tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60517448839075514022024-03-17T23:03:22.732-04:00You Don't SayJohn 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. John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.comBlogger634125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-52830333760365660892024-03-04T07:05:00.001-05:002024-03-10T10:21:17.475-04:00The practice of lexis can lead to tsuris <p> Once you hang up the green eyeshade, nobody pays you any longer for finding fault and you have to think up other things to do. Sometimes, on afternoons before the bar opens, you go to the library, pick up a book at random, read a few pages, mutter “I’d’ve caught that,” and put it down. </p><p>I was on my way out when my passage was blocked by a stocky librarian looking as determined as a managing editor denying an expense account filing. </p><p>“Ma’am, I’d like to go out,” I said. </p><p>“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, I’m only thirty-five,” she said. “And if I let you out the door you’d be trapped in the middle of the demonstration.” </p><p>“A demonstration? At the library?”</p><p>“They’re protesting Merriam-Webster.” </p><p>“Who?”</p><p>"Don’t you see all the Make Grammar Great Again caps?”</p><p>“Ah, I only saw as I came in the guy with the petition to restore the default masculine.”</p><p>“Oh, him, he's been around forever. But Merriam-Webster recently posted on social media that there’s nothing wrong in English with ending a sentence with a preposition, and it’s been all hell ever since.”</p><p>“How d’you mean?”</p><p>“Demonstrations like that out front. They petitioned us to remove all the Merriam-Webster dictionaries from the shelves and cancel the online subscription. Some people tried to take the dictionaries out of the building, and we had to tell them reference books are non-circulating. Moms for Literacy got a city councilman to threaten our funding.”</p><p>“Can I just take a look at what they’re doing?”</p><p>“All right, but you’re not going out.”</p><p>It was wild out there, like the rush for the newsroom pizzas on election night. </p><p>Two guys in black robes were crossing back and forth with a Webster’s Second open on a gurney as if it were the Ark of the Covenant. Marchers waved placards proclaiming “UP WITH THIS WE WILL NOT PUT.” One sign said “LEXICOGRAPHY IS PORNOGRAPHY.” To one side, a knot of protesters was chanting “Not over, more than!” An older woman with a bullhorn was shouting, “Kids are goats! Kids are goats!”</p><p>I asked the librarian, “They ever violent?”</p><p>“Nah,” she said. “They did get hold of a copy of McIntyre’s <i>Bad Advice</i> and burned it on the front steps, but that’s as ugly as it got.” </p><p>“How’d they get onto some obscure copy editor nerd?”</p><p>“He’s some kind of pompous ass on social media all the time, and they ferreted him out there.”</p><p>“What are you going to do?”</p><p>“Just wait. I called the police.”</p><p>In a little while, for sure, a patrol car pulled up and an officer got out. He went from person to person, holding up a document, and one by one they turned and left, like the staff laid off by a hedge fund.</p><p>“What’s that he’s got?” I asked.</p><p>“Huddleston and Pullum on stranded prepositions. He tells them if they don’t go home, they have to read it. Works every time.”</p><p>I said, “I’m going to buy a lexicographer a drink,” and stepped out the door. </p><div><br /></div>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-74236223470740785712024-02-25T11:20:00.000-05:002024-02-25T11:20:44.500-05:00Language sneaks up on you <p>Making my way through the thousand pages of <i>The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium</i> by Anthony Kaldellis, professor of classics at the University of Chicago, and published by the Oxford University Press, I came up short against a word: <i>snuck</i>. </p><p>Some of you, I suspect, will be as horrified by this as by the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. But you, like the House of Palaiologos, will be on the wrong side of history. </p><p><i>Snuck</i>, a variant of <i>sneaked</i>, lived for decades in the United States as a regional colloquialism. But in the twentieth century, and particularly in the current one, it picked up speed. </p><p>A usage note in <i>The American Heritage Dictionary</i> says that 75% of its usage panel found <i>snuck </i>acceptable in 2008. </p><p>Merriam-Webster notes that <i>snuck</i> "has risen to the status of standard and to approximate equality with <i>sneaked</i>." </p><p>And Bryan Garner, in the fifth edition of <i>Garner's Modern English Usage</i>, writes that "with startling alacrity, it has become a casualism," perhaps because of "phonemic appeal." He continues: "In any event, the numbers don't lie: in AmE, <i>snuck</i> has become strongly predominant; in BrE, it has become about equal in frequency to <i>sneaked</i>." It crops up in legal opinions, and "the last year in which <i>sneaked</i> appeared more often in print than <i>snuck</i> was 2009."</p><p>Resistance remains. I don't care for <i>snuck</i> and do not recall ever having used it in speech or text. But resistance in language is usually futile. </p><p>That's it. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-84160955503120876292024-02-24T12:27:00.004-05:002024-02-24T12:27:38.307-05:00My life as a drudge<p> February 8 marked forty-four years since I began work as a copy editor. </p><p><i>The Cincinnati Enquirer</i> took a risk in hiring a fugitive graduate student for the copy desk, where I absorbed the principles and customs of the work from colleagues like Phil Fisher, slotman Bill Trutner, and news editor Bob Johnson. My colleagues were, typically of copy desks, smart, competent, and irreverent. </p><p>After six and a half years on the desk, I made good my escape from Gannett. The saloon where my colleagues gathered for the farewell to McIntyre party turned out to be the same saloon where the city editor had scheduled a good riddance to McIntyre party. Awkward. At least for those who came through the door and realized that a choice had to be made. </p><p>Then thirty-four years as <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/2012/05/01/take-me-to-your-leadership-2/?fbclid=IwAR3GrNzUDBj0NJ726JUdphJvFL0kehztzAazo8nNbACuEHOQdxgBZpZviOw">a disciple of Andy Faith</a> on the desk at <i>The Baltimore Sun</i>, which when it was in funds gave me a free hand to hire, train, and mentor the smartest editors I could find. We had a grand time and a national reputation until the bottom fell out of the paragraph game. Tribune Publishing eliminated the copy desk in 2019, and I spent two years as a "content editor," viz., a processor of copy rather than an editor. </p><p>Now in retirement, I mark two years this month as a freelance copy editor for the online nonprofit <i>Baltimore Banner</i>, where the work is as rewarding as it first was more than four decades ago. </p><p>"Rewarding, huh?" you ask. "Weren't you just a comma jockey? You just called yourself a drudge." </p><p>I have to concede that regularizing other people's erratic punctuation, though necessary, was not the most gratifying aspect of the job. Nor was correcting the spelling of names. (We had a reporter who once misspelled the name of the U.S. attorney for Maryland fourteen times, but because he misspelled it <i>the same way</i> fourteen times we took it as an advance in his technique.) </p><p> But untangling syntax, tightening loose prose, making sure the elements were in the proper order, clarifying murky points, and occasionally taking my hands off the keyboard (when something good required no further work) provided satisfactions way beyond commas. </p><p>Every time I opened a story, my question was what is this writer trying to do, and how can I assist them in achieving their purpose while serving the readers' interests. And every time I shipped a story on to publication, I wanted to say it had been done shipshape and Bristol fashion. </p><p>That's the job: leave it better than you found it. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-13742366863087228052024-02-21T14:52:00.002-05:002024-02-21T14:52:41.786-05:00So you want to be an editor?