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, March 27, 2024

In the beginning was a word

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Imagine a collection of short detective stories in which no case is solved.  I was four pages into Anatoly Liberman’s discussion of the orig...
6 comments:
Monday, March 4, 2024

The practice of lexis can lead to tsuris

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 Once you hang up the green eyeshade, nobody pays you any longer for finding fault and you have to think up other things to do. Sometimes, o...
5 comments:
Sunday, February 25, 2024

Language sneaks up on you

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Making my way through the thousand pages of The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium  by Anthony Kaldellis, professor of classics at the...
5 comments:
Saturday, February 24, 2024

My life as a drudge

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 February 8 marked forty-four years since I began work as a copy editor.  The Cincinnati Enquirer  took a risk in hiring a fugitive graduate...
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Wednesday, February 21, 2024

So you want to be an editor?

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 The following text is an article on U.S. involvement in Kosovo during the Clinton administration, compiled by an editor at The Baltimore Su...
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Saturday, February 17, 2024

Cookies, you need cookies

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 Today Kathleen baked sour cream cookies from my grandmother's recipe. They were the great treat of my childhood, the batter alone tasti...
1 comment:
Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Um, about that anthem

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Yesterday Armstrong Williams, co-owner of The Baltimore Sun , deplored the singing of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" at the Super Bow...
3 comments:
Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Nothing's more democratic than English

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Language is the most democratic thing we have: Each English speaker gets one vote, and the language becomes what we collectively make of it ...
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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...
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