A construction keeps turning up in the newspaper that I don’t usually see elsewhere, and it leaves me wondering what the apostrophe has to do with pregnancy. It goes like this: The driver was six months’ pregnant.
What was meant was clear when I was told that my severance package would include five months’ wages — that it would be the pay of five months. But six months pregnant would tell me that a woman has been enceinte for that span of time, and omission of the apostrophe seems just fine. So what degree of meaning is conveyed by making the term possessive?
I’m away from my books at the moment, filling out interminable and maddeningly duplicative electronic job applications, so I leave you this time with a question rather than an answer. Feel free to speculate.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Pedantic, but pragmatic
The Times of London introduces a column on language written by Oliver Kamm.
Mr. Kamm, whose column is called “The Pedant,” announces that he hopes to rescue pedantry, “an obsession with linguistic precision” that “prizes form over style” from its negative connotations. His sense of pedantry is “an insistence on reasonable accuracy,” a pragmatic pedantry.
To do this he is willing to heave over the side such dubious cargo as the prohibitions against splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions. It is a promising start. He will bear watching.
Mr. Kamm, whose column is called “The Pedant,” announces that he hopes to rescue pedantry, “an obsession with linguistic precision” that “prizes form over style” from its negative connotations. His sense of pedantry is “an insistence on reasonable accuracy,” a pragmatic pedantry.
To do this he is willing to heave over the side such dubious cargo as the prohibitions against splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions. It is a promising start. He will bear watching.
The Republic of Moronia
James Madison believed that a literate, educated populace was indispensable for a representative democracy, that the intrusion of religion into politics produced toxic effects, and that the Constitution he helped design contained enough safety valves to check and correct the excesses of popular enthusiasms. He is the hero of Charles P. Pierce’s Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (Doubleday, 293 pages, $26).
The brio of his opening denunciation of the imbecilities that mark our public life charmed me in a previous post, but his book is more complex and more serious than those early passages suggest. I want to tease out a few strands.
Item: Mr. Madison, mentioned prominently in each chapter, is the standard, the measure of how far our public life has strayed from what it was intended to be.
Item: Using the 19th-century crackpot Ignatius Donnelly (father of the modern fantasy of the Lost Continent of Atlantis, diligent searcher for cryptograms in the work of Shakespeare proving that Francis Bacon was the author) as his standard, he sets out a theory of the role of the crank in American culture. America, he argues, is particularly hospitable to cranks — which is a good thing, since they explore ideas at or beyond the edge of the mainstream. The problem comes when crank ideas are carelessly incorporated into the mainstream.
Item: The means by which crackpot ideas overwhelm mainstream discourse are his “Three Great Premises”: (1) “Any theory is valid if it moves units.” That is, it is valid if it can be successfully marketed. (2) “Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.” (3) “Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.”* A consequence is what Mr. Pierce calls “the war on expertise.” Thus talk radio. Thus the scientific “controversy” over evolution and intelligent design. Thus Justice Antonin Scalia saying publicly that the United States should model its anti-terrorism policy on Jack Bauer, the hero of 24 (a show Mr. Pierce characterizes as “torture porn”).**
Item: This corruption of discourse comes about not merely because of the slack standards of talk radio or the willingness of politicians to pander. It comes about because all the news media fail in their responsibilities to the truth and to the public. The news media publish and broadcast questionable statements that they do not question and palpably false statements that they do not challenge — and we, Mr. Madison’s informed public, passively tolerate it.
There is historical continuity between Mr. Pierce’s assessment of the Republic and H.L. Mencken’s view of his native land, which he occasionally referred to as Moronia:
And here [in the United States], more than anywhere else I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly—the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries and extravagances—is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.
*We even have a word for this phenomenon, truthiness, coined by that accomplished satirist Stephen Colbert. Truthiness is what one believes by internal conviction or gut feeling to be true, regardless of available facts or logic.
**The crackpot views Mr. Pierce anatomizes are mainly those of contemporary conservatives. He argues that that is a proper focus because it is conservative positions of dubious validity that have held sway over the country for the past few decades. I think that he could have given space to zanies of the left, such as Cynthia McKinney, the former Democratic congresswoman from Georgia and Green Party presidential candidate, but I take his point.
