George Chandler-Powell is a character, a surgeon, in P.D. James’s most recent novel, The Private Patient. At one point Mr. Chandler-Powell (British surgeons do not call themselves “doctor”) expresses views about the press:
“[F]rankly, I wouldn’t lift a finger to muzzle the popular press. When you consider the machinations and deviousness of governments, we need some organisation strong enough to shout occasionally. I used to believe that I lived in a free country. Now I have to accept that I don’t. But at least we have a free press, and I’m willing to put up with a certain amount of vulgarity, popularisation, sentimentality and even misrepresentation to ensure it remains free.”
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
No easy pun here about The Sun setting
Too preoccupied with various editing projects to blog much this week, I still got around to reading the Baltimore Magazine article by Evan Serpick about the parlous state of The Baltimore Sun, my former employer. I wish it had been better.
There is factual matter in the article about the precipitous drop in revenue over the past few years and the consequent reduction of the size and scope of the paper and of the staff — and the electronic version of the article corrects the blunder about the Seattle newspaper scene from the print edition of the magazine.
But I wish that Mr. Serpick had made more of an effort to put the newspaper’s plight in a broader context.
Yes, Tribune Company officials made decisions they came to rue in acquiring Times Mirror, and Sam Zell’s purchase of Tribune saddled the company with even greater debt and brought it into bankruptcy. But Tribune does not stand alone, as Mr. Serpick mentions casually but does not explore. The McClatchy Company, which bought Knight Ridder, may be at risk of bankruptcy, and Freedom Communications, the parent company of the Orange County Register, once a fabulously profitable newspaper, filed for Chapter 11 this week. Lots of colossi are teetering.
Similarly, Monty Cook’s efforts as editor of The Sun to develop “platform-neutral” articles for both electronic and print publication are hardly an eccentricity. Most other newspapers, watching their aging readership steadily decline, are struggling to find new readers and new advertising revenue on the Internet. What The Sun is attempting may not work, but no one else has come up with a better approach for a metropolitan daily.
But it is a series of remarks that I find most regrettable. The most regrettable is Mr. Serpick’s statement, “Many Sun staffers groan about Cook's incompetence and complain that he has tried to solve the paper's problems with endless redesigns.” You’ll note that Mr. Cook’s supposed incompetence is presented as a settled fact, for which the article does not provide substantiation. And two of most the recent redesigns were conducted before he became editor.
Then there are the anonymous comments, some bashing the editor, some scornful of the younger employees, some indignant about the older employees — exactly the sort of backbiting one would expect in a situation in which people are angry and fearful. But once again, they are assertions for which no support is offered. In my time at The Sun, the paper’s guidelines on anonymous quotations held that they could be justified only when they contributed substantially to the meaning of the story. These don’t.
Toward the end of the article, there is a perfunctory effort to look ahead, at such possible remedies as local ownership, about which I have previously expressed doubts, and David Simon’s proposal to erect a pay wall around newspapers — which has been greeted with widespread skepticism, one observer having suggested that Mr. Simon might make an HBO series about the failure of newspapers that take his advice.
Mr. Serpick is quite correct about the diminished state of a proud newspaper, suffering like many others from demographic, technological, and economic circumstances beyond any single paper’s control. He is correct that the remaining staff is struggling to weather the storm and navigate to calmer waters. But his article does not add much to what was already known.
There is factual matter in the article about the precipitous drop in revenue over the past few years and the consequent reduction of the size and scope of the paper and of the staff — and the electronic version of the article corrects the blunder about the Seattle newspaper scene from the print edition of the magazine.
But I wish that Mr. Serpick had made more of an effort to put the newspaper’s plight in a broader context.
Yes, Tribune Company officials made decisions they came to rue in acquiring Times Mirror, and Sam Zell’s purchase of Tribune saddled the company with even greater debt and brought it into bankruptcy. But Tribune does not stand alone, as Mr. Serpick mentions casually but does not explore. The McClatchy Company, which bought Knight Ridder, may be at risk of bankruptcy, and Freedom Communications, the parent company of the Orange County Register, once a fabulously profitable newspaper, filed for Chapter 11 this week. Lots of colossi are teetering.
Similarly, Monty Cook’s efforts as editor of The Sun to develop “platform-neutral” articles for both electronic and print publication are hardly an eccentricity. Most other newspapers, watching their aging readership steadily decline, are struggling to find new readers and new advertising revenue on the Internet. What The Sun is attempting may not work, but no one else has come up with a better approach for a metropolitan daily.