<p> The following text is an article on U.S. involvement in Kosovo during the Clinton administration, compiled by an editor at <i>The Baltimore Sun </i>from the Associated Press, Reuters, and <i>The New York Times,</i> that was sent to the copy desk, in this form as God is my witness, for publication. I used it for some years in <i>The Sun</i>'s brutal applicant test for copy editors. See what you can make of it in the comments. </p><p><br /></p><p>LONDON — NATO allies endorsed a last-ditch U.S. effort Friday to end the violence in Kosovo peacefully, even as Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that “time is all but gone” for him to avoid airstrikes.</p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Albright declared that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was united and ready to authorize the bombing. “There was an attempt to divide us, and that has failed,” she said.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In Washington, President Clinton told senior senators in a letter what they could expect if force is used. He described a powerful first thrust, followed by a progressive expansion of intensity.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“There will be no ‘pinprick’ strikes,” he said.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As to NATO options that would involve U.S. and allied ground forces in hostile action, “I can assure you the United States would not support these options, and there currently is no sentiment in NATO for such a mission,” Clinton said. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Albright met with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia, trying to shore up support for airstrikes. “If he was looking for rescue from any member of the Contact Group, he did not get it tonight,” British Foreign Minister Robin Cook said.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She also met with the foreign ministers of the other five nations that make up the Contact Group on former Yugoslavia: Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia, but failed to gain Moscow’s support for airtrikes against the Milosevic’s security forces.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“If he was looking for rescue from any member of the Contact Group, he did not get it tonight,” British Foreign Minister Robin Cook said.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But there was no word from Italy and Germany as to whether their disquiet over the threatened military operations had been eased. A statement issued by the foreign ministers called on Milosevic to meet conditions of U.N. resolutions and made no mention of military action.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Albright accused Milosevic of “cosmetic gestures” to meet international demands on Kosovo and said he has “but a few days” to reverse course and avoid NATO military action.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“One of the keys of good diplomacy is knowing when diplomacy has reached its limits. And we are rapidly reaching that point now,” she warned.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Albright said earlier yesterday that Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. mediator for the Balkans, would return to Belgrade for a fourth round of talks this week with Milosevic. The foreign ministers endorsed Holbrook’s mission to the Yugoslav capital. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Albright declined to say categorically that Holbrooke’s visit would be the last peace mission before NATO airstrikes, but a British official, briefing reporters after the meeting, said, “Holbrooke’s trip is the last attempt.”</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Despite the arguments, Russia did not relent its opposition to the use of force. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who chaired the Contact Group meeting, said Russia was not being “invited” to participate in NATO’s decisions.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Albright met with the foreign ministers of the Contact Group in London after conferring in Brussels, Belgium, with Holbrooke, Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO’s supreme commander, and NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana.</span></p><div><br /></div>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-18050760183924841682024-02-17T11:39:00.000-05:002024-02-17T11:39:24.415-05:00Cookies, you need cookies <p> Today Kathleen baked sour cream cookies from my grandmother's recipe. They were the great treat of my childhood, the batter alone tasting better than any other cookie batter I have sampled. I have shared the recipe before, and today I'm offering it to you again. </p><p>Kathleen, who thinks they are cakey (de gustibus non est disputandum), likes to do a light lemon icing, and you, of course, are free to do that. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Clara Rhodes Early’s Sour Cream Cookies</b></p><p>1 cup shortening</p><p>2 cups sugar</p><p>3 well-beaten eggs</p><p>1 teaspoon vanilla</p><p>1 cup sour cream</p><p>5 cups sifted flour</p><p>3 teaspoons baking powder</p><p>1 teaspoon salt</p><p>½ teaspoon soda</p><p>1 ½ cups nuts (optional)</p><p>Drop from teaspoon onto cookie sheet.</p><p>Press down.</p><p>Bake 15 minutes at 350 degrees.</p><div><br /></div><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-67020046235675354702024-02-13T09:16:00.003-05:002024-02-13T10:54:50.758-05:00Um, about that anthem<p>Yesterday Armstrong Williams, co-owner of <i>The Baltimore Sun</i>, <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/02/12/armstrong-williams-black-national-anthem/">deplored the singing of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" at the Super Bowl: </a>"It is an anthem created for one race, and one race only. Playing it at the Super Bowl epitomizes attempts to divide the nation at its core by race."</p><p>By contrast, he says, the "Star-Spangled Banner" "is not a white national anthem. It’s not a Black national anthem. It’s not a national anthem for any race. It is a national anthem for everyone, regardless of race."</p><p>Perhaps Mr. Armstrong has not had occasion to read Francis Scott Key's poem in its entirety. The third verse contains these interesting lines: "No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave." They refer to Britain's offer of freedom to any enslaved person agreeing to serve in the British army against the American. </p><p>So you see, as is so often the case in this nation, race keeps cropping up all over the place. Luckily, we only ever sing the first verse. </p><p>Mr. Armstrong might also take a moment to ponder the opening of what is colloquially called the Black national anthem: "Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty." It celebrates freedom, a freedom that was not acquired easily. </p><p>It is small-minded for anyone celebrating "the land of the free" to begrudge another celebration of freedom. </p><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-75936617806774833832024-02-06T11:18:00.001-05:002024-02-06T11:18:57.116-05:00Nothing's more democratic than English <p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Language is the most democratic thing we have: Each English speaker gets one vote, and the language becomes what we collectively make of it over time.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Some people do have influence, but it is limited. (You may think a big-time former newspaper editor is influential, but you would be mistaken.) Samuel Johnson set out to write a dictionary of English that would “fix” (in both senses, "repair" and "make permanent") the language, but on completion ruefully acknowledged that it goes its own way.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Noah Webster’s dictionary got Americans to spell “honour” and “colour” without the “u,” but simplified spellings he promoted — “wimmen” for “women,” “soop” for “soup,” “tung” for “tongue” — went nowhere.