The brio of his opening denunciation of the imbecilities that mark our public life charmed me in a previous post, but his book is more complex and more serious than those early passages suggest. I want to tease out a few strands.
Item: Mr. Madison, mentioned prominently in each chapter, is the standard, the measure of how far our public life has strayed from what it was intended to be.
Item: Using the 19th-century crackpot Ignatius Donnelly (father of the modern fantasy of the Lost Continent of Atlantis, diligent searcher for cryptograms in the work of Shakespeare proving that Francis Bacon was the author) as his standard, he sets out a theory of the role of the crank in American culture. America, he argues, is particularly hospitable to cranks — which is a good thing, since they explore ideas at or beyond the edge of the mainstream. The problem comes when crank ideas are carelessly incorporated into the mainstream.
Item: The means by which crackpot ideas overwhelm mainstream discourse are his “Three Great Premises”: (1) “Any theory is valid if it moves units.” That is, it is valid if it can be successfully marketed. (2) “Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.” (3) “Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it.”* A consequence is what Mr. Pierce calls “the war on expertise.” Thus talk radio. Thus the scientific “controversy” over evolution and intelligent design. Thus Justice Antonin Scalia saying publicly that the United States should model its anti-terrorism policy on Jack Bauer, the hero of 24 (a show Mr. Pierce characterizes as “torture porn”).**
Item: This corruption of discourse comes about not merely because of the slack standards of talk radio or the willingness of politicians to pander. It comes about because all the news media fail in their responsibilities to the truth and to the public. The news media publish and broadcast questionable statements that they do not question and palpably false statements that they do not challenge — and we, Mr. Madison’s informed public, passively tolerate it.
There is historical continuity between Mr. Pierce’s assessment of the Republic and H.L. Mencken’s view of his native land, which he occasionally referred to as Moronia:
And here [in the United States], more than anywhere else I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly—the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries and extravagances—is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.
*We even have a word for this phenomenon, truthiness, coined by that accomplished satirist Stephen Colbert. Truthiness is what one believes by internal conviction or gut feeling to be true, regardless of available facts or logic.
**The crackpot views Mr. Pierce anatomizes are mainly those of contemporary conservatives. He argues that that is a proper focus because it is conservative positions of dubious validity that have held sway over the country for the past few decades. I think that he could have given space to zanies of the left, such as Cynthia McKinney, the former Democratic congresswoman from Georgia and Green Party presidential candidate, but I take his point.
Monday, June 29, 2009
AP Stylebook celebrates nerdity
There are two stereotypes about copy editors.
The first is that they are a group of burnt-out hacks and office failures who were shipped to internal exile on the copy desk when their incompetence became intolerable everywhere else. (And it takes a goodly load of incompetence to become intolerable at an American newspaper.)
The second, which is hardly any kinder, is that copy editors are a bunch of nerds and dweebs and dorks, obsessive-compulsives preoccupied with minute distinctions invisible to normal human beings. It’s just as well that they work at nights, because no one would invite them to a party.
I’ve spent a fair chunk of my professional career — at two daily newspapers, in workshops around the country, in two terms as president of the American Copy Editors Society — struggling to establish that my colleagues are well-educated, well-informed professional editors whose abilities demand that they be taken seriously.
And now this on Twitter from @APStylebook:
APStylebook Tweet your favorite AP style rule, and why, by Friday. We will give a subscription to Stylebook Online to the best.
Golly. Where to start?
oasis, oases
Delaware Abbreviate Del. In datelines or stories. Postal code: DE
Only Rhode Island is smaller in area. See state names.
rock ’n’ roll But Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
hold up (v.) holdup (n. and adj.)
Entering this competition is like running for mayor of Dorkopolis.
Nothing personal, AP Stylebook, but I have a dear friend and valued colleague who chortles vigorously every time I bash you. You want me to leave you alone, you can drop the idiotic split verb entry.
The first is that they are a group of burnt-out hacks and office failures who were shipped to internal exile on the copy desk when their incompetence became intolerable everywhere else. (And it takes a goodly load of incompetence to become intolerable at an American newspaper.)
The second, which is hardly any kinder, is that copy editors are a bunch of nerds and dweebs and dorks, obsessive-compulsives preoccupied with minute distinctions invisible to normal human beings. It’s just as well that they work at nights, because no one would invite them to a party.