But it is a series of remarks that I find most regrettable. The most regrettable is Mr. Serpick’s statement, “Many Sun staffers groan about Cook's incompetence and complain that he has tried to solve the paper's problems with endless redesigns.” You’ll note that Mr. Cook’s supposed incompetence is presented as a settled fact, for which the article does not provide substantiation. And two of most the recent redesigns were conducted before he became editor.
Then there are the anonymous comments, some bashing the editor, some scornful of the younger employees, some indignant about the older employees — exactly the sort of backbiting one would expect in a situation in which people are angry and fearful. But once again, they are assertions for which no support is offered. In my time at The Sun, the paper’s guidelines on anonymous quotations held that they could be justified only when they contributed substantially to the meaning of the story. These don’t.
Toward the end of the article, there is a perfunctory effort to look ahead, at such possible remedies as local ownership, about which I have previously expressed doubts, and David Simon’s proposal to erect a pay wall around newspapers — which has been greeted with widespread skepticism, one observer having suggested that Mr. Simon might make an HBO series about the failure of newspapers that take his advice.
Mr. Serpick is quite correct about the diminished state of a proud newspaper, suffering like many others from demographic, technological, and economic circumstances beyond any single paper’s control. He is correct that the remaining staff is struggling to weather the storm and navigate to calmer waters. But his article does not add much to what was already known.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Say 'Arrrrrrrr'
With International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19) just a couple of weeks off, here is an important reminder:
A pirate’s rhotic growl is rendered thus: Arrrrrrr, with the number of consonants at your discretion.
Arrrrrrgh is an expression of disappointment, distress, anguish. It is thus not appropriate for pirate talk and should not be confused with Arrrrrrr.
Please note this particularly for headline and caption purposes.
A pirate’s rhotic growl is rendered thus: Arrrrrrr, with the number of consonants at your discretion.
Arrrrrrgh is an expression of disappointment, distress, anguish. It is thus not appropriate for pirate talk and should not be confused with Arrrrrrr.
Please note this particularly for headline and caption purposes.
Peevologist psychology
The peevologist, a self-proclaimed expert on language, can be readily identified by certain key characteristics: a belief, stated or implicit, that the English language is in decline and being corrupted; much moaning about falling standards, often violated by identifiable groups, particularly the young; repeated brandishing of fetishes unsupported by linguistics, history, or practice (think of the split infinitive).
A post last week, “Musée des Peevologies,” offered some exhibits of peevology, and this week, as promised, we undertake a look at the psychological elements that contribute to full-blown peevology.
The teacher’s pet: The student who actually does the assignment and gives the correct answer earns the teacher’s praise. That praise being especially valuable if the student is a bookworm and inept at sports, coming up with the right answer every time becomes a powerful motivator. And when the teacher is a former teacher’s pet, grown up in the belief that there is always a right answer that the student can and should supply, the loop is closed.
The English major: The teacher’s pet who goes on to be an English major is ripe for seduction by High Modernism, with its doctrine that the greatest literary texts can be understood only by an embattled minority sensitive to nuance and allusion, and surrounded by the herd. That the prestige of majoring in English is close to nil (though still a notch or two higher than going into the School of Education) makes it necessary to hold even more firmly to that sense of being among an elect.
The copy editor: Once succumbing to journalism, job prospects for English majors being what they are and always have been, the developing peevologist likely fetches up on the copy desk. Copy editors (a dwindling species) focus on the minutiae of language, and the former English major is expected to be an expert on grammar and usage (though chances are excellent that he has never studied linguistics*). In this environment, the peevologist’s bent is reinforced by the copy editor’s conviction, echoing the lesson of the teacher’s pet, that there is always a right answer. Everything in editing is a 1 or a 0, right or wrong, as specified by the Associated Press Stylebook or some tortured exegesis of it.
The cranky old white guy:** As the arteries harden, so do the attitudes. There was, it seems, a golden age, usually dating from the peevologist’s youth or just before his time, when there were Standards. Those Standards are always being undermined, and the greatest danger comes from people who are younger than the peevologist, or of a different ethnic, cultural, or class background. The peevologist stands bravely on the ramparts, menaced by the barbarian hordes, and he will not capitulate. In plain fact, he is merely a snob.
