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.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Beware of the editor

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I have spent thirty years working with copy editors, several of whom I have trained and many of whom I admire. They have been boon compan...
6 comments:
Friday, March 12, 2010

It just don't add up

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Before you go all peevy on me about the headline, you should be reminded that it is a direct quotation from a Warner Bros. cartoon of my you...
11 comments:
Thursday, March 11, 2010

The world turned upside down

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Two propositions worth considering: Item: Glenn Beck is a satirist employed by the sinister left-wing media to subvert conservatism by m...
9 comments:
Wednesday, March 10, 2010

It's good to be the king

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Memories have not yet faded of the pleasure derived from being the benevolent despot of The Baltimore Sun ’s copy desk, so I took a natural ...
10 comments:
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:
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