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, 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 ...
1 comment:
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:
Saturday, August 1, 2026

It's not over

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This week someone on Twitter quoted a tweet from a fellow journalist: "Not to be dramatic, but the day @APStylebook made it okay to say...
12 comments:
Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Say yes to books

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 On the first day of my editing class at Loyola University Maryland, I asked the students to provide some basic information--class year, hom...
8 comments:
Thursday, July 16, 2026

In which our hero comes to feel his age

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  Note to the reader: This post is entirely personal; you may well choose to skip it. Subsequent posts will return to issues of grammar, usa...
20 comments:
Friday, July 3, 2026

A thought for the Fourth

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 Let us acknowledge things about our national anthem. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is mediocre verse set to the tune of an old drink...
5 comments:
Wednesday, June 17, 2026

People still read books, you say?

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 During the fair weather this week I have been reading The Iliad  in Emily Wilson's translation on the front porch.  My interest in Wils...
6 comments:
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