I don't typically come here asking you for money (except when I'm flogging my damn book), but today I urge you to consider contributing to the Maryland Delaware District of Columbia Press Foundation's Reese Cleghorn internship fund.
Internships at publications are a double advantage for students: They gain invaluable practical experience in reporting, writing, and editing, and a successful internship is often the surest route to permanent employment (or to such permanence as journalism offers these days).
The Cleghorn internship is a paid internship, and the number of internships offered each year depends on the contributions to the fund. I have written a check again this year (all right, I'm a trustee of the foundation; it's the least I could do). I suggest that you consider what it was like when you were starting out in the business, how much you benefited, or would have benefited, from such an internship, and how much you are able to help give the rising generation a boost.
Your check is an investment in the future of the enterprise, which badly needs promising students with proper grounding in the craft. Here is a link to the contribution form. The mailing address is 60 West Street, Annapolis, MD 21401.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Monday, December 1, 2014
A Cyber Monday suggestion
We pause for a brief commercial message.
While you are online, marshaling your forces for Christmas shopping, allow me to suggest that The Old Editor Says would be an excellent choice for that student, that aspiring writer, that editor, that stickler, that annoying know-it-all on your list.
A slim volume of fewer than seventy pages of pithy sayings, it distills three decades' worth of editing lore and wisdom, and it is cheap.
The Old Editor Says has been received favorably by Stan Carey of Sentence first, Steve Buttry of The Buttry Diary, Dawn McIlvain Stahl at Copyediting, and Mignon Fogarty, who invited The Old Editor to do a Grammar Girl podcast.
Available in print form or on Kindle.
We regret intruding with a commercial message, but there is no one else to flog that damn book.
We return now to regular programming.
While you are online, marshaling your forces for Christmas shopping, allow me to suggest that The Old Editor Says would be an excellent choice for that student, that aspiring writer, that editor, that stickler, that annoying know-it-all on your list.
A slim volume of fewer than seventy pages of pithy sayings, it distills three decades' worth of editing lore and wisdom, and it is cheap.
The Old Editor Says has been received favorably by Stan Carey of Sentence first, Steve Buttry of The Buttry Diary, Dawn McIlvain Stahl at Copyediting, and Mignon Fogarty, who invited The Old Editor to do a Grammar Girl podcast.
Available in print form or on Kindle.
We regret intruding with a commercial message, but there is no one else to flog that damn book.
We return now to regular programming.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Mr. Saunders is in the house
It was only a few months ago that we had to say goodbye to Scout, the sweet tuxedo kitten whom Alice had adopted, and then bequeathed to us when she left for college.
Scout, who was my afternoon companion and consolation during the long, fruitless job search of the [cough] hiatus [cough]. Scout, who after a year of declining health lost her vision and had to be euthanized at the age of fifteen. Scout whom we mourned--I found myself on getting up every morning looking to see if she was in the window or on the sofa.
We were not going to acquire another cat. We were in mourning. And Kathleen, who loves cats, is allergic to them.
Then, a week ago as she was working in the yard, a cat whom we had noticed in the neighborhood, a handsome but skinny orange male, walked up to her and said in fluent Cattish, "I'm hungry. Feed me."
Of course she took pity, and put out some food and water, and the cat ate ravenously. He has wandered away from someone or has been abandoned, we thought. We'll feed him for a couple of days and make inquiries around the neighborhood. If no one claims him, we'll have to call animal control, because we can't take on another cat.
Then the weather turned cold and I weakened. I let him into the house Friday, and he made himself at home. He is a genial cat. He loves to sit with people. He's a purring machine.
Fatefully, we named him, calling him Saunders, and you know what that means.
So on Monday, a trip to the Belvedere Veterinary Center for an expensive series of shots and tests (he charmed the staff), and now I have invested in him.
He is sitting at my feet as I type, wondering when I am going to give up this frivolity and return to my proper duty of paying attention to the cat.
On my way, Mr. Saunders.
