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.

Wednesday, October 28, 2026

The time to rhyme

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 I am no poet or lyricist, but a humble drudge whose beat is nonfiction prose. But I have a reader of these posts, Jeremy Desmon, a New York...
Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Proper is as proper does

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 Someone posted on Twitter recently that "'irregardless' is not a proper word." I want to look at what sort of word "...
4 comments:
Monday, October 5, 2026

It's not just the crosswords

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 Suzanne Loudermilk once posted on Facebook about the two things that most impressed students when I spoke at her Writing for the Media clas...
1 comment:
Sunday, October 4, 2026

"You could use artificial intelligence for that"

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 A query last week suggested I might take part in an interview about artificial intelligence. I demurred. I do not consciously use AI, and I...
2 comments:
Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Dry no more

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I recently discovered online that a liquor store had opened for business in Flemingsburg, Kentucky. And there's a winery there, too! It...
3 comments:
Friday, September 18, 2026

The police suspect everybody

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 A crime has been committed. A person has been robbed, assaulted, or shot. The police report of the crime says that officers are seeking to ...
2 comments:
Monday, September 7, 2026

A newsroom taxonomy

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 Among those who labor on holidays are writers and editors at daily newspapers. To celebrate them on Labor Day, I repost my classifications ...
4 comments:
Thursday, August 27, 2026

How we talk now

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If you are old enough, you were probably taught the "due to" crotchet.   For the youngsters in the gallery, due  was only ever sup...
Monday, August 24, 2026

Two ways about it

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 I used to teach my editing students at Loyola Maryland a nice little word, dilemma . It's ultimately from the Greek, di , "two,...
1 comment:
Sunday, August 9, 2026

Porch sitting

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 The porch at our front door is small, holding a round table, a small side table, and four chairs. That's the capacity. When I worked, t...
5 comments:
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