing: the headline that appears to proceed in one direction but turns out to have a completely different meaning, or, because of ambiguity in the words, a completely opaque meaning. The example, “Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms,” led commenters to embrace “crash blossom” as the generic term for such botched headlines.
The term was quickly taken up on Language Log and other sites, and “crash blossom” has become a candidate for the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year. The society, which opens its annual meeting in Baltimore tomorrow, will vote on the Word of the Year late Friday afternoon.
Whether or not it wins, copy editors have added a fresh and needed term to the technical vocabulary of journalism. See the original Testy Copy Editors post and the subsequent examples here.
What do y’all think?
You might want to look in on the debate at Language Log over whether y’all can ever be or has even been used legitimately as a singular. Many Southerners claim never to have heard such a usage from a native Southern speaker. Suspecting Yankee ignorance or even dark plots, they bristle as Georgians would at the mention of General Sherman.
For my part, I have known native Southerners, and I have been addressed, solitarily, by them as “y’all.” However, should I be called up before HUAC (the House Committee on Un-American Conversation), I will refuse to name names.
Jan Freeman’s back
The Boston Globe’s estimable language columnist, having recovered from the labor of producing her book on Ambrose Bierce’s idiosyncratic diktats on language (the book having been noted in these precincts), has launched a fresh blog, Throw Grammar from the Train.
You will want to bookmark it.
Poof!
Sometime within the past few weeks, Baltimoresun.com made a software adjustment that renders the 700-plus posts on the previous version of You Don’t Say inaccessible. If you click on the old address, you will be transferred to the current one.
I regret that, because the old site continued for most of 2009 to have regular traffic, drawing readers who found the old posts of continuing value. As time permits, I may revisit those previous topics — all the original texts are in my possession — to update and repurpose the information. If there are any such topics that you would like for me to address, please send me a note.
Good searches
And finally, because I know you are good people, I commend to you again a simple action that will serve your purposes and do good at no cost to you.
Go to GoodSearch.com, and choose as your designated cause the American Copy Editors Society Education Fund. Then, whenever you would use Yahoo’s search engine, use the GoodSearch version of it; each time you do so, a small amount, about a penny, will be designated for the education fund. That brought in more than $70 in 2009, and we should be able to do much better this year.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Editors as entrepreneurs
In twenty-eight semesters of teaching editing, I have been lucky to encounter students who grasped the importance of the craft and showed a gift for it. Today I am pleased to present a guest post from one of those students, Michael Bullwinkle, who, aware of the crisis in editing and the plight of editors turned out of employment, suggests some fresh directions. Editors, particularly copy editors, have not, as a class, been notable for the entrepreneurial impulse, but perhaps Mr. Bullwinkle’s friendly suggestions will stimulate them.
Mr. Bullwinkle:
When I think of editing and the general lack of it that is present on the Internet, I can’t help but remember the opening lines of a TED talk given in 2008 by Benjamin Zander on the state of classical music:
Probably a lot of you know the story of the two salesmen who went down to Africa in the 1900s. They were sent down to find if there was any opportunity for selling shoes. And they wrote telegrams back to Manchester. And one of them wrote: “Situation hopeless. Stop. They don't wear shoes.” And the other one wrote: “Glorious opportunity. They don't have any shoes yet.”
I think the classical model of copy editors employed with benefits within an organization is indeed something of a dying breed. However, as outsourcing becomes more and more popular, it is quite clear that there is still an incredible value to the service native-speaking copy editors provide.
What I wonder is if perhaps one could take the basic model of these overseas copy-editing establishments and set up a similar little agency of native-speaking editors in the United States. To start, all you would need is a loosely connected group of work-at-home freelancers who had a common website and e-mail and divided up the editing accordingly. Billing could be done based on number of pages edited or specific contracts depending on customers’ needs.
The real question is, of course, how you actually get customers, since no one, even the more language-minded among us, will actually go out of our way to seek out the paid services of a copy editor.
