Thunderstorms could not dampen the enthusiasm this weekend of members of the Fleming County High School Class of 1969 at their reunion parties. *
Before you continue, you should now have been tipped off that this post is even less of general interest than the usual ones. Carping about grammar and usage will resume tomorrow. I don’t want to spoil the account of the reunion by pointing out that The Baltimore Sun has referred in an article to two parties reaching “an agreement in principal.”
I arrived in Elizaville on Friday evening in time to sit outside with a wee dram (or two) of Woodford Reserve and watch the sun go don over the hills. The old Early place is at the crest of a hill just outside metropolitan Elizaville. It was on the road at the crest of that hill that a minor skirmish of the Civil War occurred, when a Confederate recruiting party marching in from Johnson Junction met a Federal patrol marching up from Nepton. Musket fire was exchanged, with no apparent injury to either party.**
That would have been about 1862, when my great-grandfather acquired the property. The farmhouse was built by my great-grandfather about 120 years ago, and my mother, the last of the Earlys, lived there until her death in 2001.
The first of the reunion parties on Saturday was at the house in Flemingsburg that my classmate Larry Johnson has been restoring and filling with antiques. We posed on the front porch for photos that are likely to show up in this week’s Flemingsburg Gazette — if a little hastily, because a thunderstorm was running through.
There were the usual exchanges: “Why, John Early, you haven’t changed a bit.”*** That was, of course, the polite lie that people exchange in these operations, and I reciprocated as often as I could do so convincingly.
In the evening, we repaired to the McCartney cottage, thanks to Sidney McCartney Day and Marsha McNeill McCartney, at Park Lake, a private resort, and sat through another thunderstorm while relaxing on the screened-in porch and waiting for the burgers to mature on the grill. People kept repeating remarks, many of them ill-natured, attributed to me. Fortunately, I was in possession of the formulaic response from my first news editor, the late Bob Johnson: “Did I say that? [beat] That sounds like something I would have said.”
The reason for attending a reunion is to see how time has marked one’s old companions, and to see how one measures up against them. Well, those of us who still have hair have gone gray, and some of us are still working and some of us are not, but the personalities previously in evidence are still recognizably there.
It was enormously moving to be greeted with affection and enthusiasm after this long lapse of years. Feeling the evening breeze rise over the hill at the farm, where I spent so many childhood years reading and watching the play of the shadows of clouds over the fields and hills, felt like home.
Seeing my old classmates was like the return of the prodigal, known and welcomed.
*Lord forgive me.
**I was not there.
***These are the only people who still know what my name is. I haven’t been called “John Early” this often for decades.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
One more thing
Before I venture west to examine the marks of time on my classmates from 1969, a reminder:
I was mistaken about the broadcast of my interview about the state of copy editing on National Public Radio’s On the Media. It is scheduled for this weekend, running at 2:00 p.m. Sunday on WYPR-FM in Baltimore. (Listings may vary in your area.) You can also download the program from the On the Media Web site.
I was mistaken about the broadcast of my interview about the state of copy editing on National Public Radio’s On the Media. It is scheduled for this weekend, running at 2:00 p.m. Sunday on WYPR-FM in Baltimore. (Listings may vary in your area.) You can also download the program from the On the Media Web site.
Off to the Dark and Bloody
Even the unemployed need to take a little time off.
A week ago a letter arrived announcing that fellow graduates of the Class of 1969 at Fleming County High School have planned parties for this weekend. I will be heading west tomorrow morning and won’t be back in Baltimore until early next week. You’re left to your own devices until then.
Since I won’t be monitoring this site, I’ve decided, with misgivings, to cancel comment moderation before I hit the road. You’ll be able to comment at will over the weekend, but I don’t want to get back to discover that you’ve been misbehaving.
To tide you over, some brief items:
X is not alone
Mild-mannered copy editor John McIntyre, sometime chief of the desk at The Baltimore Sun, has campaigned for years against the stale devices of journalism.
McIntyre is not alone.
Fellow copy editor and former ACES president Pam Robinson has published on her blog, Words at Work, an eye-popping collection of the hack “not alone” transition from publications that ought to have editors who know better.
Grammar for chimps
Somebody had to do it, and, sighing at the necessity, Geoffrey Pullum has demolished the latest example of “Stupid Animal Communication Stories,” this time the BBC’s report on a study that supposedly says that chimpanzees can recognize bad grammar. They can’t.**
Before you complain about the headline
A tweeted observation by Bill Walsh should give reporters and editors cause to pause before they storm over to what is left of the copy desk to complain about a headline that misses what they thought was the mark:
I side with reporters more often than you'd think when such disputes arise, but I'd say misguided headlines tend to reflect muddled stories.
Tell it, Brother Walsh.
*For readers unacquainted with the lore of the Commonwealth of Kentucky — quick, name the other three states that are technically commonwealths — the area was a battleground for Indians before European-descended settlers took over, and it was the Native Americans who called it “the dark and bloody ground.”
**If they could, reporters then could presumably be trained to make the same distinctions, and the nation’s dozen or so remaining copy editors could join me in collecting unemployment benefits.
