You Don't Say

John McIntyre, whom James Wolcott called "the Dave Brubeck of the art and craft of copy editing," writes on language, editing, journalism, and random topics. Identifying his errors relieves him of the burden of omniscience. Write to jemcintyre@gmail.com, befriend at Facebook, or follow at Twitter: @johnemcintyre. His original "You Don't Say" blog at The Baltimore Sun ran from 2005 to 2021, and posts on it can sometimes be found at baltimoresun.com through Google searches.

Friday, April 24, 2026

Letting down the side again

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 Ever unable to help myself, I responded to an online post in which someone was carping about the use of loan  as a verb. You may have been ...
2 comments:
Thursday, April 16, 2026

Upon further consideration ...

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 A few days ago an irate reader vented his spleen online over someone who used further  to mean at a greater distance.  For the civilians in...
12 comments:
Monday, April 13, 2026

Strike it out. Just strike it out.

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 If you make no other gesture this day toward clarity and economy in prose, deleting ongoing  will store up treasure for you in Heaven.  It ...
3 comments:
Friday, April 3, 2026

Whose history were you taught?

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 Perhaps your introduction to American history through high school was like mine: the discovery by white people from Europe of a vast land t...
5 comments:
Monday, March 30, 2026

Ups and downs of our national anniversaries

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50th:  This, in 1826, is the one everyone remembers because Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died coincidentally on the fiftieth anniversary ...
2 comments:
Friday, March 20, 2026

You want to know from leadership?

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To the reader: I wrote this for The Sun  in 2012, headed "Take me to your leadership." The plaque mentioned in the opening paragra...
Thursday, March 12, 2026

On the porch

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 In yesterday's unseasonable warmth I spent part of the afternoon on the porch, reading The Private Patient  (P.D. James's final Ada...
6 comments:
Friday, March 6, 2026

Yes, it's a quibble, but dammit

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 Let me be clear. I do not want to disparage Karen Hao, to whose Empire of AI  I have turned for information on the despicable tech bros who...
11 comments:
Wednesday, March 4, 2026

O Day of Grammar, draw nigh

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 On a weekday afternoon in a quiet bar, a glass of Smithwick's is one of the benisons of retirement. I was pondering a second pint when ...
Monday, February 16, 2026

One of the best

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 Last week I lost a friend of forty years.  Steve Auerweck died Friday at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, where he was being treated f...
17 comments:
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