H.L. Mencken, a gifted amateur student of the English language in its American version, was rightly skeptical of snobs and self-anointed authorities, writing in his monumental work, The American Language:
The error of ... viewers with alarm is in assuming that there is enough magic in pedagogy to teach ‘correct’ English to the plain people. There is, in fact, too little; even the fearsome abracadabra of Teachers College, Columbia, will never suffice for the purpose. The plain people will always make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and often without much insight. Their lives would be more comfortable if they ceased to repine over it, and instead gave it some hard study. It is very amusing, and not a little instructive.
We have English because some exceedingly plain people, a rabble of illiterate peasants, abandoned the standards of Anglo-Saxon, and English remains, like all other languages, what its speakers and writers collectively make of it. Linguists understand this, and they explore the mechanisms and richnesses of the language, as it is actually spoken and actually written. Reasonable prescriptivists, among whom I number myself,*** who aim to advise people how to write more clearly, more effectively, more elegantly, acknowledge this and labor to offer advice that is better informed than the misguided strictures of the peevologists.
*Actually, English majors and journalists (the latter group often with a less reliable education even than the English major’s) may never have studied grammar much in any form. Thus we can find people railing against the split infinitive who do not know what an infinitive is, or condemning passive voice in constructions that are not passive.
**Not to stereotype, but you must surely have noticed how frequently the peevologist is white, male, and middle-aged or older.
***The ready reader of this blog will have recognized how many dangerous personal traits I have struggled with to move toward such reasonableness.
A post last week, “Musée des Peevologies,” offered some exhibits of peevology, and this week, as promised, we undertake a look at the psychological elements that contribute to full-blown peevology.
The teacher’s pet: The student who actually does the assignment and gives the correct answer earns the teacher’s praise. That praise being especially valuable if the student is a bookworm and inept at sports, coming up with the right answer every time becomes a powerful motivator. And when the teacher is a former teacher’s pet, grown up in the belief that there is always a right answer that the student can and should supply, the loop is closed.
The English major: The teacher’s pet who goes on to be an English major is ripe for seduction by High Modernism, with its doctrine that the greatest literary texts can be understood only by an embattled minority sensitive to nuance and allusion, and surrounded by the herd. That the prestige of majoring in English is close to nil (though still a notch or two higher than going into the School of Education) makes it necessary to hold even more firmly to that sense of being among an elect.
The copy editor: Once succumbing to journalism, job prospects for English majors being what they are and always have been, the developing peevologist likely fetches up on the copy desk. Copy editors (a dwindling species) focus on the minutiae of language, and the former English major is expected to be an expert on grammar and usage (though chances are excellent that he has never studied linguistics*). In this environment, the peevologist’s bent is reinforced by the copy editor’s conviction, echoing the lesson of the teacher’s pet, that there is always a right answer. Everything in editing is a 1 or a 0, right or wrong, as specified by the Associated Press Stylebook or some tortured exegesis of it.
The cranky old white guy:** As the arteries harden, so do the attitudes. There was, it seems, a golden age, usually dating from the peevologist’s youth or just before his time, when there were Standards. Those Standards are always being undermined, and the greatest danger comes from people who are younger than the peevologist, or of a different ethnic, cultural, or class background. The peevologist stands bravely on the ramparts, menaced by the barbarian hordes, and he will not capitulate. In plain fact, he is merely a snob.
H.L. Mencken, a gifted amateur student of the English language in its American version, was rightly skeptical of snobs and self-anointed authorities, writing in his monumental work, The American Language:
The error of ... viewers with alarm is in assuming that there is enough magic in pedagogy to teach ‘correct’ English to the plain people. There is, in fact, too little; even the fearsome abracadabra of Teachers College, Columbia, will never suffice for the purpose. The plain people will always make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and often without much insight. Their lives would be more comfortable if they ceased to repine over it, and instead gave it some hard study. It is very amusing, and not a little instructive.
We have English because some exceedingly plain people, a rabble of illiterate peasants, abandoned the standards of Anglo-Saxon, and English remains, like all other languages, what its speakers and writers collectively make of it. Linguists understand this, and they explore the mechanisms and richnesses of the language, as it is actually spoken and actually written. Reasonable prescriptivists, among whom I number myself,*** who aim to advise people how to write more clearly, more effectively, more elegantly, acknowledge this and labor to offer advice that is better informed than the misguided strictures of the peevologists.
