It was one of the editors I hired who, a while back, made sure that you did not read a description of a homicide as a grizzly scene.
A grizzly is North American brown bear (Ursa arctos) so called because its brown fur has white tips. The word derives from grizzle — gray hair. Thus you would describe the author of this blog as a grizzled editor, among other terms. The etymology of grizzle is uncertain, the Oxford English Dictionary says.
The word the writer was reaching for is grisly — terrifying, horrible, ghastly. It derives from the Old English grislic, allied to agrisan, to terrify.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
The world didn't end in 1970
Many of you will have recognized the title of yesterday’s post, “Teach your children well,” as an allusion to the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song of that name. That song is about the most recent piece of popular music to which I can refer.
You see, in the spring of 1970, my freshman year at Michigan State, one of my roommates, Michael Hyatte, suggested that the end of the world was imminent (Kent State, Nixon, etc.), that human beings were about to be divided between the freaks and the straights, and that I had better get my act together if I didn’t want to spend eternity with Lawrence Welk and Arthur Godfrey.
So I did due diligence. I acquired and listened to some albums. I sat for much of a day in a muddy field outside Lansing listening to Jefferson Airplane and a series of other bands. It was stupefyingly dull, perhaps because I was the only person in the audience not stoned. And then the world did not come to an end, which I understood to amount to a divine mandate to be as stuffy as I liked. I have not consciously attended to popular music since.
This attitude was reinforced a year later when Patricia Nedeau, whose advice was not to be disregarded, told me, “John, you are not a denim person; you are a tweeds and woolens person.” I have been faithful to her counsel.
Dr. Johnson said, “No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures,” and I have been listening contentedly to Bach and Handel and Haydn and Mozart ever since. (With occasional indulgence in 1920s jazz recorded by Vince Giordano and His Nighthawks Orchestra.) You may prefer Jimmy Buffett or Madonna or Nine Inch Nails or New Kids on the Block or any of those other performers of whose existence I am dimly aware; I don’t begrudge you your innocent pleasures, unfathomable as they are.
For my part, a wee dram and a Haydn string quartet make life as sweet as it gets.
You see, in the spring of 1970, my freshman year at Michigan State, one of my roommates, Michael Hyatte, suggested that the end of the world was imminent (Kent State, Nixon, etc.), that human beings were about to be divided between the freaks and the straights, and that I had better get my act together if I didn’t want to spend eternity with Lawrence Welk and Arthur Godfrey.
So I did due diligence. I acquired and listened to some albums. I sat for much of a day in a muddy field outside Lansing listening to Jefferson Airplane and a series of other bands. It was stupefyingly dull, perhaps because I was the only person in the audience not stoned. And then the world did not come to an end, which I understood to amount to a divine mandate to be as stuffy as I liked. I have not consciously attended to popular music since.
This attitude was reinforced a year later when Patricia Nedeau, whose advice was not to be disregarded, told me, “John, you are not a denim person; you are a tweeds and woolens person.” I have been faithful to her counsel.
Dr. Johnson said, “No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures,” and I have been listening contentedly to Bach and Handel and Haydn and Mozart ever since. (With occasional indulgence in 1920s jazz recorded by Vince Giordano and His Nighthawks Orchestra.) You may prefer Jimmy Buffett or Madonna or Nine Inch Nails or New Kids on the Block or any of those other performers of whose existence I am dimly aware; I don’t begrudge you your innocent pleasures, unfathomable as they are.
For my part, a wee dram and a Haydn string quartet make life as sweet as it gets.
Dammit, Jim, I'm a journalist, not a Trekkie
Regret the Error is, for a journalist, a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I site. Craig Silverman collects corrections from print and Web sources, and today’s harvest of corrections on articles about the new Star Trek movie reminds us that journalism is full of traps.
The Star Trek franchise has, over more than forty years, attracted legions of fans, many of whom apparently have encyclopedic recall of details from the television shows and movies. Once you have identified a Romulan as a Klingon, scorn will be heaped on you up to the eyebrows.
The journalist who approaches any specialized topic strides into a minefield, and the details are triggers. Religion is treacherous because of the distinctive language in different denominations or branches of faith. (I used to have to remind Sun copy editors that orthodox has to be capitalized in writing about Judaism or the Eastern branches of Christianity. Never mind the occasional references to “massive Christian burial.”) Science and medicine abound in technical detail — remember the column that said you could stop hiccups with carbon monoxide?
Popular culture is just the same sort of specialized area: Star Trek, the Harry Potter books and films, Doonesbury. No matter how much you may think you know, the chances are excellent that there are readers who know the subject better than you do, and they are waiting for you to stumble.
Not that you should transform yourself into a Trekkie or Potterite, but you should make sure that you know people who are in appropriate fan groups. Show them what you’re working on, and allow their robust interest to spare you the horselaughs.
The Star Trek franchise has, over more than forty years, attracted legions of fans, many of whom apparently have encyclopedic recall of details from the television shows and movies. Once you have identified a Romulan as a Klingon, scorn will be heaped on you up to the eyebrows.