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Two and a half centuries of grammarians and schoolteachers have hammered away that it is incorrect to use “they” as a third-person singular pronoun, all in vain. We have been using “they” as a singular since King Alfred burned the cakes, and today even the “Associated Press Stylebook” and “Chicago Manual of Style” have grudgingly accepted it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">(You may not be comfortable with it, but you’re already OK with using “you” as either a singular or plural, so you can get used to things.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The same generations have labored to maintain the “lie” and “lay” distinction, that “lay” is the past tense of “to lie,” not “laid.” But I taught editing to undergraduates for 24 years, and let me tell you, it’s not going to happen. You can try to hold on to it in formal prose, but over time even formal prose yields to the the way people actually speak.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">H.L. Mencken, with characteristic bluntness, summed it up in “The American Language”: “The plain people will always make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and without much insight.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Jonathan Swift proposed establishment of an English Academy that would, like the French version, establish and legislate the correctness of the language. But we English speakers are a stubborn and unruly lot. We made a mongrel language out of a mishmash of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. We take things freely from other languages and do as we please with them. (Imagine a francophone’s wince at the way we pronounce “lingerie.”) It’s our language, we do as we please with it, and we have always done so.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">In our language, we are a free and unfettered people.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-2461096081427039772024-01-24T13:55:00.002-05:002024-01-24T13:55:50.417-05:00The editor's hand<p><span style="text-align: center;">The reputation of editors, particularly copy editors, has not been enviable. There is a long tradition of writers affecting to believe that if we were only rid of these petty, pedantic, literal-minded, comma-chopping drones, we would experience an efflorescence of English prose not seen since the reign of the first Elizabeth. But all parties should grasp that writers, editors and copy editors alike work toward a common goal: accuracy, clarity, and precision of expression </span><span style="text-align: center;">—</span><span style="text-align: center;"> perhaps even elegance. It is essentially a communal and collaborative activity.</span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">Christopher Ricks, reviewing<i> Johnson on the English Language</i> for <i>The New Criterion</i> in 2005, said: "T</span><span style="text-align: center;">he meaning of a word is neither a matter of opinion, nor a matter of fact, neither subjective nor objective, but an exercise of communal judgment. ... A language is a body of agreements (not opinion or facts but agreements, judgments that are at once personal and impersonal, individual and social), agreements not only between people who are alive but also between those who are alive and those who are dead, It is by courtesy of the dead that we are able to communicate at all, and this is one of the many reasons why those of us who are (for now) alive should treat with courtesy the dead." </span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">Mutual respect among the parties — the editor for the writer’s primacy of imagination and invention, the writer for the editor’s sharpness of eye and sense of precision, the respect of both for the language we have inherited and of which we are custodians — is necessary for the formation of reliable judgments. For the writer, understanding the editor’s role and methods will sharpen perceptions during the first crucial editing, the writer's self-editing of the text. For the editor, improving the techniques of editing will better serve for the writer — and the reader. D'you remember there's a reader?</span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">The reader’s interests transcend the preoccupations and vanities of both writer and editor. All readers demand clarity and order, and when they do not find it, they turn aside without compunction. Particularly the informed reader, the literate reader offers the greatest promise for appreciation of the writer’s effort; for them, precision in the use of words shows that the writer is to be honored for having mastered the craft.</span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">Though the perspectives and skills, not to speak of the temperament, of writing and editing are distinct, what they have in common is what John Updike said of <i>The New Yorker</i>’s Katherine White in an essay reprinted in <i>Odd Jobs</i>: “To the born editor, it must be, the mass of manuscripts looms as nature and experience do to the writer — as a superabundance to be selected from and refined, and made shapely and meaningful.”</span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">Let us be clear: Writing is a primary function, editing a secondary one, and no one should pretend otherwise. Editors must also realize that their task is to bring out and clarify what is inherent in the text, to make it shapely and meaningful, but they cannot go beyond what they are given. As Anthony Trollope said, “One cannot pour out of a jug more than is in it.” </span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">The personal element, always present, cannot be ignored. However much writers tell themselves that they are professionals, that the text they have written is an artifact rather than an extension of themselves, that criticism of the text is not a reflection on their selves, very few really believe that. No one enjoys being edited. This is what editing looks like to the writer: After the vividly recalled circumstances of the conception of the article, the prolonged gestation, the sweat and pain of the labor that brought it forth into the world, the writer murmurs, “This is my child.” And then: “Here comes some editor, saying, " 'Mmmm-MMMMPH, that is one ugly baby.' "</span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">Disarming the writer’s psychological reaction is an editor's crucial responsibility if anything useful is to be accomplished. When a discussion of editing issues turns instead into a struggle over who will prevail, on who has say-so, editing turns into a battle. The loser leaves the field smarting from defeat and vowing to be a victor in the next round, guaranteeing a continual cycle of conflict in which the reader is the ultimate loser. </span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">A writer might consider a different metaphor. Imagine that you, the writer, are about to receive an award at a formal banquet. You are wearing your best clothes and have taken trouble with your grooming. Just as you are about to walk into the bright light to claim the plaque or the trophy and savor the applause, a person standing beside you points out that you have a foot-long streamer of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe. </span><span style="text-align: center;">You do not want to hear that. You feel foolish and embarrassed — but not nearly as much as you would have been had you walked out before an entire audience with a length of toilet paper flapping at your foot. The person who warned you is a friend who has performed a useful service for you. </span><span style="text-align: center;">An editor is, or can be, that kind of friend, who spares you public embarrassment. </span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">You as a writer are, of course, perfectly free to ignore your editor, just as you are free to check out of the hospital against medical advice. But do you want to take the chance? </span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">Learning on your own, without an editor’s advice, is learning the hard way. Russell Baker describes the method in <i>The Good Times</i>, explaining the relationship between reporter and copy editor (copyreader) at <i>The Sun</i> in Baltimore more than half a century ago: "T</span><span style="text-align: center;">he Sun believed in learning by doing. … Copyreaders rarely changed anything you wrote, no matter how dreadful it might be. Once promoted to the big time, you were given a lot of rope. A reporter could also learn by making a fool of himself. So went the theory, and the Sun dared to live by it until it became obvious the offender would never learn anything, in which case he was tucked away in an inconspicuous niche where he could no longer embarrass the paper."