Scout, who was my afternoon companion and consolation during the long, fruitless job search of the [cough] hiatus [cough]. Scout, who after a year of declining health lost her vision and had to be euthanized at the age of fifteen. Scout whom we mourned--I found myself on getting up every morning looking to see if she was in the window or on the sofa.
We were not going to acquire another cat. We were in mourning. And Kathleen, who loves cats, is allergic to them.
Then, a week ago as she was working in the yard, a cat whom we had noticed in the neighborhood, a handsome but skinny orange male, walked up to her and said in fluent Cattish, "I'm hungry. Feed me."
Of course she took pity, and put out some food and water, and the cat ate ravenously. He has wandered away from someone or has been abandoned, we thought. We'll feed him for a couple of days and make inquiries around the neighborhood. If no one claims him, we'll have to call animal control, because we can't take on another cat.
Then the weather turned cold and I weakened. I let him into the house Friday, and he made himself at home. He is a genial cat. He loves to sit with people. He's a purring machine.
Fatefully, we named him, calling him Saunders, and you know what that means.
So on Monday, a trip to the Belvedere Veterinary Center for an expensive series of shots and tests (he charmed the staff), and now I have invested in him.
He is sitting at my feet as I type, wondering when I am going to give up this frivolity and return to my proper duty of paying attention to the cat.
On my way, Mr. Saunders.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Holy smoke
Today, November 2, the Feast of All Saints was translated to the Sunday morning service at Memorial Episcopal Church, and I was there with the thurible* to smoke up the joint.
(Those of you who are not liturgically minded may want to absent yourselves at this point. I will be returning to secular subjects tomorrow morning.)
The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland is traditionally a Low Church diocese, and it was exceedingly Low when my wife and I arrived here twenty-eight years ago. Incense, in particular, provoked reactions of dismay and horror as a Romish practice. It took years of wearing down opposition to establish its use on a certain number of festival days.
All Saints' is one of these festivals. The texts speak of "clouds of witnesses," and clouds I provide.
The use of incense, of course, is very old, antedating Christianity. Incense was burned as a sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem, as well as at the altars of virtually all religions in antiquity. Early on, Christianity ripped off the practice from Roman civic ceremonial, in which processions of civic officials in the streets were preceded by a thurifer with incense as an emblem of authority.
The major metaphoric sense with which incense is associated is the image of prayers rising to heaven with its smoke. But there are other associations. Incense was thought to purify, and because it was expensive, it was a worthy gift. Its function, the late Marion Hatchett explains his his Commentary on the American Prayer Book, is "honorific, fumigatory, and festive."
Or, as the Rev. James L. Jelinek, later bishop of Minnesota and the priest who presided at our wedding, liked to say, "It's for the nose." When incense is included at the Eucharist, all five senses of the body are involved, and smell is one of the most evocative associations. Incense smells like church.
Some, and they are vocal in making this plain, dislike it for physical reasons as well as theological ones and find it oppressive. But the pure Somalian frankincense that we use at Memorial is proudly labeled by the purveyor, the F.C. Ziegler company, as hypo-allergenic. I am not troubled at all by it, and I am standing directly above the pot (though it is true that I smoked a pipe for forty years, which may have inured me to fumes).
The Feast of All Saints, in which we commemorate the heroes of the faith, gets inevitably entangled with the Feast of All Souls, in which we mark the memory of all the faithful departed. And so, at Memorial today, incense was used not only at the entrance, exit, and censing of the altar at the offertory, but also at the reading of the names members of the the congregation had submitted to be particularly remembered.**
All Saints' is one of those days on which one wants it all: the Vaughn Williams setting of "For all the saints," the choir singing Anglican chant, a brass choir accompanying the hymns, the Elgar "Lux Aeterna," the solemn reading of names, and the aromatic smoke rising among the voices and prayers of the people.
*Thuirble, the censer in which incense is burned, from the Latin thurbibulum, ultimately from the Greek thyos, "incense, "sacrifice."
**Among those numbered today were Lucien Lundy Early, Clara Rhodes Early, Raymond McIntyre, and Marian Early McIntyre.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
You don't want to go home again
When I see people brandishing signs about wanting their country back, I'm pretty sure that their country is the one I grew up in.