I think the only way this idea has even the slightest chance to succeed is to target Internet-based content and to very selectively start auditing various websites. Mine them for errors, grammatical, legal, unintentionally embarrassing content, etc. Tally the results and send a nice little e-mail report not too many pages in length to the company, pointing out all of the potential issues that might be prevented if they paid a nominal fee for having their posts professionally screened by your agency.
Unfortunately, you would probably have to engage in this exercise a number of times before anyone was interested and paid any money, and selecting which type or size of sites would represent the greatest potential for becoming customers would be an interesting game of trial-and-error research. This also means you will at least initially be working for free with only the hope of maybe getting customers. But theoretically, if you could build a large enough client base, you could charge an exceedingly low rate per article/page to be edited and still make a profit worthy of your time based on the large number of pages that can be edited in a single day.
Another place to look for business might be in the professional blog sphere. While there are not a huge number of them, there are at least a couple of hundred blogs that serve as the sole source of income for their authors. These highly successful bloggers do quite well for themselves, and if you presented them with a similar report of the various errors, potential legal missteps, etc., that appear on their blogs, they might be willing to pay a small fee to have each post screened by a professional editor. Many of these bloggers have a fairly firm understanding of the concept of time and image as money, and professional editing might help them with both of these things. This would serve two purposes — one, it is another paying customer; two, it gives you a chance to clean up the crap that appears on the Web.
You could also offer free editing for a month to a few key highly successful bloggers (high page-view count) in exchange for a plug on their site linking to your editing agency’s site, and the chance that they might become your customer in the future.
Eventually, if you could actually get a successful brand going, you could have a symbol like the little VeriSign security symbols that subscribers to your service could post on their site. For a low cost they would have an insignia to remind their readers that the information on their site is professionally edited, or even fact-checked.
Mr. Bullwinkle:
When I think of editing and the general lack of it that is present on the Internet, I can’t help but remember the opening lines of a TED talk given in 2008 by Benjamin Zander on the state of classical music:
Probably a lot of you know the story of the two salesmen who went down to Africa in the 1900s. They were sent down to find if there was any opportunity for selling shoes. And they wrote telegrams back to Manchester. And one of them wrote: “Situation hopeless. Stop. They don't wear shoes.” And the other one wrote: “Glorious opportunity. They don't have any shoes yet.”
I think the classical model of copy editors employed with benefits within an organization is indeed something of a dying breed. However, as outsourcing becomes more and more popular, it is quite clear that there is still an incredible value to the service native-speaking copy editors provide.
What I wonder is if perhaps one could take the basic model of these overseas copy-editing establishments and set up a similar little agency of native-speaking editors in the United States. To start, all you would need is a loosely connected group of work-at-home freelancers who had a common website and e-mail and divided up the editing accordingly. Billing could be done based on number of pages edited or specific contracts depending on customers’ needs.
The real question is, of course, how you actually get customers, since no one, even the more language-minded among us, will actually go out of our way to seek out the paid services of a copy editor.
I think the only way this idea has even the slightest chance to succeed is to target Internet-based content and to very selectively start auditing various websites. Mine them for errors, grammatical, legal, unintentionally embarrassing content, etc. Tally the results and send a nice little e-mail report not too many pages in length to the company, pointing out all of the potential issues that might be prevented if they paid a nominal fee for having their posts professionally screened by your agency.
Unfortunately, you would probably have to engage in this exercise a number of times before anyone was interested and paid any money, and selecting which type or size of sites would represent the greatest potential for becoming customers would be an interesting game of trial-and-error research. This also means you will at least initially be working for free with only the hope of maybe getting customers. But theoretically, if you could build a large enough client base, you could charge an exceedingly low rate per article/page to be edited and still make a profit worthy of your time based on the large number of pages that can be edited in a single day.