</span></p><p><span style="text-align: center;">So we can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div><br /></div></div>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-11705605492749173332024-01-17T13:00:00.005-05:002024-01-18T08:35:58.180-05:00I subscribe to The Baltimore Sun. For now<p> For more than thirty-seven years, thirty-three of them on the staff, I have been a daily subscriber to <i>The Baltimore Sun</i>. The announcement that the newspaper has been purchased by <a href="https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/economy/baltimore-sun-david-smith-sinclair-owner-F77S3D47ORD7LNEPZ7PJCXSLWM/">a conservative crank with no experience, and apparently no interest, in newspaper publishing</a> has led a number of people in my orbit to announce that they have canceled or plan to cancel their subscriptions. </p><p>But I have friends and colleagues who, stunned and dismayed, are still there, working as professionals, trying to provide readers with accurate, reliable news about the city and the region. I am loath to abandon them. </p><p><i>The Sun </i>has undergone a painful decline over the past two decades because of corporate management that has been alternately incompetent and avaricious. (Occasionally both.) Everyone on the staff during that time understands how hard we worked to produce a reputable publication with fewer people and resources. The remaining staff members today face the greatest challenge yet. </p><p>So I am still here, reading the print edition each morning and watching online during the day, waiting to see what can be done to salvage the work against great odds. Very likely there will come a point at which it is unbearable to look at a paper to which I have given half my life. Should that point arrive, I will make the call to circulation, and mourn the loss. </p><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-38171105242415440192024-01-11T10:43:00.001-05:002024-01-11T15:25:08.369-05:00The plot against the copy desk <p> It was the 1990s. I was chief of the copy desk at <i>The Baltimore Sun</i>.</p><p>One day a senior editor came into my office, closed the door, and sat down.</p><p>"What's up?" I asked. </p><p>He said, "[Editor X] is compiling a list of the sins of the copy desk and inviting other editors to contribute."</p><p>"Ah," I said. </p><p>"What do you want to do about it?"</p><p>I thought for a moment and said, "Nothing." </p><p>"Nothing?"</p><p>"Nothing. They can't complain about our editing without showing what they send to the desk, and that stuff can't stand up under examination."</p><p>He got up, opened the door, and left without another word. </p><p>Nothing further was ever heard about the sins of the copy desk. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-79142858948334519062024-01-10T11:47:00.001-05:002024-01-10T11:47:19.417-05:00Yeah, you probably need an editor <p>We know, because we have looked at the internet, that few people can write effectively, and we also know that all human beings are prone to error. Engaging an editor compensates for this state of affairs. </p><p>First of all, your editor will catch lapses in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and English usage. Trivial details as they are, they give readers an opportunity to discount your competence and dismiss your message. Your editor works to make your text clean. </p><p>Then, do you actually know what you are trying to say? When we write, we have an idea in our heads of the meaning and importance of what we are attempting to say, but what appears on the page may not correspond. Your editor will keep asking what you mean here and whether you meant to say that and how you think the reader will understand this. Your editor works to make your text clear. </p><p>Do you know how to shut up? First-draft writing tends to be slack, and revision may not fix it. An editor will know how to tighten your prose, identify rambling, drop verbiage, make your point more direct. Your editor works to make your text concise. </p><p>The main thing is that your editor will weigh what is <i>appropriate</i>. Is what you say appropriate to the subject? To the situation? To the occasion? To the publication? To the audience (the party frequently disregarded in these operations)? Your editor may have to be the person to tell you, tactfully, that you are not as funny as you think you are, as elegant, as impressive. </p><p>Your editor, if they are competent and professional, does not want to demonstrate superiority over you, but to assist you in accomplishing your purpose, to collaborate to make your text more efficient and effective, to keep you from making an ass of yourself in public. </p><p>Yes, you need to pay for this. Expertise as an editor is acquired by study and apprenticeship in the craft. Your friend who got a passing grade in English in high school is not an equivalent. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-75497067864648034852024-01-03T11:18:00.004-05:002024-01-03T11:18:49.592-05:00Editor, control your crotchets<p>Editors are human beings, though you may have been told otherwise, as susceptible to idiosyncratic preferences about language as anyone else. Even the most scrupulous can be tempted to impose a crotchet on a text being edited. </p><p>One of mine is to despise the term <i>locals</i> in writing about the members of a community. It is vaguely condescending, the eminent journalist looking from great height at the inhabitants going about their little lives. It echoes the expression <i>local yokels</i>. So I regularly change <i>locals</i> to <i>local residents</i>. </p><p>But it is a slippery slope in choosing when to impose a personal preference, and, as usual, it is easier to spot a problem when someone else is doing it. We had a copy editor at <i>The Sun</i> who thought that the word <i>how</i> should not precede a clause. He would routinely change "how the copy editor approaches the text" to "the way the copy editor approaches the text." Where he got this notion I cannot say; it does not come up in any of the manuals I have consulted, nor does it achieve a significant gain in clarity. </p><p>This is dangerous, principally because <i>editors tend to find what they are looking for</i>. If you have a set of arbitrary preferences in your head, you will find all that occur, at the hazard of missing something important. I wrote the other day about <a href="https://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/2023/12/a-chronicle-of-time-wasted.html">copy desk busywork</a>, and the unreflective imposition of personal preferences is another example of time-wasting edits. </p><p>So I try to examine my own preferences, consult with linguists, lexicographers, and usage experts to see whether there is justification. In the case of <i>locals</i>, I can explain my reasoning if challenged by the writer or another editor. In other cases, I can appeal to authority, such as Theodore Bernstein's <i>Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins</i> or <i>Garner's Modern English Usage</i>. </p><p>You do not have enough time in editing to do everything that you need to do, much less everything that you would like to do. You need to examine very carefully how you are spending that time. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-38176289985367766472023-12-31T15:13:00.004-05:002024-03-15T07:24:24.056-04:00A chronicle of time wasted <p>Despite having vigorously defended the work of copy editors for decades, I concede that not all that we were called upon to perform had the best effect. Here's a recollection. </p><p>When I began work at <i>The Baltimore Sun</i> in 1986, the grandees who ran the paper liked to ape <i>The New York Times</i>. One consequence is that <i>The Sun</i>, like <i>The Times</i>, used courtesy titles on second and subsequent reference to everyone except the long dead and notorious criminals.