I’ve spent a fair chunk of my professional career — at two daily newspapers, in workshops around the country, in two terms as president of the American Copy Editors Society — struggling to establish that my colleagues are well-educated, well-informed professional editors whose abilities demand that they be taken seriously.
And now this on Twitter from @APStylebook:
APStylebook Tweet your favorite AP style rule, and why, by Friday. We will give a subscription to Stylebook Online to the best.
Golly. Where to start?
oasis, oases
Delaware Abbreviate Del. In datelines or stories. Postal code: DE
Only Rhode Island is smaller in area. See state names.
rock ’n’ roll But Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
hold up (v.) holdup (n. and adj.)
Entering this competition is like running for mayor of Dorkopolis.
Nothing personal, AP Stylebook, but I have a dear friend and valued colleague who chortles vigorously every time I bash you. You want me to leave you alone, you can drop the idiotic split verb entry.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
A limit to Anglican tolerance
Anglicans, taking one with another, are a broad-minded and tolerant sort — a colleague once congratulated me on our magnanimity in not resenting the pope and his followers for having broken away from the Church of England. But I cringed this morning on my way to church as I heard a news reader on NPR refer to reaction to a previous story about conservative “Episcopals.”
Please, dear people at NPR and journalists elsewhere, keep always in mind that if you report on religion you must master the lingo. And each branch you encounter will have its own distinctive nomenclature, fatally easy to get wrong.
For purposes of the U.S. Episcopal Church, one branch of the Anglican Communion:
Episcopal (adj.)
Episcopalian (n.)
Episcopalians are members of Episcopal congregations, NOT Episcopals are members of Episcopalian congregations. The Episcopal Church — not the Episcopalian Church — is an episcopal polity (with authority given to bishops).
Do say it over to yourselves two or three times.
Then go and sin no more.
Please, dear people at NPR and journalists elsewhere, keep always in mind that if you report on religion you must master the lingo. And each branch you encounter will have its own distinctive nomenclature, fatally easy to get wrong.
For purposes of the U.S. Episcopal Church, one branch of the Anglican Communion:
Episcopal (adj.)
Episcopalian (n.)
Episcopalians are members of Episcopal congregations, NOT Episcopals are members of Episcopalian congregations. The Episcopal Church — not the Episcopalian Church — is an episcopal polity (with authority given to bishops).
Do say it over to yourselves two or three times.
Then go and sin no more.
Information without knowledge
I’ve just started reading a very promising book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free, by Charles P. Pierce.
From page 8: “The rise of Idiot America today reflects—for profit, mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power—the breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people we should trust the least are the people who know best what they’re talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert."
In my own parochial way, I said something similar earlier this year in a post, “Crisis of authority.” But Mr. Pierce makes the point more forcibly and more entertainingly: America “is drowning in information and thirsty for knowledge” and suffering from “lazy, pulpy tolerance for risible ideas.”
If you are curious about these risible ideas, his introduction describes a visit to the Creation Museum in Hebron, Kentucky, where visitors can marvel at a model of a dinosaur wearing an English saddle — since, of course, human beings and dinosaurs were contemporaneous when the world began in 4004 B.C.
Expect a fuller report once I finish the book.
From page 8: “The rise of Idiot America today reflects—for profit, mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage in the pursuit of power—the breakdown of the consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people we should trust the least are the people who know best what they’re talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert."
In my own parochial way, I said something similar earlier this year in a post, “Crisis of authority.” But Mr. Pierce makes the point more forcibly and more entertainingly: America “is drowning in information and thirsty for knowledge” and suffering from “lazy, pulpy tolerance for risible ideas.”
If you are curious about these risible ideas, his introduction describes a visit to the Creation Museum in Hebron, Kentucky, where visitors can marvel at a model of a dinosaur wearing an English saddle — since, of course, human beings and dinosaurs were contemporaneous when the world began in 4004 B.C.
Expect a fuller report once I finish the book.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
The man who never listened to Michael Jackson
Tell the Charlotte Observer that I’m ready for my interview.
The reason: A mention at Headsup (thanks, fev) of an article in that paper on the late Michael Jackson that included this passage:
Homer had the “Iliad,” Francis Ford Coppola had “The Godfather,” and Michael Jackson had “Thriller” – which is arguably the most influential album of all time and easily the most popular one in history.