Another place to look for business might be in the professional blog sphere. While there are not a huge number of them, there are at least a couple of hundred blogs that serve as the sole source of income for their authors. These highly successful bloggers do quite well for themselves, and if you presented them with a similar report of the various errors, potential legal missteps, etc., that appear on their blogs, they might be willing to pay a small fee to have each post screened by a professional editor. Many of these bloggers have a fairly firm understanding of the concept of time and image as money, and professional editing might help them with both of these things. This would serve two purposes — one, it is another paying customer; two, it gives you a chance to clean up the crap that appears on the Web.
You could also offer free editing for a month to a few key highly successful bloggers (high page-view count) in exchange for a plug on their site linking to your editing agency’s site, and the chance that they might become your customer in the future.
Eventually, if you could actually get a successful brand going, you could have a symbol like the little VeriSign security symbols that subscribers to your service could post on their site. For a low cost they would have an insignia to remind their readers that the information on their site is professionally edited, or even fact-checked.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Operators are standing by
If you marked the start of a new year with a resolve for some kind of self-improvement — and who among us couldn’t stand a little betterment? — here are two opportunities to make good on that resolution, without your having to leave the house.
The first is a week and a half away, but there is still time to sign up for
Things Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You
This audioconference produced by McMurry, which also publishes the Copyediting newsletter, will help you distinguish a rule from a guideline from a superstition in English usage. It will run for ninety minutes on January 14, and in addition to being able to listen to my dulcet tones, you will have the opportunity to ask questions and argue with me.
Details about fees and registration are on the link.
Next month will bring another opportunity:
Where to Turn: Resources for Editors
If you have been leaning too heavily on those frail reeds, The Elements of Style and Wikipedia, you will benefit from advice on more reliable resources and references. The ninety-minute audioconference on February 18 will explore both print and electronic references that will, used with appropriate caution and judgment, get you where you want to go. Here, too, you will have an opportunity to share your views.
Again, details are on the link.
I hope to hear from you on one or both of these occasions.
The first is a week and a half away, but there is still time to sign up for
Things Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You
This audioconference produced by McMurry, which also publishes the Copyediting newsletter, will help you distinguish a rule from a guideline from a superstition in English usage. It will run for ninety minutes on January 14, and in addition to being able to listen to my dulcet tones, you will have the opportunity to ask questions and argue with me.
Details about fees and registration are on the link.
Next month will bring another opportunity:
Where to Turn: Resources for Editors
If you have been leaning too heavily on those frail reeds, The Elements of Style and Wikipedia, you will benefit from advice on more reliable resources and references. The ninety-minute audioconference on February 18 will explore both print and electronic references that will, used with appropriate caution and judgment, get you where you want to go. Here, too, you will have an opportunity to share your views.
Again, details are on the link.
I hope to hear from you on one or both of these occasions.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Don't do yourself a mischief
I had better issue an ***ICK ALERT*** for potentially offensive content below.
(That should hook you.)
Those of you who were at least moderately sentient in the 1960s and 1970s may recall Tom Lehrer’s little proposed theme song for a film version of Oedipus Rex (and the younger sort will have some cultural education to undergo):
When he found what he had done,
He tore his eyes out, one by one,
A tragic end for a loyal son
Who LOVED his mother.*
I suspect that this may not be one of Jan Freeman’s favorite tunes, because she has written in The Boston Globe about her distaste for self-maiming hyperbole:
My nominee isn’t new, but last February I noticed it in a classier location than its usual haunts. At John McIntyre’s language blog, You Don’t Say—where readers are asked to “keep a civil tongue in their heads”—one commenter posted a complaint about the language of a TV weatherman. “Tonight he came up with ‘the evening-hour time frame’,” said the commenter. “Made me want to dig my eyeballs and eardrums out with a soup spoon.”