*</p><p>The staff understood the house style and generally followed it in local copy. But the copy desk was obliged to supply courtesy titles in wire service copy. That meant that copy editors working on national, foreign, and business copy had to supply Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms., military rank, ecclesiastical titles, and the like in every Associated Press and Reuters story that came over the desk. It was busywork that may well have gone unnoticed by most readers, but it was our house style, a mark of our sober dignity. </p><p>In the 1990s there was a short-lived vogue for consulting actual employees about how the work might be better carried out, and I heard that in the pressroom a number of suggestions came up that improved efficiency and productivity. Even the copy editors were included in this START (Sun Teams Achieving Results Together) program. </p><p>Among the proposals the copy editors produced: Eliminate all courtesy titles, except in direct quotations and in obituaries. With a Jove-like nod, John S. Carroll, the editor, said, "Yes." And thus <i>Sun </i>house style remains, <i>in secula seculorum</i>. </p><p><i>The Sun</i> eliminated the copy desk in 2019, and there is no longer busywork of that kind, or work at all. </p><p><br /></p><p>*I digress: Determining eligibility for those two categories was a point of nearly endless discussion on the desk. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-75282898422180907452023-11-25T12:13:00.000-05:002023-11-25T12:13:07.650-05:00You can still make corn pudding for Christmas<p>On Thanksgiving I posted that Kathleen had made my mother's corn pudding as one of the side dishes at dinner, and a couple of people asked for the recipe. Here it is. </p><p><b>Marian Early McIntyre's corn pudding</b></p><p><b>Ingredients</b></p><p>3 cups corn</p><p>4 eggs</p><p>4 tablespoons flour</p><p>2 cups milk</p><p>3 tablespoons sugar</p><p>2 tablespoons butter</p><p>1 teaspoon salt </p><p><b>Instructions</b></p><p>Mix corn with flour, salt, sugar, and butter. </p><p>Add well-beaten eggs and milk.</p><p>Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, stirring three times while baking. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-91806884003954773302023-11-17T11:59:00.000-05:002023-11-17T11:59:00.810-05:00Let unlearning be unconfined<p> A couple of weeks ago I posted<a href="https://johnemcintyre.blogspot.com/2023/11/give-up-ship.html"> "Give up the ship,"</a> in which I argued to abandon, or at least consider abandoning, a handful of long-established usage rules. One reader commented, "My teaching career has been in vain."</p><p>Well, mine too. There are points of usage that I taught during a quarter-century at Loyola University Maryland before I came to understand that they were invalid or dangerously dated.* Several of them had been in the <i>Associated Press Stylebook </i>since Joseph Pulitzer was in short pants, which I also enforced on the copy desk until I learned better and nagged the stylebook editors relentlessly to eliminate them. </p><p>When we read about some fresh development in biology or physics, we don't fume and resist and insist that what we were taught in sophomore year of high school is true and eternally valid. We expect that we are going to learn new things, and in the course of learning those new things discovering things we previously learned have to be abandoned. It has been during my lifetime, for example, that the theory of continental drift has become established science after a long period of being ridiculed.</p><p>But with language, with grammar and usage, there is stubborn resistance to learning new things and abandoning old ones. (Does gender-neutral third-person singular <i>they</i> spring to mind?) I suspect I know why.</p><p>I was, after all, an English major in college, and my mastery of what I had been taught was proper English was not only central to my academic career but also to my identity. As I have remarked elsewhere, without high birth, wealth, and physical beauty, mastery of English grammar was all I had going for me. So sticklers, who insist on precision in English usage even when they are misguided, do so because it is a prop to their identity, a means of differentiating themselves from Those People.**</p><p>We can talk about the structure of grammar and examine historic patterns of usage, but language is social and therefore messy. The way we talk and write is how we present ourselves to other people and expect to be perceived by them, just as we make judgments about them on the basis of how they speak and write. Language is as good a means as any to draw a sharp line between ourselves and whoever we label as Those People. </p><p>Working as an editor, trying to make texts clear and appropriate for various audiences, I find it wholesome not to make a fetish of grammar and usage. You can see from this post and others that I deal in the register of standard formal English and that dropping shibboleths over the side does not mean that Anything Goes. After more than forty years as a professional editor, I am still learning and putting that learning to use. </p><p><br /></p><p>* I was receptive to the idea early on, having read Theodore M. Bernstein's <i>Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins</i> in graduate school. It was one of the inspirations for [cough] my own <i>Bad Advice: The Most Unreliable Counsel Available on Grammar, Usage, and Writing</i>.</p><p>** We see the same phenomenon with history, which people also internalize as part of their identity. I was still in high school when I knew, because of wide reading, that the patriotic sanitized history in our textbooks was pap, that what actually happened was far more complicated and often darker. The people who think that Confederate statues are history rather than propaganda, for example, have identifiable reasons for wanting to believe that. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-68710388621658741342023-11-13T09:06:00.001-05:002023-11-13T10:07:21.245-05:00Where things go<p>That monosyllable <i>go</i> turns out to contribute to highly expressive phrases. </p><p>It can mean to cooperate, as when one <i>goes along</i> or <i>goes with the flow</i>. That is, to use another idiom, to <i>follow the herd</i>. To <i>go in with</i> is the agree to share expenses. To champion a person or cause is to <i>go to bat for</i>. </p><p>Or it can mean the mere appearance of cooperation, as when one <i>goes through the motions</i>, makes a pretense of doing something. </p><p>It can mean success, as in to <i>go great guns</i> or <i>go one better</i>. Of course, there is always a risk that success may <i>go to one's head</i>. </p><p>It can mean to oppose, to <i>go after</i> someone, or to <i>go out</i>, go on strike. </p><p>All-out efforts can be indicated by <i>go to the mat</i>, <i>go for broke</i>, or <i>go to town</i>. But if you don't want someone to make such an all-out effort, you can <i>go easy on</i> them. </p><p>Some in the U.S. dislike the British <i>go missing</i>, but it is helpful neutral term when someone is not where they are expected to be, covering the range from merely wandering away to kidnapping. </p><p>Bad behavior has a wealth of expressions. To <i>go ape</i> is to lose self-control. To <i>go ballistic</i> is to fly into a rage. To <i>go round the bend,</i> <i>go off the rails</i>, or <i>go to pieces</i> is to behave abnormally. To <i>go off the deep end</i> is to get unnecessarily angry. When bad behavior annoys, the party responsible can be dismissed by being told to <i>go fly a kite</i>.