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 30, 2009

Busy week

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You may have been traveling last week, or stunned by Thanksgiving food and drink, and were too distracted to follow this blog. But my hands ...
1 comment:
Sunday, November 29, 2009

RED ALERT! RED ALERT!

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A colleague in an unnamed state has just sent me an alarming bulletin: "FYI: AP is running on the wire Sunday the annual nonstory on ...
10 comments:

Don't you ever talk about what's RIGHT with America?

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Before I undertake the heavy lifting myself, does anyone else want to address the character who made — anonymously — the captious comment sc...
13 comments:
Saturday, November 28, 2009

Not news

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Though no foe of innocent amusement — speculate as you will about the private life of Tiger Woods — it wearies me to see how much text in pr...
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These are the rules

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In Good as Gold , Joseph Heller summarizes the basic rules of behavior: Don’t make personal remarks, never tell a hostess you enjoyed your...
2 comments:
Friday, November 27, 2009

Just one word: plastic

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An opening paragraph in this morning’s Baltimore Sun : Sitting at a table of strangers in a steamy gymnasium, Michael Brisco poked at turk...
3 comments:
Thursday, November 26, 2009

The Times leads a sheltered life

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In the New York Times article on Michaele and Tarek Salahi . the would-be reality show participants who wormed their way, uninvited, into a...
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Only another copy editor would understand

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Reacting to my mordant “Horoscope for editors” post (sample: The people who carried your company into bankruptcy will be given bonuses. Yo...
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Unstable core

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I am not persuaded that the Internet reduces our attention spans or that the 140-word bursts on Twitter make our thinking superficial, but y...
8 comments:
Monday, November 23, 2009

And yet, it moves

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By coincidence, the weekend brought the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and the publicatio...
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