She goes on to comment:
At the Baltimore Sun, where McIntyre used to run the copy desks, the eye-gouging imagery would be off limits, he confirmed. Figurative language that’s “gratuitously violent or distasteful” is unwelcome, as the paper’s writing guidelines make clear. “Hyperbole, and particularly death hyperbole,” is not to be used flippantly. “Repulsive metaphors have no place in the paper.” The cautionary example is an oyster simile I won’t quote, since it might make you want to…you know.
Not that I mind quoting the cautionary example from The Sun’s “Guidelines on Writing and Editing” (largely disregarded but which, damn my modesty, I had a hand in developing):
Repulsive metaphors have no place in the paper. Here are some illustrations: “The sleek gray meats of the oyster, Sagoff once said, remind him of something you'd see on the floor of a tuberculosis ward.”; “For years, the city's been drooling over the real estate in the 400 block of E. Baltimore St.”; “Mr. Gore didn't search for huge globs of government fat lying around waiting to be lopped off.”
Well, assuming that you still have eyes to read this, it’s clear that I am less squeamish than Ms. Freeman, or perhaps The Boston Globe — surely they don’t talk like that in Boston.
But while I’m willing to grant a little more latitude in my own blog posts and to the comments I authorize on this site, I think that she is on to something. The ready resort to exaggerated reaction to minor irritations, and the partisan impulse toward apocalyptic metaphor over political differences** suggest not only a diminution of civility but also a tendency toward hysteria, both mild and extreme.
Use your indoor voices, please.
*Yes, he loved his mother like no other;
His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother.
One thing on which you can depend is,
He sure knew who a boy’s best friend is.
**On Facebook, a friend liked Bryan Garner’s word the the day the other day — CATCHPENNY, adj. = sensationally appealing to the ignorant — but couldn’t think of an appropriate use. I suggested lawyer-dentist Orly Taitz's catchpenny campaign to prove that Barack Obama is not an American citizen.
(That should hook you.)
Those of you who were at least moderately sentient in the 1960s and 1970s may recall Tom Lehrer’s little proposed theme song for a film version of Oedipus Rex (and the younger sort will have some cultural education to undergo):
When he found what he had done,
He tore his eyes out, one by one,
A tragic end for a loyal son
Who LOVED his mother.*
I suspect that this may not be one of Jan Freeman’s favorite tunes, because she has written in The Boston Globe about her distaste for self-maiming hyperbole:
My nominee isn’t new, but last February I noticed it in a classier location than its usual haunts. At John McIntyre’s language blog, You Don’t Say—where readers are asked to “keep a civil tongue in their heads”—one commenter posted a complaint about the language of a TV weatherman. “Tonight he came up with ‘the evening-hour time frame’,” said the commenter. “Made me want to dig my eyeballs and eardrums out with a soup spoon.”
She goes on to comment:
At the Baltimore Sun, where McIntyre used to run the copy desks, the eye-gouging imagery would be off limits, he confirmed. Figurative language that’s “gratuitously violent or distasteful” is unwelcome, as the paper’s writing guidelines make clear. “Hyperbole, and particularly death hyperbole,” is not to be used flippantly. “Repulsive metaphors have no place in the paper.” The cautionary example is an oyster simile I won’t quote, since it might make you want to…you know.
Not that I mind quoting the cautionary example from The Sun’s “Guidelines on Writing and Editing” (largely disregarded but which, damn my modesty, I had a hand in developing):
Repulsive metaphors have no place in the paper. Here are some illustrations: “The sleek gray meats of the oyster, Sagoff once said, remind him of something you'd see on the floor of a tuberculosis ward.”; “For years, the city's been drooling over the real estate in the 400 block of E. Baltimore St.”; “Mr. Gore didn't search for huge globs of government fat lying around waiting to be lopped off.”
Well, assuming that you still have eyes to read this, it’s clear that I am less squeamish than Ms. Freeman, or perhaps The Boston Globe — surely they don’t talk like that in Boston.
