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.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

The editor's hand

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The reputation of editors, particularly copy editors, has not been enviable. There is a long tradition of writers affecting to believe that ...
1 comment:
Wednesday, January 17, 2024

I subscribe to The Baltimore Sun. For now

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 For more than thirty-seven years, thirty-three of them on the staff, I have been a daily subscriber to The Baltimore Sun . The announcement...
9 comments:
Thursday, January 11, 2024

The plot against the copy desk

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 It was the 1990s. I was chief of the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun . One day a senior editor came into my office, closed the door, and sat...
Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Yeah, you probably need an editor

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We know, because we have looked at the internet, that few people can write effectively, and we also know that all human beings are prone to ...
4 comments:
Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Editor, control your crotchets

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Editors are human beings, though you may have been told otherwise, as susceptible to idiosyncratic preferences about language as anyone else...
3 comments:
Sunday, December 31, 2023

A chronicle of time wasted

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Despite having vigorously defended the work of copy editors for decades, I concede that not all that we were called upon to perform had the ...
4 comments:
Saturday, November 25, 2023

You can still make corn pudding for Christmas

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On Thanksgiving I posted that Kathleen had made my mother's corn pudding as one of the side dishes at dinner, and a couple of people ask...
2 comments:
Friday, November 17, 2023

Let unlearning be unconfined

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 A couple of weeks ago I posted "Give up the ship,"  in which I argued to abandon, or at least consider abandoning, a handful of ...
2 comments:
Monday, November 13, 2023

Where things go

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That monosyllable go  turns out to contribute to highly expressive phrases.  It can mean to cooperate, as when one goes along  or goes with ...
6 comments:
Monday, November 6, 2023

Baltimore: The Greatest City in America

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 In 1986, when we moved to Baltimore so that I could begin work on The Sun 's copy desk, we rented an apartment in Towson while we looke...
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