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.

Friday, October 8, 2021

Go, little text, along your way

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 Yesterday on Facebook and Twitter I posted a sneer dismissing the fashionable term curation  as merely the equivalent of frottage.  And yes...
3 comments:
Thursday, October 7, 2021

Inveighing against changes in language is like inveighing against continental drift

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When you get exercised about things you don't care for in English vocabulary or usage, you might keep in mind this passage from Robertso...
Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Back to the books

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 It was a grand feeling to walk out of the Hamilton branch of the Pratt Library this morning with a selection of books under my arm.  During...
4 comments:
Saturday, September 18, 2021

Just don't do this

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 All those years I listened to reporters bitching that the copy desk was crushing their creativity I also  marveled at their fondness for ha...
9 comments:
Friday, September 17, 2021

Chances are excellent that you are mistaken about English grammar

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 One way to get the morning off to a strong start is to open an online discussion of grammar and growl,  realizing that many people hold str...
6 comments:
Saturday, August 14, 2021

How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm?

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 The Census Bureau's 2020 count shows a continuation of the trend noticed a century ago when Sophie Tucker and Eddie Cantor were singing...
1 comment:
Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Here for the asking

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 The academic year is cranking up, and though it has been two years since I last taught editing at Loyola University Maryland, an impulse to...
Monday, August 2, 2021

Whose prayer in school?

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 People are cluttering Facebook and Twitter with calls to put God, and specifically prayer, in the public schools. I'm old enough to rem...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Schooled in dishonesty about the nation's past

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 You may have seen an asinine tweet by Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, earlier this month: "If we teach that the founding o...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Not worth knowing

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You do not have to be on Twitter or Facebook long before you come across some glaring example of pedagogical malfeasance.  Today some poor d...
2 comments:
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