But while I’m willing to grant a little more latitude in my own blog posts and to the comments I authorize on this site, I think that she is on to something. The ready resort to exaggerated reaction to minor irritations, and the partisan impulse toward apocalyptic metaphor over political differences** suggest not only a diminution of civility but also a tendency toward hysteria, both mild and extreme.
Use your indoor voices, please.
*Yes, he loved his mother like no other;
His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother.
One thing on which you can depend is,
He sure knew who a boy’s best friend is.
**On Facebook, a friend liked Bryan Garner’s word the the day the other day — CATCHPENNY, adj. = sensationally appealing to the ignorant — but couldn’t think of an appropriate use. I suggested lawyer-dentist Orly Taitz's catchpenny campaign to prove that Barack Obama is not an American citizen.
Don't give up the ship*
A reader has written to express “gratitude for your blog, which helps me keep the faith,” and adding, “I, too, am an unemployed copy editor who is too old to be hired yet too young to retire and am trying to figure out what to do next.”
There is ample reason to be discouraged. Not merely in faltering daily newspapers, but also in magazines, books, and Internet sites, there has been a large-scale abandonment of the discipline of editing and an acceptance of shoddiness as the norm. The depressed economy aggravates the situation, so that when an actual editing position opens up, scores, or even hundreds, of qualified applicants swarm over it.
There is my own melancholy situation, with dozens of fruitless applications and inquiries over the past eight months. A couple of possibilities I bungled on my own, but when I am invariably turned down or ignored, speculating about other reasons is inevitable: I am too narrowly qualified as a newspaper copy editor, or I am overqualified, or too old, or too expensive (they think) — too easily rejected out of hand. (Just think, dear reader, would you like to have me as a subordinate?)
And yet, even though the day may come that I wind up bagging your groceries, I have not given up and do not intend to.
The freelance editing jobs that have come my way in the past few months have demonstrated two important points: People need editing just as much as they ever did, and I can deliver the goods. To those two points, I can add a generalization: If everyone is to make do with fewer editors, it is important to employ qualified ones and allow them to function properly.
Positive glimmers can be discerned. Twenty-two students have signed up for my editing course at Loyola for the coming semester. (How many will remain after the first class is a different matter.) They are not interested in newspapers, but in their majors in advertising and public relations and other areas, they have been led to understand that a grasp of editing is essential for people who want to make a living with language.
There are you, gentle readers, a sturdy band always returning to this site, perhaps, like my correspondent, finding encouragement here. There are many others doing the Lord’s work, too. Bryan Garner has brought out a third, expanded edition of his dictionary of modern American usage. Grammar Girl has a huge audience for her level-headed advice (delivered without my pomposity and affectation). The estimable Jan Freeman took a major smack at peevologists with her commentary on Ambrose Bierce’s cranky manual of usage; she continues to hold the line with her column in The Boston Globe.
All of these, and more, are offering a moderate and informed prescriptivism to people who want to write more clearly and more precisely, without the bogus rules and idiosyncratic shibboleths that have burdened students and writers for generations.
Let me remind you as well, that the sun has begun to track northward again in this hemisphere and the daylight is slowly lengthening, the American economy is beginning to crawl out of a hole, and we have a fresh year to work with. I have retooled the resume and am preparing a renewed campaign for employment. Those of you in my situation should be doing the same. There is work to be done; it remains for us to find it.
In the meantime, I have not given up. I have kept the faith.
*I am aware, irony fanciers, that Captain Lawrence died shortly after saying something like this (the actual words were “Tell the men to fire faster and not give up the ship”) and that the Chesapeake was compelled to surrender after a disastrously short battle with HMS Shannon. But still.
There is ample reason to be discouraged. Not merely in faltering daily newspapers, but also in magazines, books, and Internet sites, there has been a large-scale abandonment of the discipline of editing and an acceptance of shoddiness as the norm. The depressed economy aggravates the situation, so that when an actual editing position opens up, scores, or even hundreds, of qualified applicants swarm over it.