*Actually, English majors and journalists (the latter group often with a less reliable education even than the English major’s) may never have studied grammar much in any form. Thus we can find people railing against the split infinitive who do not know what an infinitive is, or condemning passive voice in constructions that are not passive.
**Not to stereotype, but you must surely have noticed how frequently the peevologist is white, male, and middle-aged or older.
***The ready reader of this blog will have recognized how many dangerous personal traits I have struggled with to move toward such reasonableness.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Farewell to Professor Hatchett
I only learned today of the death earlier this month of Marion Hatchett. Professor Hatchett was a formidable figure at the school of theology at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. He knew more about Christian liturgy than just about anyone else would ever want to know.
He not only participated in the revision of the Book of Common Prayer of 1979 but also wrote the learned and lucid Commentary on the American Prayer Book (the Big Hatchett) and A Manual of Ceremonial for the New Prayer Book (the Little Hatchett), both of which hold honored places on my shelves.
He understood — and said — that public worship in the Episcopal Church could maintain a continuity with its historical origins without becoming a museum liturgy, and he wrote with authority, grace, and humanity.
Whenever I endure some service of mechanical liturgy, mediocre music, and tedious homiletics, as is the fate of many churchgoers, I recall that Professor Hatchett showed us that it does not have to be that bad. He thought that we could achieve a higher standard, and now that he has gone to glory, we would do well to remember his example.
He not only participated in the revision of the Book of Common Prayer of 1979 but also wrote the learned and lucid Commentary on the American Prayer Book (the Big Hatchett) and A Manual of Ceremonial for the New Prayer Book (the Little Hatchett), both of which hold honored places on my shelves.
He understood — and said — that public worship in the Episcopal Church could maintain a continuity with its historical origins without becoming a museum liturgy, and he wrote with authority, grace, and humanity.
Whenever I endure some service of mechanical liturgy, mediocre music, and tedious homiletics, as is the fate of many churchgoers, I recall that Professor Hatchett showed us that it does not have to be that bad. He thought that we could achieve a higher standard, and now that he has gone to glory, we would do well to remember his example.
I am not making this up, you know
Item: Wikipedia, which discovered last week that there might be some value in editing articles before publication, is now going to indicate which articles you can believe with a color-coded background. (Hint: orange, bad; white, good.)
Item: The debate over health care reform is taking on a refreshing candor. Yesterday, David Sheets out in St. Louis put up a link on Facebook to FactCheck.org’s article “Twenty-six lies about H.R. 3200."* Among the Facebookers responding was one Dan Devine, who said, in part:
There are many good ideas to reform the current structure, which has worked well enough for me. I've worked hard to get the coverage I have and don’t want risk losing it. The current package seems to be a way to provide free health care for the baby boomers as they age; sorry, I’m not interested in helping them.
If you, dear reader, are like me, a person in your fifties, particularly if you are also someone whose presence is no longer required in the workplace, I plan to take Mr. Devine’s hint and see whether I can contract with the Oriental Trading Company or Archie McPhee or some similar company to manufacture buttons for us reading:
DO NOT RESUSCITATE
You know it’s the right thing to do.
Item: If you join me in the categories mentioned in the previous item, there’s a word for it, to which we are alerted by the ever-alert Fritinancy: mancession. A mancession is a recession in which unemployment hits men disproportionately more than women.
Item: I will be back in the classroom at Loyola tomorrow morning at 9:25, where seventeen vulnerable undergraduates are signed up to be introduced to the occult secrets of copy editing. Keep them in your thoughts.
*FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and similar operations are not among those sites for people who already know what they think before they hear any specifics. They hark back to the outdated principles in print journalism — you remember newspapers — of attempting to publish verifiable, factual material.
Item: The debate over health care reform is taking on a refreshing candor. Yesterday, David Sheets out in St. Louis put up a link on Facebook to FactCheck.org’s article “Twenty-six lies about H.R. 3200."* Among the Facebookers responding was one Dan Devine, who said, in part:
There are many good ideas to reform the current structure, which has worked well enough for me. I've worked hard to get the coverage I have and don’t want risk losing it. The current package seems to be a way to provide free health care for the baby boomers as they age; sorry, I’m not interested in helping them.
If you, dear reader, are like me, a person in your fifties, particularly if you are also someone whose presence is no longer required in the workplace, I plan to take Mr. Devine’s hint and see whether I can contract with the Oriental Trading Company or Archie McPhee or some similar company to manufacture buttons for us reading:
DO NOT RESUSCITATE
You know it’s the right thing to do.