The journalist who approaches any specialized topic strides into a minefield, and the details are triggers. Religion is treacherous because of the distinctive language in different denominations or branches of faith. (I used to have to remind Sun copy editors that orthodox has to be capitalized in writing about Judaism or the Eastern branches of Christianity. Never mind the occasional references to “massive Christian burial.”) Science and medicine abound in technical detail — remember the column that said you could stop hiccups with carbon monoxide?
Popular culture is just the same sort of specialized area: Star Trek, the Harry Potter books and films, Doonesbury. No matter how much you may think you know, the chances are excellent that there are readers who know the subject better than you do, and they are waiting for you to stumble.
Not that you should transform yourself into a Trekkie or Potterite, but you should make sure that you know people who are in appropriate fan groups. Show them what you’re working on, and allow their robust interest to spare you the horselaughs.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Teach your children well
Mem Fox, teacher and writer of children’s books, says this about her twin vocations in Radical Reflections:
Those who write well have more power and therefore have more control over their lives. ... [T]he granting of this power to our children is politically and socially essential. In the end they must be able to spell and punctuate; they’re powerless without these skills. Their power won’t come about without practice, and the practice can’t come about without purpose.
Those who write well have more power and therefore have more control over their lives. ... [T]he granting of this power to our children is politically and socially essential. In the end they must be able to spell and punctuate; they’re powerless without these skills. Their power won’t come about without practice, and the practice can’t come about without purpose.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Talk retro to me
This one is for the Young People, if any such lurk among my readers. Are you mystified by the peculiar turns of speech when Baby Boomers talk? Do you feel ashamed that at your unfamiliarity with the TV series of the late 1950s and early 1960s? Are you disinclined to watch hours of TV Land to catch up?
Help is available.
Ralph Keyes has published a book, I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech (St. Martin’s Press, 310 pages, $25.95), that will help you caulk the gaps in your cultural education.
I was particularly touched to find his entries on newspaper lingo, particularly piquant now in the twilight of print journalism.
Deadline, for example, the appointed time by which copy is due or an edition is to be completed, derives from the line in a prison that an inmate could not cross without being shot. (I would very much have liked to recover the original penalty in the newsroom, but I could never persuade my betters even to issue sidearms to the copy editors.)
The spindle on which stories written on copy paper were impaled when editors decided not to run them was called a spike, and to this day a story that is killed is said to have been spiked.
Theodore Roosevelt, alluding in 1906 to “The Man with the Muck Rake” in Pilgrim’s Progress, said that journalists exposing scandals were “raking the muck,” and muckraking has been a badge of honor in investigative journalism ever since.
Let Mr. Keyes help you. With a perusal of his book and a little practice, you could contrive to sound almost as antique as I do.
Help is available.
Ralph Keyes has published a book, I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop a Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech (St. Martin’s Press, 310 pages, $25.95), that will help you caulk the gaps in your cultural education.
I was particularly touched to find his entries on newspaper lingo, particularly piquant now in the twilight of print journalism.
Deadline, for example, the appointed time by which copy is due or an edition is to be completed, derives from the line in a prison that an inmate could not cross without being shot. (I would very much have liked to recover the original penalty in the newsroom, but I could never persuade my betters even to issue sidearms to the copy editors.)
The spindle on which stories written on copy paper were impaled when editors decided not to run them was called a spike, and to this day a story that is killed is said to have been spiked.
Theodore Roosevelt, alluding in 1906 to “The Man with the Muck Rake” in Pilgrim’s Progress, said that journalists exposing scandals were “raking the muck,” and muckraking has been a badge of honor in investigative journalism ever since.
Let Mr. Keyes help you. With a perusal of his book and a little practice, you could contrive to sound almost as antique as I do.
The other place and this one
Now that You Don’t Say is no longer a working blog at Baltimoresun.com, it is not listed at that site’s main page. But it will continue to reside there for an indeterminate time. Feel free to rummage around in it while you still can. The Grammarnoir serial, for example, remains.
A couple of readers have inquired about videos, such as the bow tie, the martini, and the first and second pronunciation videos, as well as the weekly video jokes.*
The appearance of video at this site will have to wait until (a) I acquire a video camera, (b) learn how to operate it or coerce someone into operating, (c) learn how to edit the resulting video, and (d) figure out how to post it here. Although I have acquired an unanticipated fund of free time, this may take a while.
*The titles of the video jokes all begin with “Surely you jest,” which makes them easily searchable.
A couple of readers have inquired about videos, such as the bow tie, the martini, and the first and second pronunciation videos, as well as the weekly video jokes.*
The appearance of video at this site will have to wait until (a) I acquire a video camera, (b) learn how to operate it or coerce someone into operating, (c) learn how to edit the resulting video, and (d) figure out how to post it here. Although I have acquired an unanticipated fund of free time, this may take a while.
*The titles of the video jokes all begin with “Surely you jest,” which makes them easily searchable.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Watch where you sit
A recent Baltimore Sun article contained a sentence saying that federal proceedings supercede local judgments. So they do, but the word is supersede.
Supersede derives from the Latin supersedere: super (above) sedere (to sit). To supersede is, from the literal roots of the word, to be superior to, to sit above.