</p><p>Of course it gets into sex, to <i>go steady</i>, <i>go all the way</i>, <i>go to bed with</i>, and <i>go down on</i>. </p><p>Things often <i>go bad</i>. To <i>go belly up</i> is to become bankrupt. When things do not proceed according to plan they can <i>go south</i>, <i>go sideways</i>, or <i>go pear-shaped</i>. (This last, a British idiom, is thought to have arisen from the difficulties airplane pilots can encounter in doing loops.) </p><p>And to <i>go west</i>, where the sun sets, is to die. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-1278577754930733272023-11-06T10:38:00.002-05:002023-11-06T14:19:50.802-05:00Baltimore: The Greatest City in America<p> In 1986, when we moved to Baltimore so that I could begin work on <i>The Sun</i>'s copy desk, we rented an apartment in Towson while we looked for a house in the city. </p><p>A couple in a nearby apartment had a daughter the same age as our twins, and the children played together and swam in the pool. In conversation with the parents we discovered that though they had lived in Towson for several years, they had never set foot inside Baltimore's city limits. </p><p>Their daughter had never been to the National Aquarium, the Science Center, the Maryland Zoo. Or the Baltimore Museum of Art or the Walters Art Museum. Had never strolled around the Inner Harbor or seen the Constellation. Her parents were content with the turn-ons of Towson (which was not in 1986 the cosmopolitan happening place it has become today).*</p><p>In that they resemble many people in the counties surrounding Baltimore who decline to come into the city or, if they happen to work in the city, prefer to drive in at 40 mph or more and exit at the same speed at the earliest possible moment. They regularly write letters to <i>The Sun</i> to inform us that we in the city are living in a cesspit. </p><p>That is not to say that the bleak picture of a crime-ridden decaying city that Sinclair's Fox 45 television station exerts itself to broadcast to the surrounding area can be wished away. </p><p>Too many people, especially impetuous young men, carry guns and use them. Some years ago the driver of an unlicensed cab was fatally shot across the street from my house at 9 p.m. That was when I discovered that one task for the Fire Department is to show up the next day and hose the blood and brain matter from the pavement. </p><p>There is no denying the consequences of living in a one-party city with too many Democratic hacks in government. Two mayors have left office amid charges of corruption. We spend more than $600 million a year on a police department that seems unable to reduce homicides or even manage traffic enforcement, and for which we have spent an additional $22 million in settlements to the victims of the corrupt Gun Trace Task Force. Our Department of PublicWorks can't manage water billing or operate the sewage treatment plants. </p><p>We have schools that have to send children home on days that are intolerably hot or intolerably cold. </p><p>A third of city residents do not own an automobile, and public transit is laughable. </p><p>So you may be wondering why I am still in the modest house my wife and I bought nearly thirty-six years ago, or why I call Baltimore The Greatest City in America.**</p><p>Our house is in a racially mixed neighborhood in the northeastern quadrant of the city, and we like our neighbors. There's a creek nearby that I pass on my daily walks, occasionally seeing a heron take flight or a hawk circle overhead. </p><p>Despite the city's reputation for danger, for more than thirty years I drove through the city after work at the newspaper at midnight, one o'clock, or three o'clock in the morning, without incident. </p><p>There's a very nice bookstore in the neighborhood, one of several in the city. (You see that, Towson?) There's also a very nice Italian restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Abruzzo; my wife and I had a leisurely lunch there with a friend yesterday. The Enoch Pratt Free Library has a branch here and is diligent about providing books I request. </p><p>We have a group of friends who meet at a bar near Belvedere Square at three o'clock in the afternoon several days a week for beer and badinage. </p><p>My parish, Memorial Episcopal Church, has a progressive history: rejecting its segregationist past, hiring the first woman priest in the diocese and the first openly gay male priest, working to form alliances with the surrounding Black neighborhoods.***</p><p>We've been to the museums, the symphony, the zoo, the opera, and the Inner Harbor. We've visited the one-of-a-kind Visionary Arts Museum and drunk in the view of the city from the summit of Federal Hill. </p><p>And yet, when I say any of this online, some jabroni in the county tells me that I'm living in a shithole and am a hopeless liberal who can't listen to reason (as if some feckless echo of Donald Trump constituted the voice of reason). Let me tell you, I have seen what some call the lovely suburban life, York Road from Towson to Cockeysville, Ritchie Highway from Annapolis to Baltimore, and I'm having none of it.</p><p>My wife and I have had a happy life here for three decades, and now that we are retired we feel no impulse to leave what for us has been The Greatest City in America for anywhere else. </p><p><br /></p><p>*I joke. Towson, a county seat of 5,000 people adjacent to a state university with more than 20,000 students, cannot support a bookstore.</p><p>**"Baltimore: The Greatest City In America" is the slogan then-Mayor Martin O'Malley affixed to benches around the city, a morale booster for a battered urban populace. It got some attention recently when a resident used it <a href="https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/culture/npr-wait-wait-dont-tell-me-baltimore-greatest-city-4RJY5LPUJ5BS3PWEB37EKFZ35U/">on an an NPR radio show</a>. </p><p>***And indulging me in smoking up the joint with incense a couple of times a year. </p><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-82730126340537281682023-11-02T13:10:00.001-04:002023-11-02T13:10:36.555-04:00Don't dispute refute<p>I grumped this morning about that article that used <i>refuted</i> in a context plainly indicating that the sense was "disputed" or "rebutted," and someone reminded me that those senses of <i>refute</i> have become widespread enough to be included in dictionaries. </p><p>One colleague, alluding to <a href="https://tinyurl.com/yvtstw8e">yesterday's post</a>, said, "You can’t blog about how 'literally' is a perfectly acceptable substitute for 'figuratively' and then split this hair."</p><p>I answered: Watch me. </p><p>Are you watching?</p><p>The non-literal use of <i>literally</i> is not some linguistic innovation for which we can blame Millennials. <i>Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage</i> points out that what it calls the "hyperbolic use" of the word was common in the nineteenth century and can even be traced to Pope. A use so well-attested for so long hardly seems worth fuming and fretting over today. </p><p>Had I been editing that article that ran this morning, I would have changed <i>refuted</i> to either <i>disputed</i> or <i>rebutted</i>, as has been my practice. Since the earlier sense of <i>refute</i>, "to disprove conclusively," survives though blurred, I prefer to retain it for contexts that plainly indicate that sense. </p><p>An example: Sixty court cases have refuted Donald Trump's assertion that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. </p><p>As far as I am concerned, the hair has been split. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-9583061445657043462023-11-01T12:46:00.000-04:002023-11-01T12:46:04.566-04:00Give up the ship<p> During more than forty years as a copy editor, part of my job was to make copy clean and correct. Another part of the job was to determine when things previously thought correct no longer applied. </p><p>I give you the example of the <i>over/more than</i> distinction drummed into journalists, that <i>over</i> may only be used to indicate spatial relationships, a rule so willfully ignorant of standard English usage that even the <i>Associated Press Stylebook</i> finally abandoned it. There are more. </p><p>You may have held bravely to the distinction that <i>literally </i>cannot mean<i> figuratively</i>; that an <i>enormity</i> is a great evil, not a Really Big Thing; that a <i>dilemma</i> involves a choice between two unpleasant options, rather than a mere perplexity. It falls to me to tell you that those ships have sailed; they are not even visible on the horizon. </p><p>No doubt you understand that <i>podium</i> derives from the Greek word for foot and thus indicates an object one stands on, not behind. The thing one stands behind to read from a book or other text is a <i>lectern</i>, from the Latin word for reading. That thing the clerk stands behind at the airport gate is a <i>desk</i>, but so many hundreds of thousands of travelers have now been summoned to the <i>podium</i> that the original sense has been rubbed away. The Greek etymology is instructive, but not definitive. </p><p>I once made a spirited argument that one could distinguish between <i>convince</i> and<i> persuade</i>, the former being a stronger term, because people can be <i>persuaded</i> to do things even when they are not <i>convinced</i> it is right to do so. I long ago gave up on it, and assume you have too. </p><p>Probably you know that to <i>beg the question</i> is to make a logical fallacy, to assume the validity of what you are purportedly trying to prove, not to <i>prompt</i> or <i>pose</i> a question. And if you are writing for <i>The New York Review of Books</i>, more power to you. If you are writing for nearly anyone else, your accusation of <i>question begging</i> is apt to produce furrowed brows. </p><p>Well-brought-up writers and editors know that <i>comprise</i> means to <i>contain</i>, to <i>encompass</i>. The whole <i>comprises</i> the parts, which <i>compose</i> the whole. Well-brought-up writers and editors were taught to shudder at <i>is comprised of</i>, and Bryan A. Garner cites the heroic labors of Bryan Henderson, who single-handedly changed 18,000 Wikipedia instances of <i> is comprised of</i> to <i>is composed of</i>. The example of Canute comes to mind. </p><p>I learned as a lad that the <i>due</i> in <i>due to</i> must be an adjective following a linking verb. "The error was due to ignorance of standard usage." See: <i>due</i> is the predicate adjective, and <i>to</i> is just a preposition. But to write <i>due to ignorance of standard usage</i> would make <i>due to</i> a PREPOSITION and scare the horses in the streets. If you escaped that particular lesson, count yourself lucky. </p><p>Perhaps in a subsequent post I may mention traditional distinctions of usage that still matter. </p><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-32142740543942691532023-09-22T10:56:00.003-04:002023-09-22T10:56:39.772-04:00The printed word<p> I have been a subscriber to <i>The Baltimore Sun</i>, a seven-day-a-week print subscriber, for thirty-seven years, since I began working on its copy desk, and I have begun to wonder what the point is. </p><p>Since <i>The Sun</i> publishes online first, I have already seen its stories the day before, sometimes several days before, they appear in the print edition. And I will also have seen the Associated Press and <i>New York Times</i> articles <i>The Sun</i> picks up as well. So I am essentially paying for a print newspaper to read the "Ask Amy" column and the comic strips. (Yes, they're in the online edition as well, but there is something just <i>wrong</i> about reading a comic strip on an iPad.)</p><p>Beyond that, the quality of the print edition, since Alden Global Capital shut down <i>The Sun'</i>s printing plant and transferred print production to the Gannett organ in Wilmington, Delaware, has been abysmal. Light inking is the least of the problems. </p><p>The cost, however, has been rising. I believe it was Al Neuharth of Gannett who experienced the illumination that a decline in advertising revenue could be offset by jacking up the circulation prices, since newspaper readers were dependent on their habit. Unfortunately, neither Neuharth nor the other corporate illuminati ever figured out a way to attract new readers, and my generation with the newspaper habit is steadily proceeding to a location to which the circulation department cannot deliver. </p><p>Dammit, I want my morning ritual, in my chair with a cup of strong coffee and my newspaper. The main pleasure that has survived is the grumbling. Tribune eliminated copy editing even before the company was acquired by Alden Global, and the daily procession of subject-verb disagreements, misplaced modifiers, and other offenses against English usage does not pass unremarked on at these premises. There is also a grim satisfaction in noticing when the online text has been incorporated intact without altering references, a clear indication of the lack of an editor's eye on the page. Carp, carp, carp, that's the life. </p><p>I could call circulation to cancel print, converting the savings to bourbon money. But I might just ride it out until one of the sharp-pencil people at Alden Global determines that the cost of print production, even with Gannett, is greater than the mingy returns from print advertising and subscriptions, turning my seven-day-a-week newspaper into a three-day-a-week newspaper, or simply online only. </p><p>In forty years at newspapers I only twice heard an editor call the pressroom to say, "Stop the presses." I think it will be a good deal less than forty until all of them are stopped. </p><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-37911489794616600812023-09-13T13:08:00.002-04:002023-09-13T13:08:25.307-04:00What he said<p> Journalists, ever citing people's speech and documents, are rightfully fond of the word <i>said</i>. It is plain, straightforward, unobtrusive. It gets the job done without resort to the thesaurus and pretension. </p><p>But journalists are unaccountably unwilling to invert subject and verb in these citations. Perhaps they feel the construction arch and dated, something one would find in Gilbert and Sullivan, as one indeed can in one of my favorite passages in <i>Trial by Jury</i>, the judge's recommendation of his daughter in marriage: "You'll soon get used to her looks," said he, / "And a very nice girl you'll find her! / She may very well pass for forty-three / In the dusk, with the light behind her!"</p><p>But this aversion can lead to strained and awkward constructions, of a kind I see daily. Here's a synthetic example (so as not to embarrass anyone publicly): <i>"Said suffices," John McIntyre, a retired editor of </i>The Baltimore Sun<i>, said. </i></p><p>You see the problem. The delay between the subject and the verb creates a suspensive effect, dropping you at the end of the sentence at the prosaic and anticlimactic <i>said</i>. Much better to render it <i>said John McIntyre, a retired editor of </i>The Baltimore Sun<i>.</i> </p><p>That keeps the subject and verb nestled close together, where they are happy, while also maintaining the connection between the noun and the appositive phrase. </p><p>Go, and sin no more. </p><p><br /></p><p> </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-4127559677776653672023-09-03T12:17:00.001-04:002023-09-03T12:17:58.494-04:00On-the-job learning<p> I have allowed a significant date to pass unremarked. On August 17, fifty years ago, I worked my last day at the <i>Flemingsburg Gazette </i>before leaving for graduate school at Syracuse.