It's nearly impossible to find someone over age 35 who didn't own the album at one time [emphasis added]. Since it was released Nov. 30, 1982, more than 50 million copies of “Thriller” have been sold worldwide.
Here I am, well past 35, without ever having owned a single Michael Jackson, song, album, or poster. I suppose I may have inadvertently heard something from Thriller over the years, but I was not conscious of it. I had no interest in his music when he was a cute little kid, and even less when he became a creepy adult. So for the past couple of days I have had to tune out the gush on Facebook, the newspaper, and the television.*
All right, journalists, here is your assignment and your challenge.
A famous person dies, a performer who has, for whatever reason, legions of devoted fans for whom this passing is a moment of intense emotion. You have to write about both the artist’s career and the impact on the fans, giving justice to each.
Your challenge is to do so without sounding like a fan. Skip references to the Iliad, unless you have some substantial reason to think that people will be listening to Thriller three thousand years hence. Turn away from superlatives and improbable assertions. Wildly improbable assertions. Get a grip.
The trick for a professional is to smuggle in the excess by direct quotation of fans’ emotional excess; then you are simply reporting, not endorsing.
*I don’t remember where I was when John Lennon died, either.
The reason: A mention at Headsup (thanks, fev) of an article in that paper on the late Michael Jackson that included this passage:
Homer had the “Iliad,” Francis Ford Coppola had “The Godfather,” and Michael Jackson had “Thriller” – which is arguably the most influential album of all time and easily the most popular one in history.
It's nearly impossible to find someone over age 35 who didn't own the album at one time [emphasis added]. Since it was released Nov. 30, 1982, more than 50 million copies of “Thriller” have been sold worldwide.
Here I am, well past 35, without ever having owned a single Michael Jackson, song, album, or poster. I suppose I may have inadvertently heard something from Thriller over the years, but I was not conscious of it. I had no interest in his music when he was a cute little kid, and even less when he became a creepy adult. So for the past couple of days I have had to tune out the gush on Facebook, the newspaper, and the television.*
All right, journalists, here is your assignment and your challenge.
A famous person dies, a performer who has, for whatever reason, legions of devoted fans for whom this passing is a moment of intense emotion. You have to write about both the artist’s career and the impact on the fans, giving justice to each.
Your challenge is to do so without sounding like a fan. Skip references to the Iliad, unless you have some substantial reason to think that people will be listening to Thriller three thousand years hence. Turn away from superlatives and improbable assertions. Wildly improbable assertions. Get a grip.
The trick for a professional is to smuggle in the excess by direct quotation of fans’ emotional excess; then you are simply reporting, not endorsing.
*I don’t remember where I was when John Lennon died, either.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Those damn copy editors again
You may have read that a former writer at the student newspaper at the University of Hawaii-Manoa has been accused of fabrication: An examination of his work identified twenty-nine people quoted in fourteen articles whose existence could not be confirmed.
Now, according to an article in the Honolulu Advertiser, the student, Kris DeRego, has come up with a novel explanation: It’s the copy editors’ fault. His articles, he says, were “adulterated” on the copy desk.
The faculty adviser to the paper, Jay Hartwell, found it odd that no other reporters for the paper had complained about such bungling on the copy desk, and he found it additionally odd that other names in the articles, such as faculty members, were correct.
Mark Brislin, the editor of the student paper, Ka Leo O Hawaii, said that DeRego, asked to supply names, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses for the twenty-nine questionable sources, submitted five. Only one of the five responded.
It would be idle to pretend that copy editors do not make mistakes, even inserting errors into texts — I bear the scars of many such lapses myself. But I have also seen over the years how tempting it is for some reporters to condemn the copy desk before determining the facts. The human reflex to shift blame elsewhere, especially on a target group, is quite strong. Any number of times I have reported to work to take up the day’s fresh complaints, discovering frequently on examination that the reporter actually made the error, or the originating editor made the error, or even, on some occasions, that there was actually no error.
I’m not privy to Mr. DeRego’s work or the work of the Ka Leo copy desk, but the reported information casts a shadow over his explanation, as well as over his work.
Now, according to an article in the Honolulu Advertiser, the student, Kris DeRego, has come up with a novel explanation: It’s the copy editors’ fault. His articles, he says, were “adulterated” on the copy desk.