Merriam-Webster says that the spelling supercede has turned up regularly since the 17th century (so much for any expectation that it would have been rare when everyone studied Latin) but is widely considered an error. It is probably a matter of time until it is widely listed in dictionaries as an acceptable variant.
While we are thinking about Latin, a reminder that this is graduation season. You who cross the platform to receive the diploma and the handshake will be an alumnus or an alumna, collectively alumni or, in some cases, alumnae. Arnold Zwicky, having come across a Web site in which a man describes himself as “a Distinguished Alumnae,” will sort out the terms for you.
If you want to appear edumacated, you will not say, “I am an alumni,” and you will not spell supersede with a c.
Supersede derives from the Latin supersedere: super (above) sedere (to sit). To supersede is, from the literal roots of the word, to be superior to, to sit above.
Merriam-Webster says that the spelling supercede has turned up regularly since the 17th century (so much for any expectation that it would have been rare when everyone studied Latin) but is widely considered an error. It is probably a matter of time until it is widely listed in dictionaries as an acceptable variant.
While we are thinking about Latin, a reminder that this is graduation season. You who cross the platform to receive the diploma and the handshake will be an alumnus or an alumna, collectively alumni or, in some cases, alumnae. Arnold Zwicky, having come across a Web site in which a man describes himself as “a Distinguished Alumnae,” will sort out the terms for you.
If you want to appear edumacated, you will not say, “I am an alumni,” and you will not spell supersede with a c.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Look over at Blogs.com
By invitation, I offered Blogs.com a list of my top ten blogs on language and editing — a selection that should not astonish anyone who has been grazing in this pasture.
But I am just one of a number of people who have been invited to submit such lists on various topics. The Internet is such a wilderness — some tall trees but a great deal of scrub intermixed with patches of poison ivy — that a guide is always welcome. Rummage around over there to see what sites you may find useful. There’s a link to the Top 10 Lists in the menu bar at the top of the page.
Make sure you come back here.
But I am just one of a number of people who have been invited to submit such lists on various topics. The Internet is such a wilderness — some tall trees but a great deal of scrub intermixed with patches of poison ivy — that a guide is always welcome. Rummage around over there to see what sites you may find useful. There’s a link to the Top 10 Lists in the menu bar at the top of the page.
Make sure you come back here.
Puzzling possessives
A few days ago a reader wondered about the construction pork producers’ and Israelis’ objecting to. Why apostrophes?
The use of a possessive with a gerund (the present participle of a verb functioning as a noun) is common in English. So is the use of a non-possessive noun. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage finds that both forms have been examined and faulted or endorsed over a long span — and that it is quite common for an author to switch from one to the other. So of these two possibilities —
I can’t stand his creeping up behind me while I’m working
I can’t stand him creeping up behind me while I’m working —
you get to use whichever you like. Another step to reduce usage anxiety!
If the possessive with a gerund makes you step back, you may also be put off momentarily by the double possessive, or double genitive. That is a construction in which possession is indicated twice, by a possessive form and the word of. One refers to a friend of mine rather than a friend of me. (You can also say a friend to me, though it will probably sound stilted to many listeners or readers.)
The construction has an ancient pedigree in English, and Merriam-Webster’s explains its function in reducing ambiguity by distinguishing between an objective genitive and a possessive genitive. Here’s how: Jane’s picture can mean a picture belonging to Jane or a picture of Jane. Saying a picture of Jane’s — the double genitive — distinguishes the former sense from the latter.
The use of a possessive with a gerund (the present participle of a verb functioning as a noun) is common in English. So is the use of a non-possessive noun. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage finds that both forms have been examined and faulted or endorsed over a long span — and that it is quite common for an author to switch from one to the other. So of these two possibilities —
I can’t stand his creeping up behind me while I’m working
I can’t stand him creeping up behind me while I’m working —
you get to use whichever you like. Another step to reduce usage anxiety!
If the possessive with a gerund makes you step back, you may also be put off momentarily by the double possessive, or double genitive. That is a construction in which possession is indicated twice, by a possessive form and the word of. One refers to a friend of mine rather than a friend of me. (You can also say a friend to me, though it will probably sound stilted to many listeners or readers.)
The construction has an ancient pedigree in English, and Merriam-Webster’s explains its function in reducing ambiguity by distinguishing between an objective genitive and a possessive genitive. Here’s how: Jane’s picture can mean a picture belonging to Jane or a picture of Jane. Saying a picture of Jane’s — the double genitive — distinguishes the former sense from the latter.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Presented without comment
An Irish student inserts a bogus quotation in the Wikipedia entry for a recently deceased French composer —“to show how journalists use the internet as a primary source” — and discovers that newspaper and blogs around the world pick it up and use it without making any effort to verify its authenticity.
Wikipedia’s editing does not effectively remove the bogus item, and the fraud is disclosed when the student himself writes to newspapers after a lapse of weeks to inform them.
Wikipedia’s editing does not effectively remove the bogus item, and the fraud is disclosed when the student himself writes to newspapers after a lapse of weeks to inform them.
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