Fleming County, Kentucky, on the edge of the Bluegrass and Appalachia, was pretty much white in the 1950s and 1960s. The African-American population was small, and there were no Asians and Hispanics.
It was not only white, but overwhelmingly Protestant. There were some Roman Catholic families, mainly descended from the German migration into Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky of the mid-nineteenth century, and there was one Jewish family, but the Lord's Prayer that we recited at the beginning of each school day was the Protestant version.
The casual prejudices of the time were much in evidence. I recall hearing one prominent burgher and pillar of the Methodist Church complaining that the Jews had their hands in his pockets, and I recall one pillar of the Presbyterian Church explaining to me that Negroes were intelligent according to the proportion of "white blood" in them. The numerous homophobes were less genteel in their expressions.
And, as in much of America, credentials were held in higher esteem than actual learning. Growing up, I must have heard some version of "He's got book sense but no common sense" a thousand times.
Reading Sinclair Lewis's Main Street at fourteen was a revelation of the pervasive narrowness of that rural culture. At the first opportunity, when I was eighteen, I "went North" to college. I returned home for four summers, left for graduate school at twenty-two, and have never been back, except for brief visits.
Mind you, I remain a son of Kentucky. My accent broadens when I'm there. There are friends of my youth with whom I am still in touch. I stand when the band plays "My Old Kentucky Home" on Derby Day. My parents and grandparents lie at rest on a hillside in the cemetery in Elizaville. I remember, and miss, the scent of the locust trees blooming in late spring. And I am in line to inherit what remains of the family farm, in the family since 1862.
But I neither miss nor long for that insular white, evangelical Protestant, anti-intellectual culture I grew up in, or its many bigotries, genteel or otherwise.
It is not coming back, and it ought not to.
Fleming County, Kentucky, on the edge of the Bluegrass and Appalachia, was pretty much white in the 1950s and 1960s. The African-American population was small, and there were no Asians and Hispanics.
It was not only white, but overwhelmingly Protestant. There were some Roman Catholic families, mainly descended from the German migration into Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky of the mid-nineteenth century, and there was one Jewish family, but the Lord's Prayer that we recited at the beginning of each school day was the Protestant version.
The casual prejudices of the time were much in evidence. I recall hearing one prominent burgher and pillar of the Methodist Church complaining that the Jews had their hands in his pockets, and I recall one pillar of the Presbyterian Church explaining to me that Negroes were intelligent according to the proportion of "white blood" in them. The numerous homophobes were less genteel in their expressions.
And, as in much of America, credentials were held in higher esteem than actual learning. Growing up, I must have heard some version of "He's got book sense but no common sense" a thousand times.
Reading Sinclair Lewis's Main Street at fourteen was a revelation of the pervasive narrowness of that rural culture. At the first opportunity, when I was eighteen, I "went North" to college. I returned home for four summers, left for graduate school at twenty-two, and have never been back, except for brief visits.
Mind you, I remain a son of Kentucky. My accent broadens when I'm there. There are friends of my youth with whom I am still in touch. I stand when the band plays "My Old Kentucky Home" on Derby Day. My parents and grandparents lie at rest on a hillside in the cemetery in Elizaville. I remember, and miss, the scent of the locust trees blooming in late spring. And I am in line to inherit what remains of the family farm, in the family since 1862.
But I neither miss nor long for that insular white, evangelical Protestant, anti-intellectual culture I grew up in, or its many bigotries, genteel or otherwise.
It is not coming back, and it ought not to.
Friday, July 18, 2014
O brave new world, that has such pixels in it
The Internet is not as smart as it thinks it is.
I know that we all crouch under the all-seeing eye of Mordor, our surfing and shopping monitored by our government, our email and search engine providers, the merchants with whom we shop.
But if you look closely, you see slippage in the surveillance.
Item: The servers to which The Sun is connected are not in Baltimore, so when I go online at work, Google assumes that I am in Chicago.