The faculty adviser to the paper, Jay Hartwell, found it odd that no other reporters for the paper had complained about such bungling on the copy desk, and he found it additionally odd that other names in the articles, such as faculty members, were correct.
Mark Brislin, the editor of the student paper, Ka Leo O Hawaii, said that DeRego, asked to supply names, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses for the twenty-nine questionable sources, submitted five. Only one of the five responded.
It would be idle to pretend that copy editors do not make mistakes, even inserting errors into texts — I bear the scars of many such lapses myself. But I have also seen over the years how tempting it is for some reporters to condemn the copy desk before determining the facts. The human reflex to shift blame elsewhere, especially on a target group, is quite strong. Any number of times I have reported to work to take up the day’s fresh complaints, discovering frequently on examination that the reporter actually made the error, or the originating editor made the error, or even, on some occasions, that there was actually no error.
I’m not privy to Mr. DeRego’s work or the work of the Ka Leo copy desk, but the reported information casts a shadow over his explanation, as well as over his work.
English is not in danger
A few days back, Language Log published a sneer at a panel discussion on English-only measures at the “Building the New Majority” conference sponsored by The American Cause, Pat Buchanan’s organization. I am afraid that Mark Liberman, whose headline for the post was “Conferenece of dunces,” may be insufficiently respectful of Mr. Buchanan and his endeavors.*
For my part, I have been bewildered for years at the recurring propositions that (a) the English language is in some kind of danger and (b) some kind of governmental action can protect it.
I once wrote an op-ed piece for The Baltimore Sun on proposition (a). It is no longer available in a public archive, but I can summarize its points. English has become a world language, more widespread than Latin at its high-water mark. It’s hardly like Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, whose dwindling population of speakers gets annual attention in wire service feature stories. People around the world are keen to learn English, and you can make a modest living by teaching it to them.
I suppose that the perceived threat to English is the number of people in the United States whose primary language is Spanish or Chinese or something else that sounds like an outlandish tongue to middle-aged white American monoglots. But I live in a city that as recently as a century ago had public schools in which instruction was conducted in German, and yet somehow the Kaiser did not prevail here.
As to proposition (b), the failure of the French Academy to preserve the purity of French from inroads by English and other languages should be instructive.
If that is not a sufficient example, consider this passage from H.L. Mencken’s The American Language:
[S]o early as February 15, 1838, the Legislature of Indiana, in an act establishing the State university at Bloomington, provided that it should instruct the youth of the new Commonwealth (which had been admitted to the Union in 1816) “in the American, learned and foreign languages ... and literature.” Nearly a century later, in 1923, there was a violent upsurging of the same patriotic spirit, and bills making the American language official (but never clearly defining it) were introduced in the Legislatures of Illinois, North Dakota, Minnesota and other States.
Further, Mr. Mencken writes, Jay McCormick, a Republican of Montana, introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives proposing “That the national and official language of the Government and people of the United States of America, including Territories and dependencies thereof, is hereby defined as and declared to be the American language.” Mr. McCormick’s bill died quietly and unmourned.
You may be aware, from what you say and hear and read and write every day, that American English, as distinct from the British and other varieties, has done all right for itself, without having to be propped up by the regulatory and military might of the federal government or the constituent sovereign states.
The polar ice caps are melting, hundreds of thousands of people (including your most humble & ob’t. servant) are out of work, and the National Threat Level is an ugly orange. Worry about those things and leave English alone. It has done quite nicely on its own for the past six centuries and more. It does not require assistance.
*When a measure was introduced to make English the official language of Taneytown, Maryland, I had a little innocent fun with the subject myself.
For my part, I have been bewildered for years at the recurring propositions that (a) the English language is in some kind of danger and (b) some kind of governmental action can protect it.
I once wrote an op-ed piece for The Baltimore Sun on proposition (a). It is no longer available in a public archive, but I can summarize its points. English has become a world language, more widespread than Latin at its high-water mark. It’s hardly like Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, whose dwindling population of speakers gets annual attention in wire service feature stories. People around the world are keen to learn English, and you can make a modest living by teaching it to them.
I suppose that the perceived threat to English is the number of people in the United States whose primary language is Spanish or Chinese or something else that sounds like an outlandish tongue to middle-aged white American monoglots. But I live in a city that as recently as a century ago had public schools in which instruction was conducted in German, and yet somehow the Kaiser did not prevail here.