</p><p>Lowell and Jean Denton, the proprietors, had hired me in the summer of 1968, after my junior year in high school, to allow Jean to take the summer off. The six years I worked at the <i>Gazette</i>, a weekly in Fleming County, Kentucky, with about 3,000 circulation, were a practical education, an apprenticeship, in newspaper journalism. </p><p>I attended meetings of the fiscal court (the county council in Kentucky) and interviewed the superintendent of schools about plans for the coming school year. I profiled local worthies. I covered the beautiful baby competition at the Ewing Fair. (I did not determine whether it was accident or design that Mr. Pierce Million, who rented the public address system for the occasion, played a recording of "Born to Lose" as the mothers and babies crossed to the infield.) I Englished the social notes from the outlying communities. I did copy editing and proofreading. I took classified ads over the telephone. On Wednesdays I drove the pasted-up pages to the newspaper in Cynthiana that printed us, drove the printed copies back, helped with the Addressograph, bundled copies for mailing, and delivered the bundles to the post office. On Fridays I swept out the office and dusted the counters. Photography and page makeup were pretty much the only things I didn't do. </p><p>I was reporter, columnist, copy editor, proofreader, clerk, and dogsbody. </p><p>It was grand. Lowell and Jean were generous and indulgent in allowing me to make mistakes and recover from them, and the income from the job was a welcome help with my college expenses. Lowell was the practical partner in the enterprise; he did all the photography and dealt with all the advertisers. Jean was the literary partner, particularly fond of the work of Joan Didion. I was once assigned to profile a worthy and "lay it on thick." I attempted that, and Jean looked at it, told me, "We don't publish satire," and rewrote it herself. </p><p>And I owe them my life's career. When, after abandoning the Ph.D. program in English at Syracuse, I approached <i>The Cincinnati Enquirer</i> for a post on the copy desk, the <i>Flemingsburg Gazette</i> was my only significant journalistic credential. (As an undergraduate and graduate student, I [cough] never took any classes in journalism.)</p><p>Lowell and Jean are gone, and I honor their memory, grateful that they were willing to take me, a skinny kid, a bookworm, into their business and allow me to learn it. Yes, I spent six summers at the <i>Gazette</i>, and they became the prelude to forty years in newspaper journalism. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-2819924353159512772023-08-27T16:18:00.002-04:002023-08-27T16:37:23.426-04:00We used to read the stuff before publication <p>When I retired two years ago from <i>The Baltimore Sun</i> after more than three decades of service as an editor, I swore a mighty oath that I would not become one of those former <i>Sun</i> employees who splutter that the place went straight to hell once they left. </p><p>But damme, there's a limit. </p><p>A <i>Sun </i>reporter filed a story that began, "Nearly 60 years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared he had a dream. ..." It was published online two days ago. </p><p>It appeared this morning on Page One of <i>The Sun</i>, above the fold, with the identical opening sentence, the day AFTER the 60th anniversary. Paired with the story was a refer to the wire service story inside on commemoration of the anniversary. </p><p>So it seems that the print edition has become of so little consequence that there is no editor on hand paying sufficient attention to protect a reporter from looking like a fool. </p><p>This is precisely the sort of thing that used to be caught before publication on the copy desk, when newspapers still had copy desks. </p><p>COUGH:</p><p>A fellow copy editor reminds me that tomorrow, Aug. 28, is the 60th anniversary of the King speech. as we see, I do not have an editor to keep me from looking like a fool. </p><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-29094533029431364552023-07-13T09:48:00.001-04:002023-07-13T09:48:20.307-04:00Shootings first, questions after <p> The recent violence at the Brooklyn Homes housing project in Baltimore, in which two people were fatally shot and 28 wounded, is being commonly described as a "mass shooting." That is a slippery term. </p><p><i>The Associated Press Stylebook</i> says that there is no firm consensus on what constitutes a mass shooting: "Definitions vary. A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University defines mass killings as four or more dead, not including the shooter."</p><p>When <i>The Sun</i> described the Brooklyn Homes shootings as perhaps the greatest mass shooting in Baltimore history, I wondered whether the Pratt Street riot of 1861 should be included. When the local mob attacked the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry as the troops were marching between two train stations, the casualties included eight rioters, three soldiers, and a bystander killed, with scores of soldiers and civilians wounded. </p><p>But no, the term <i>mass shooting</i> is a 20th-century U.S. coinage. Charles Whitman climbed a tower at the University of Texas in Austin in August 1966, fatally shot 15 people and wounded 31 others before being killed by police officers, setting the pattern for mass shootings: A gunman (mass shooters are typically male), for motives that may be unknown and unknowable, begins firing in public, at specific individuals or at random, with multiple fatalities and woundings, at a single event. </p><p>That pattern fits the shootings in 2017 in Las Vegas, in which Stephen Paddock, firing from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 before he killed himself. </p><p>But groups of people die in shootings in other contexts. We don't necessarily call it a mass shooting when gunfire breaks out in public between gang members, when people are killed in an armed robbery, or when an entire family dies in a murder-suicide. </p><p>Do the Brooklyn Homes shootings qualify as a mass shooting? There appear to have been two or more shooters, and their motives are unknown. If the violence turns out to have been gang-related, will we still call it a mass shooting? Or if it started as a domestic dispute? Are two deaths rather than four or more enough to qualify?</p><p>It would be tidy if we could define the term as a single shooter, at a public event, with four or more fatalities. But the proliferation of firearms in this country and the increasing propensity to use them on impulse make it difficult to characterize these events neatly. And the tendency to lump so many multiple shootings under the category "mass shooting" can blur what is distinctive about each case. </p><p>I don't think that it is a very useful term. </p><p><br /></p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6051744883907551402.post-89238447331803075852023-07-10T17:50:00.001-04:002023-07-10T17:50:52.239-04:00Yeah, you're not alone <p>You are writing a story about someone, let's call them X, who has a problem. X has a medical condition and cannot find or afford treatment; X is looking for housing and is unable to afford current rents; X is living in a neighborhood where police presence is sporadic and ineffective, and is afraid to leave the house. </p><p>By the most remarkable coincidence, X exemplifies the larger issues in the story you are actually writing, so after three or four paragraphs about X, you drop them, perhaps to return for brief mention later in the article, and write the nut graph that explains the issue that your article is really about. </p><p>But first you must write the essential transition: X is not alone. </p><p>The thing is that this device, known as the "anecdotal lede" in the paragraph game, has become so familiar to readers over the past quarter-century or so that no transition is really necessary. The reader grasps what the game is. That means that the "X is not alone" transition is something more than a gimmick; it has become a cliche. </p><p>When I was an editor at <i>The Baltimore Sun</i> and an "X is not alone" transition came across the desk, I immediately deleted it, to no harm to the structure of the article and no obstacle to the reader's understanding. We actually disparaged it in the house style guide, to which reporters paid fitful attention. </p><p>But the "monkey-see, monkey-do" tendency in journalism is powerful, and you will see "X is not alone" all the damn time.</p><p>On one occasion I deleted it from an article, and the next day the reporter asked for an explanation of the change. A writer is always entitled to an explanation of changes in editing, and so I patiently explained that that transition had become a stock device that was not particularly helpful to readers and that we had been discouraged from using. </p><p>The reporter answered: "It's not a cliche when <i>I</i> use it." </p><p>You see what editors are up against. </p>John McIntyrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03559687583130468871noreply@blogger.com5