Item: I was once mistakenly put on a mailing list for an Atlanta swim club. (Have you ever tried to get your name off a group email list? It's worse than getting chewing gum out of the cat.) I think I finally extricated myself from that, but I still get come-ons from Atlanta businesses every day.
Item: Amazon.com regularly communicates offers for me to buy my own book.
Item: Nearly a year ago, AT&T confused me with one James McIntyre, who has, or had, an account with them, and started sending me his billing information. I was naive then, and I went to the AT&T website to remedy the matter. It was an electronic version of an Escher drawing. Email was equally futile.
So I posted at this blog in September about AT&T's ineptitude. Apparently susceptible to public embarrassment, some functionary wrote and promised to clear the matter up. When I was still getting James McIntyre email in November, I posted again. I got a reply and assurances from yet another functionary.
I still don't know whether James McIntyre's account is in order, and I don't care. Let the dead bury their dead. This morning I got another AT&T offer calling me "James."
The thing that will blind Mordor's all-seeing eye is the sheer volume of this stuff.
At my work email, I delete scores of messages a day, many of them irrelevant to my purposes, many of only ephemeral importance. Recently, someone added me to The Sun's electronic tip line. Now, in addition to a daily flood of p.r. bumf, I am privileged to receive the pronouncements of every crank in Christendom, and I delete messages by the hundreds.
I no longer even look at the spam file, which apparently purges itself every gigabyte or two. That means I shall never draw on that Nigerian banking account, but journalism trains one to live modestly.
Yes, you are under perpetual surveillance and any sense of personal privacy you cling to is illusory. But be of good cheer: They are all inept.
I know that we all crouch under the all-seeing eye of Mordor, our surfing and shopping monitored by our government, our email and search engine providers, the merchants with whom we shop.
But if you look closely, you see slippage in the surveillance.
Item: The servers to which The Sun is connected are not in Baltimore, so when I go online at work, Google assumes that I am in Chicago.
Item: I was once mistakenly put on a mailing list for an Atlanta swim club. (Have you ever tried to get your name off a group email list? It's worse than getting chewing gum out of the cat.) I think I finally extricated myself from that, but I still get come-ons from Atlanta businesses every day.
Item: Amazon.com regularly communicates offers for me to buy my own book.
Item: Nearly a year ago, AT&T confused me with one James McIntyre, who has, or had, an account with them, and started sending me his billing information. I was naive then, and I went to the AT&T website to remedy the matter. It was an electronic version of an Escher drawing. Email was equally futile.
So I posted at this blog in September about AT&T's ineptitude. Apparently susceptible to public embarrassment, some functionary wrote and promised to clear the matter up. When I was still getting James McIntyre email in November, I posted again. I got a reply and assurances from yet another functionary.
I still don't know whether James McIntyre's account is in order, and I don't care. Let the dead bury their dead. This morning I got another AT&T offer calling me "James."
The thing that will blind Mordor's all-seeing eye is the sheer volume of this stuff.
At my work email, I delete scores of messages a day, many of them irrelevant to my purposes, many of only ephemeral importance. Recently, someone added me to The Sun's electronic tip line. Now, in addition to a daily flood of p.r. bumf, I am privileged to receive the pronouncements of every crank in Christendom, and I delete messages by the hundreds.
I no longer even look at the spam file, which apparently purges itself every gigabyte or two. That means I shall never draw on that Nigerian banking account, but journalism trains one to live modestly.
Yes, you are under perpetual surveillance and any sense of personal privacy you cling to is illusory. But be of good cheer: They are all inept.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Sweetest words in English: check enclosed
A couple of days ago a check from Apprentice House arrived, the royalties for The Old Editor Says from 2013.
Several of you have been kind enough to praise the book, and Jan Freeman. Stan Carey, and Steve Buttry, among others, have written generous reviews of the little book. Now I have an additional reason to be grateful to those of you who bought the book: cash in the bank.