Item: If you join me in the categories mentioned in the previous item, there’s a word for it, to which we are alerted by the ever-alert Fritinancy: mancession. A mancession is a recession in which unemployment hits men disproportionately more than women.
Item: I will be back in the classroom at Loyola tomorrow morning at 9:25, where seventeen vulnerable undergraduates are signed up to be introduced to the occult secrets of copy editing. Keep them in your thoughts.
*FactCheck.org, PolitiFact.com, and similar operations are not among those sites for people who already know what they think before they hear any specifics. They hark back to the outdated principles in print journalism — you remember newspapers — of attempting to publish verifiable, factual material.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
You mean you can check things for accuracy?
Expecting me to rise to the bait, a number of readers have sent me links to announcements that Wikipedia is going to be engaging editors to review revisions of entries before they can be made public.
Everyone loves a repentant sinner, but it’s not clear that the conversion is complete. The review of flagged changes is to be limited to entries about living people, and the qualifications of volunteer editors and the quality of their editing remain to be seen.
Still, after being challenged repeatedly over posts about the limitations of Wikipedia*, I was interested to see Michael Snow, chairman of the Wikimedia board, quoted thus in The New York Times:
“We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. There was a time probably when the community was more forgiving of things that were inaccurate or fudged in some fashion — whether simply misunderstood or an author had some ax to grind. There is less tolerance for that sort of problem now.”
A-men, Brother Snow.
Now, if it would be possible to spare one of those volunteer editors for a moment or two to look at the Jaipur entry on Wikipedia, something might be done about this sentence that a reader brought to my attention:
Mansarovar housing colony is the largest housing colony in the entire universe.
*No I am not going to provide links to all those posts. A search on Wikipedia at this site and at the previous site will turn up as much as you ever want to see.
Everyone loves a repentant sinner, but it’s not clear that the conversion is complete. The review of flagged changes is to be limited to entries about living people, and the qualifications of volunteer editors and the quality of their editing remain to be seen.
Still, after being challenged repeatedly over posts about the limitations of Wikipedia*, I was interested to see Michael Snow, chairman of the Wikimedia board, quoted thus in The New York Times:
“We are no longer at the point that it is acceptable to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. There was a time probably when the community was more forgiving of things that were inaccurate or fudged in some fashion — whether simply misunderstood or an author had some ax to grind. There is less tolerance for that sort of problem now.”
A-men, Brother Snow.
Now, if it would be possible to spare one of those volunteer editors for a moment or two to look at the Jaipur entry on Wikipedia, something might be done about this sentence that a reader brought to my attention:
Mansarovar housing colony is the largest housing colony in the entire universe.
*No I am not going to provide links to all those posts. A search on Wikipedia at this site and at the previous site will turn up as much as you ever want to see.
Friday, August 28, 2009
What's the story?
Two articles in this morning’s Baltimore Sun reach for the same cliche with reference to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy:
BOSTON — In an extraordinary outpouring of public emotion, thousands of people in Massachusetts solemnly lined highways, overpasses and city streets Thursday to pay their last respects to Sen. Edward Kennedy, the last patriarch of America’s most storied political dynasty.
And:
And with the loss of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and his storied ability to eke out bipartisan compromises, lawmakers are eyeing those consensus proposals. ...
The advice sometimes given to aspiring writers that they should avoid adjectives is like a fad diet — Atkins or South Beach — that rules out a whole class of foods. But it is true that some adjectives are empty calories, and storied is surely one of them. Like prestigious and legendary, two other adjectives that crop up in the work of unimaginative writers, it says merely, “I’m writing an important story about somebody you should have heard of.”
Of course, the first example is constructed almost completely from prefabricated material. Extraordinary outpouring of public emotion turns up whenever a crowd gathers, especially if they are outdoors to pay their last respects. And if this storied figure is also a patriarch, then he must be part of a dynasty.
It pretty much writes itself.
The other article — after revealing that Mr. Kennedy was a Democrat from Massachusetts — refers to his storied ability to eke out compromises. The phrasal verb to eke out, which originally meant to supplement by meager increments or to stretch out a small supply, has come to mean to accomplish with great difficulty, and no one has any business insisting on the older sense. But I thought that compromises were hammered out in the smithy of the Congress.
