You Don't Say

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

Monday, November 16, 2009

Christmas is coming. Save yourselves

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Another holiday season looms menacingly over us, and some merchants, desperate to flog their inventory, have even resorted to taking out adv...
25 comments:
Sunday, November 15, 2009

The hermeneutic comma

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The Rev. Avery Dulles, a Jesuit priest and son of the arch-Presbyterian John Foster Dulles, once spoke at a church that had one of those tre...
8 comments:
Thursday, November 12, 2009

Michigan State, how could you even think of it?

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An urgent e-mail from my daughter says that the provost at Michigan State University, my alma mater, has proposed eliminating the major in c...
12 comments:
Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Mr. Hawthorne's caution

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I wonder whether some of us in the paragraph game, finding ourselves abruptly deposited on the street after long tenure with a publication, ...
9 comments:

The Founders' dilemmas

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Name a text — other than the Bible — that is more revered and less understood than the Constitution of the United States. Can’t? I’m not s...
6 comments:
Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Note to copy editors everywhere

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Anal-retentive takes a hyphen.
6 comments:

Words to watch out for: Accused

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This headline appears at Baltimoresun.com this morning: Charges dropped against / accused city brothel operator The intention is to iden...
8 comments:
Monday, November 9, 2009

Fading Star

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I hadn’t planned to write on the The Toronto Star memo that was marked up by a copy editor , given its wide currency on the Internet, but so...
3 comments:
Sunday, November 8, 2009

Wasted words: New initiative

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It appears to be lost on many that an initiative is something that is being started, and thus new. The word derives from the Latin initiare...
3 comments:
Saturday, November 7, 2009

Testing, testing

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Tonight is Quiz Night at Memorial Episcopal Church, an event for which I prepared a few questions, and the occasion brought up recollections...
8 comments:
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