There is my own melancholy situation, with dozens of fruitless applications and inquiries over the past eight months. A couple of possibilities I bungled on my own, but when I am invariably turned down or ignored, speculating about other reasons is inevitable: I am too narrowly qualified as a newspaper copy editor, or I am overqualified, or too old, or too expensive (they think) — too easily rejected out of hand. (Just think, dear reader, would you like to have me as a subordinate?)
And yet, even though the day may come that I wind up bagging your groceries, I have not given up and do not intend to.
The freelance editing jobs that have come my way in the past few months have demonstrated two important points: People need editing just as much as they ever did, and I can deliver the goods. To those two points, I can add a generalization: If everyone is to make do with fewer editors, it is important to employ qualified ones and allow them to function properly.
Positive glimmers can be discerned. Twenty-two students have signed up for my editing course at Loyola for the coming semester. (How many will remain after the first class is a different matter.) They are not interested in newspapers, but in their majors in advertising and public relations and other areas, they have been led to understand that a grasp of editing is essential for people who want to make a living with language.
There are you, gentle readers, a sturdy band always returning to this site, perhaps, like my correspondent, finding encouragement here. There are many others doing the Lord’s work, too. Bryan Garner has brought out a third, expanded edition of his dictionary of modern American usage. Grammar Girl has a huge audience for her level-headed advice (delivered without my pomposity and affectation). The estimable Jan Freeman took a major smack at peevologists with her commentary on Ambrose Bierce’s cranky manual of usage; she continues to hold the line with her column in The Boston Globe.
All of these, and more, are offering a moderate and informed prescriptivism to people who want to write more clearly and more precisely, without the bogus rules and idiosyncratic shibboleths that have burdened students and writers for generations.
Let me remind you as well, that the sun has begun to track northward again in this hemisphere and the daylight is slowly lengthening, the American economy is beginning to crawl out of a hole, and we have a fresh year to work with. I have retooled the resume and am preparing a renewed campaign for employment. Those of you in my situation should be doing the same. There is work to be done; it remains for us to find it.
In the meantime, I have not given up. I have kept the faith.
*I am aware, irony fanciers, that Captain Lawrence died shortly after saying something like this (the actual words were “Tell the men to fire faster and not give up the ship”) and that the Chesapeake was compelled to surrender after a disastrously short battle with HMS Shannon. But still.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Quorum call
A gentleman from Seattle named Charles Kraus published a light-hearted set of New Year’s resolutions in this morning’s Baltimore Sun. Among them was this one:
This year, I resolve to purchase The New York Times at the local newsstand at least once a week to show solidarity with those of us who believe Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, Stanley Fish, David Brooks, Charles Blow, Thomas Friedman and Bob Herbert form a minion, and should never be forced to work for Arianna Huffington.
Spotted it already, didn’t you?
A minion is an underling, particularly a servile one — a flunky, a stooge, a lackey, a tool, a cat’s paw. A minyan is the quorum required for public worship in a synagogue — ten Jewish men over the age of thirteen, or, in some congregations, ten men and women.
Reaching for the mistaken homophone (or homograph) is one of the commonest errors in writing, and this little gem leads us to expect a fresh new year of opportunities to carp, cavil, and quibble. Life is good.
This year, I resolve to purchase The New York Times at the local newsstand at least once a week to show solidarity with those of us who believe Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, Stanley Fish, David Brooks, Charles Blow, Thomas Friedman and Bob Herbert form a minion, and should never be forced to work for Arianna Huffington.
Spotted it already, didn’t you?
A minion is an underling, particularly a servile one — a flunky, a stooge, a lackey, a tool, a cat’s paw. A minyan is the quorum required for public worship in a synagogue — ten Jewish men over the age of thirteen, or, in some congregations, ten men and women.
Reaching for the mistaken homophone (or homograph) is one of the commonest errors in writing, and this little gem leads us to expect a fresh new year of opportunities to carp, cavil, and quibble. Life is good.
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