Some of you, no doubt through oversight, have not bought The Old Editor Says, but don't be troubled; it's still available, in print and electronic versions. A previous post carries a link to Amazon.com and also includes links to those favorable reviews. Let me assure you that a royalty check next year from your purchases will be just as gratefully received as this year's.
And since the stores are already flogging their back-to-school merchandise, this might be a good time to think about purchasing a copy for that young person who aspires to be a writer and would benefit from a little sound advice.
Several of you have been kind enough to praise the book, and Jan Freeman. Stan Carey, and Steve Buttry, among others, have written generous reviews of the little book. Now I have an additional reason to be grateful to those of you who bought the book: cash in the bank.
Some of you, no doubt through oversight, have not bought The Old Editor Says, but don't be troubled; it's still available, in print and electronic versions. A previous post carries a link to Amazon.com and also includes links to those favorable reviews. Let me assure you that a royalty check next year from your purchases will be just as gratefully received as this year's.
And since the stores are already flogging their back-to-school merchandise, this might be a good time to think about purchasing a copy for that young person who aspires to be a writer and would benefit from a little sound advice.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Manifestations
You still have time, though not much, to sign up for Wednesday's Copyediting audio conference, "Judgment Calls," in which I will be talking about how to adapt to trends in English usage, including the increasing occurrence of singular they, the decline of whom, the old comprise/compose conundrum and other issues.
Moreover, you will have an opportunity to participate in discussion of the issues. Operators are standing by.
Tough "Judgment Calls" is audio only, I will be present in the too, too sullied flesh on April 26 at the Maryland Writers' Conference in Linthicum Heights, talking about social media. Still time to sign up for that one.
And if you are planning to attend the American Copy Editors Society's national conference in Las Vegas, March 20-22, look for me in the bar. Don't neglect the silent auction, to which I am donating two copies of The Old Editor Says, and which I am willing to autograph.
Moreover, you will have an opportunity to participate in discussion of the issues. Operators are standing by.
Tough "Judgment Calls" is audio only, I will be present in the too, too sullied flesh on April 26 at the Maryland Writers' Conference in Linthicum Heights, talking about social media. Still time to sign up for that one.
And if you are planning to attend the American Copy Editors Society's national conference in Las Vegas, March 20-22, look for me in the bar. Don't neglect the silent auction, to which I am donating two copies of The Old Editor Says, and which I am willing to autograph.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Sitting in judgment
The old schoolroom certitudes about grammar and usage that many of us were taught have come under fire: from linguists who question their validity, from lexicographers who record widespread usage that flouts those rules, and even from prescriptivists like Bryan Garner who call them superstitions.
Those of us who edit have to watch and monitor the development of the language. Singular they appears to be gaining ground. Whom seems to be on its last legs (though Geoffrey Pullum suggests puckishly that there may be a biological advantage in using it). Whether to stick up for or abandon a long-standing usage is a delicate point of judgment.
Thus on March 12 I will be conducting an audio conference for Copyediting, "Judgment Calls," in which I will address a number of these thorny points of usage and offer advice on how to make reasonable editorial choices.
I not only hope that you will sign up for what I hope will partake of conversation as well as monologue, but that you will also offer suggestions about points of usage that you find vexatious. Be assured that I have a list of my own cued up, but I think the conference will be more productive if it takes account of the issues you identify from your own work.
Feel free to make suggestions in the comments, or to write to me directly.
Those of us who edit have to watch and monitor the development of the language. Singular they appears to be gaining ground. Whom seems to be on its last legs (though Geoffrey Pullum suggests puckishly that there may be a biological advantage in using it). Whether to stick up for or abandon a long-standing usage is a delicate point of judgment.
Thus on March 12 I will be conducting an audio conference for Copyediting, "Judgment Calls," in which I will address a number of these thorny points of usage and offer advice on how to make reasonable editorial choices.
I not only hope that you will sign up for what I hope will partake of conversation as well as monologue, but that you will also offer suggestions about points of usage that you find vexatious. Be assured that I have a list of my own cued up, but I think the conference will be more productive if it takes account of the issues you identify from your own work.
Feel free to make suggestions in the comments, or to write to me directly.