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.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Those who can't, teach

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Geoffrey K. Pullum, the celebrated linguist, laid down a full barrage yesterday, directed at a Web site called The Apple , which proclaims ...
10 comments:
Monday, March 8, 2010

Curse you, Microsoft Word

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A couple of readers have complained that the ¾ symbol is showing up in these blog posts, and one suggests that they are occurring where I...
15 comments:

More than one in ten is OK

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Etymology can suggest, but it cannot command. The Latin word decem , “ten,” is the root of decimal and also decimate , which originally ...
2 comments:
Sunday, March 7, 2010

Why not the worst?

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You English majors and lovers of literature (not necessarily identical categories), a while back on the old blog I posed a question: Wha...
5 comments:
Saturday, March 6, 2010

A caution about St. Patrick's Day

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Though the Irish in my genome   is probably the deplorable Scotch-Irish Presbyterian form rather than the genuine article,* I do know thi...
8 comments:
Friday, March 5, 2010

Counting heads

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This is a year for midterm elections, some primaries having already been conducted, so you can be confident of being battered with pollin...
7 comments:

Pulp Diction: The complete serial

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1. 15 items or trouble You get ’em in the checkout at Safeway — harried mothers with kids clamoring for candy, bleary-eyed old guys pus...
1 comment:
Thursday, March 4, 2010

Pulp Diction 4: The dark tower

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(Previously: 15 items or trouble , The last copy editor , The wider web ) The Amtrak from Baltimore to New York was only ninety minutes ...
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Wrapped in the mantle of shame

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More in sorrow ... The current issue of The New Yorker has an article on Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, in which one passage describe...
7 comments:

Your role in National Grammar Day

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Admittedly, National Grammar Day was cooked up by Martha Brockenbrough as a stunt. She wanted to publicize her book. This year, Mignon Fogar...
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