Sometimes the writer reaches for the wrong cliche. But eyeing, at least, is pure journalese.
BOSTON — In an extraordinary outpouring of public emotion, thousands of people in Massachusetts solemnly lined highways, overpasses and city streets Thursday to pay their last respects to Sen. Edward Kennedy, the last patriarch of America’s most storied political dynasty.
And:
And with the loss of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and his storied ability to eke out bipartisan compromises, lawmakers are eyeing those consensus proposals. ...
The advice sometimes given to aspiring writers that they should avoid adjectives is like a fad diet — Atkins or South Beach — that rules out a whole class of foods. But it is true that some adjectives are empty calories, and storied is surely one of them. Like prestigious and legendary, two other adjectives that crop up in the work of unimaginative writers, it says merely, “I’m writing an important story about somebody you should have heard of.”
Of course, the first example is constructed almost completely from prefabricated material. Extraordinary outpouring of public emotion turns up whenever a crowd gathers, especially if they are outdoors to pay their last respects. And if this storied figure is also a patriarch, then he must be part of a dynasty.
It pretty much writes itself.
The other article — after revealing that Mr. Kennedy was a Democrat from Massachusetts — refers to his storied ability to eke out compromises. The phrasal verb to eke out, which originally meant to supplement by meager increments or to stretch out a small supply, has come to mean to accomplish with great difficulty, and no one has any business insisting on the older sense. But I thought that compromises were hammered out in the smithy of the Congress.
Sometimes the writer reaches for the wrong cliche. But eyeing, at least, is pure journalese.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Now we have a term for it
You’ve heard about the Cupertino.* You have seen the eggcorn.** You know about the snowclone.*** Now — flourish by trumpets and hautboys — we have the crash blossom.
At Testy Copy Editors.org, a worthy colleague, Nessie3, posted this headline:
Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms
(If this seems a bit opaque, and it should, the story is about a young violinist whose career has prospered since the death of her father in a Japan Airlines crash in 1985.)
A quick response by subtle_body suggested that crash blossom would be an excellent name for headlines done in by some such ambiguity — a word understood in a meaning other than the intended one. The elliptical nature of headline writing makes such ambiguities an inevitable hazard.
And danbloom was quick to set up a blog to collect examples of “infelicitously worded headlines.”
Such collections already exist because the phenomenon was identified long before a name was attached to it. There are two notable collections, Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim and Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge, from the files of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Please add crash blossom to your professional lexicon forthwith.
*The Cupertino effect occurs when the spell-checking system in a software program substitutes an inappropriate word. The term comes from the substitution of Cupertino for a misspelling of cooperation. A notorious Cupertino occurred at The Baltimore Sun when the spell-checker, not having Kunte Kinte in its word list, substituted Chunter Knit. The Cupertino effect is one of the principal reasons that you should be skittish about using the auto-correct function.
**The eggcorn substitutes a word or phrase of similar sound for the correct one. At The Sun the copy desk once received a story containing a reference to a toe-headed boy.
***The snowclone is a stock phrase that can be repurposed with minor variations by lazy writers who imagine themselves to be clever: X is the new Y; have X, will travel; this is your brain on X.
At Testy Copy Editors.org, a worthy colleague, Nessie3, posted this headline:
Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms
(If this seems a bit opaque, and it should, the story is about a young violinist whose career has prospered since the death of her father in a Japan Airlines crash in 1985.)
A quick response by subtle_body suggested that crash blossom would be an excellent name for headlines done in by some such ambiguity — a word understood in a meaning other than the intended one. The elliptical nature of headline writing makes such ambiguities an inevitable hazard.
And danbloom was quick to set up a blog to collect examples of “infelicitously worded headlines.”
Such collections already exist because the phenomenon was identified long before a name was attached to it. There are two notable collections, Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim and Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge, from the files of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Please add crash blossom to your professional lexicon forthwith.
*The Cupertino effect occurs when the spell-checking system in a software program substitutes an inappropriate word. The term comes from the substitution of Cupertino for a misspelling of cooperation. A notorious Cupertino occurred at The Baltimore Sun when the spell-checker, not having Kunte Kinte in its word list, substituted Chunter Knit. The Cupertino effect is one of the principal reasons that you should be skittish about using the auto-correct function.
**The eggcorn substitutes a word or phrase of similar sound for the correct one. At The Sun the copy desk once received a story containing a reference to a toe-headed boy.