As to proposition (b), the failure of the French Academy to preserve the purity of French from inroads by English and other languages should be instructive.
If that is not a sufficient example, consider this passage from H.L. Mencken’s The American Language:
[S]o early as February 15, 1838, the Legislature of Indiana, in an act establishing the State university at Bloomington, provided that it should instruct the youth of the new Commonwealth (which had been admitted to the Union in 1816) “in the American, learned and foreign languages ... and literature.” Nearly a century later, in 1923, there was a violent upsurging of the same patriotic spirit, and bills making the American language official (but never clearly defining it) were introduced in the Legislatures of Illinois, North Dakota, Minnesota and other States.
Further, Mr. Mencken writes, Jay McCormick, a Republican of Montana, introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives proposing “That the national and official language of the Government and people of the United States of America, including Territories and dependencies thereof, is hereby defined as and declared to be the American language.” Mr. McCormick’s bill died quietly and unmourned.
You may be aware, from what you say and hear and read and write every day, that American English, as distinct from the British and other varieties, has done all right for itself, without having to be propped up by the regulatory and military might of the federal government or the constituent sovereign states.
The polar ice caps are melting, hundreds of thousands of people (including your most humble & ob’t. servant) are out of work, and the National Threat Level is an ugly orange. Worry about those things and leave English alone. It has done quite nicely on its own for the past six centuries and more. It does not require assistance.
*When a measure was introduced to make English the official language of Taneytown, Maryland, I had a little innocent fun with the subject myself.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Got prestige?
A sentence in The New Yorker’s profile of Angelo Mozilo refers to the head of Countrywide Financial as having delivered “the prestigious Dunlop Lecture for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in Washington, D.C.”
Like dramatic, prestigious is one of those adjectives you should probably shy away from. If circumstances are inherently dramatic, giving the details suffices. If an award or a lecture carries genuine prestige, you shouldn’t have to say so; writing about “the prestigious Nobel Prize” would make you look like an idiot.
“The prestigious Dunlop Lecture for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in Washington, D.C.,” tells the reader that this lecture, which he has probably never heard of (which is why the writer needs to add “for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in Washington, D.C.”), is important for a limited audience of which the reader is not a member.
It would have been better for the writer, rather than resort to the prestigious shortcut, to explain what the audience is and why the lecture is important to it.
I possess a certain small stock of prestige among copy editors, as the comments on my farewell post at Baltimoresun.com attest.* It is an exceedingly dim flicker of glory among a very small populace, and attaching the term prestige to anything I have ever been or done would strike most readers as, at best, peculiar — hell, would look ludicrous even to copy editors.
Writers who are tempted to pump up the importance of a subject by adjectival shortcuts — dramatic, prestigious, prominent, significant, premier, momentous, outstanding, renowned, storied — would be better advised to heed the venerable show-don’t-tell maxim.
*I don’t expect that I will ever be able to express my full appreciation for those comments and the regard of those readers.
Like dramatic, prestigious is one of those adjectives you should probably shy away from. If circumstances are inherently dramatic, giving the details suffices. If an award or a lecture carries genuine prestige, you shouldn’t have to say so; writing about “the prestigious Nobel Prize” would make you look like an idiot.
“The prestigious Dunlop Lecture for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in Washington, D.C.,” tells the reader that this lecture, which he has probably never heard of (which is why the writer needs to add “for Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in Washington, D.C.”), is important for a limited audience of which the reader is not a member.
It would have been better for the writer, rather than resort to the prestigious shortcut, to explain what the audience is and why the lecture is important to it.
I possess a certain small stock of prestige among copy editors, as the comments on my farewell post at Baltimoresun.com attest.* It is an exceedingly dim flicker of glory among a very small populace, and attaching the term prestige to anything I have ever been or done would strike most readers as, at best, peculiar — hell, would look ludicrous even to copy editors.
Writers who are tempted to pump up the importance of a subject by adjectival shortcuts — dramatic, prestigious, prominent, significant, premier, momentous, outstanding, renowned, storied — would be better advised to heed the venerable show-don’t-tell maxim.
*I don’t expect that I will ever be able to express my full appreciation for those comments and the regard of those readers.
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