***The snowclone is a stock phrase that can be repurposed with minor variations by lazy writers who imagine themselves to be clever: X is the new Y; have X, will travel; this is your brain on X.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Musée des Peevologies
Though I do not aspire to be its curator, a collection of the historical representations of peevology* should be of some use to the student of language. Some readers may already be aware of the rich repository of examples at Language Log. I have some material near at hand that could be considered for exhibition in the musée.
In 1710, for example, Jonathan Swift complained in The Spectator about “the deplorable ignorance that for some years hath reigned among our English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and the continual corruption of our style.” Two years later he published “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue,” in which he advocated formation of an English Academy of notables, based on the French model, to superintend the language. The proposal had no legs then, and it has none now.
The estimable Jan Freeman of The Boston Globe is bringing out an edition — soon to be examined here — of Ambrose Bierce’s style guide, Write It Right, annotating Bierce’s quirky advice, often based on minute distinctions that no modern eye can discern.
In 1962 — 1962, one of the last of the Good Years, in which the echoes of the Fifties sounded in all ears — Dwight Macdonald published Against the American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture. My crumbling paperback copy includes “Updating the Bible,” a jeremiad about the Revised Standard Version of the English Bible of 1952; “The String Untuned,” an examination of the descriptivist wickedness of the third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary (Unabridged); and “The Decline and Fall of English,” a fusillade at the wanton perversity of linguists and pedagogues.
Not on the shelves but in the garage with the other books from my former office at The Sun, is The State of the Language, an anthology edited thirty or so years ago by Christopher Ricks. You may recall some of the menaces of the Seventies — hopefully used as a sentence adverb, and the Episcopal Church’s carelessness in revising the Book of Common Prayer into texts comprehensible to worshipers.
All of these works grow increasingly quaint with the passage of time. More to the point, all illustrate components of the peevologist personality, a subject to which I plan to return in a future post. For now, as it occurs to you what exhibits you would like to see displayed in the musée, by all means suggest them.
*peevology (n.) An analysis of faults, often imaginary, in language usage, arbitrarily pronounced by self-anointed experts, the analysis typically revealing rank prejudice and cultural bias.
**When I see the plaint “I want my America back” at rallies against health care reform, I tend to think that it is the Fifties the loss of which is so keenly felt — that blessed age when blacks were at the back of the bus, gays in the closet, women in the kitchen, and white men in the White House. But I digress.
In 1710, for example, Jonathan Swift complained in The Spectator about “the deplorable ignorance that for some years hath reigned among our English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and the continual corruption of our style.” Two years later he published “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue,” in which he advocated formation of an English Academy of notables, based on the French model, to superintend the language. The proposal had no legs then, and it has none now.
The estimable Jan Freeman of The Boston Globe is bringing out an edition — soon to be examined here — of Ambrose Bierce’s style guide, Write It Right, annotating Bierce’s quirky advice, often based on minute distinctions that no modern eye can discern.
In 1962 — 1962, one of the last of the Good Years, in which the echoes of the Fifties sounded in all ears — Dwight Macdonald published Against the American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture. My crumbling paperback copy includes “Updating the Bible,” a jeremiad about the Revised Standard Version of the English Bible of 1952; “The String Untuned,” an examination of the descriptivist wickedness of the third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary (Unabridged); and “The Decline and Fall of English,” a fusillade at the wanton perversity of linguists and pedagogues.
Not on the shelves but in the garage with the other books from my former office at The Sun, is The State of the Language, an anthology edited thirty or so years ago by Christopher Ricks. You may recall some of the menaces of the Seventies — hopefully used as a sentence adverb, and the Episcopal Church’s carelessness in revising the Book of Common Prayer into texts comprehensible to worshipers.
All of these works grow increasingly quaint with the passage of time. More to the point, all illustrate components of the peevologist personality, a subject to which I plan to return in a future post. For now, as it occurs to you what exhibits you would like to see displayed in the musée, by all means suggest them.
*peevology (n.) An analysis of faults, often imaginary, in language usage, arbitrarily pronounced by self-anointed experts, the analysis typically revealing rank prejudice and cultural bias.
**When I see the plaint “I want my America back” at rallies against health care reform, I tend to think that it is the Fifties the loss of which is so keenly felt — that blessed age when blacks were at the back of the bus, gays in the closet, women in the kitchen, and white men in the White House. But I digress.
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