A week ago a letter arrived announcing that fellow graduates of the Class of 1969 at Fleming County High School have planned parties for this weekend. I will be heading west tomorrow morning and won’t be back in Baltimore until early next week. You’re left to your own devices until then.
Since I won’t be monitoring this site, I’ve decided, with misgivings, to cancel comment moderation before I hit the road. You’ll be able to comment at will over the weekend, but I don’t want to get back to discover that you’ve been misbehaving.
To tide you over, some brief items:
X is not alone
Mild-mannered copy editor John McIntyre, sometime chief of the desk at The Baltimore Sun, has campaigned for years against the stale devices of journalism.
McIntyre is not alone.
Fellow copy editor and former ACES president Pam Robinson has published on her blog, Words at Work, an eye-popping collection of the hack “not alone” transition from publications that ought to have editors who know better.
Grammar for chimps
Somebody had to do it, and, sighing at the necessity, Geoffrey Pullum has demolished the latest example of “Stupid Animal Communication Stories,” this time the BBC’s report on a study that supposedly says that chimpanzees can recognize bad grammar. They can’t.**
Before you complain about the headline
A tweeted observation by Bill Walsh should give reporters and editors cause to pause before they storm over to what is left of the copy desk to complain about a headline that misses what they thought was the mark:
I side with reporters more often than you'd think when such disputes arise, but I'd say misguided headlines tend to reflect muddled stories.
Tell it, Brother Walsh.
*For readers unacquainted with the lore of the Commonwealth of Kentucky — quick, name the other three states that are technically commonwealths — the area was a battleground for Indians before European-descended settlers took over, and it was the Native Americans who called it “the dark and bloody ground.”
**If they could, reporters then could presumably be trained to make the same distinctions, and the nation’s dozen or so remaining copy editors could join me in collecting unemployment benefits.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Deferring to the godly
In yesterday’s post on regrettable news leads, I said that one reason not to affect bogus King James English was to avoid giving offense to the godly. One reader commented: “I don't think the danger of offending th godly, or anyone else for that matter, is a good reason not to write something, or do anything really.”
On the contrary, when one is writing for publication, there are excellent reasons not to *** READER ALERT: VULGAR LANGUAGE PENDING *** piss off the readers.
In some articles, on some occasions, for some audiences, one avoids certain references or certain kinds of language — profanity, for example, or ethnic slurs. Among the things to take care with are religious references, because people’s religious beliefs and associations are held profoundly. (I myself, as by adult profession a high-church Anglican, understand all too clearly the danger of hinting that other people’s beliefs and practices are silly.)
If you are going to give offense to the godly, you had better do so for a good reason — to assert, for example, that, contrary to Scripture, the earth revolves around the sun, that it came into being much earlier than an October morning in 4004 B.C., and that its human inhabitants descended from more primitive forms of life, are points of established scientific fact, rather than to adapt the language of their sacred texts merely for some cheap and transient effect.
On the contrary, when one is writing for publication, there are excellent reasons not to *** READER ALERT: VULGAR LANGUAGE PENDING *** piss off the readers.
In some articles, on some occasions, for some audiences, one avoids certain references or certain kinds of language — profanity, for example, or ethnic slurs. Among the things to take care with are religious references, because people’s religious beliefs and associations are held profoundly. (I myself, as by adult profession a high-church Anglican, understand all too clearly the danger of hinting that other people’s beliefs and practices are silly.)
If you are going to give offense to the godly, you had better do so for a good reason — to assert, for example, that, contrary to Scripture, the earth revolves around the sun, that it came into being much earlier than an October morning in 4004 B.C., and that its human inhabitants descended from more primitive forms of life, are points of established scientific fact, rather than to adapt the language of their sacred texts merely for some cheap and transient effect.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Don't do this again
All right, I’m just a copy editor — and a cashiered copy editor at that — so you may wonder where I come off with attitude about how real writers write. (Several reporters have in the past.) In part, it’s because I was a reader first, and as a reader I identified stale devices with which writers, journalists in particular, imagine that they bring freshness and imagination to their work.
For fuller discussion, you should look at a compilation of cliche leads that Dick Thien offered to the American Copy Editors Society and a similar analysis at Bob Baker’s Newsthinking.
For some that I myself find particularly irritating:
Webster’s defines ...
First off, there is no Webster’s, or rather, no one Webster’s. Merriam-Webster is only one of a number of publishers using that name in the title. Second, giving a dictionary definition of a term as a starting point is such a fixture of low-grade sermons that a first-year seminarian, not to say a professional journalist, ought to blush at being caught resorting to it.
It’s official
It’s official means that some piece of information has been confirmed — meaning that you are telling the reader something already widely known. Usually readers expect a story to tell them things they don’t already know.
The conventional wisdom
The conventional wisdom is also something that the reader has already heard. When a writer starts by saying what the conventional wisdom is, it’s usually to move to some fresh take on the situation. Maybe the writer could just start with that fresh take.
The pathetic fallacy
If I ever catch you writing that storm clouds couldn’t dampen the spirits of any person or group at an event, or in any other manner attributing emotion to meteorology, I’ll see to it that you are locked in a room listening to recordings of Wordsworth’s later poetry until you scream for mercy.
Christmas came early
Unless a holiday has some direct connection with the subject of the article, it’s as relevant as the weather. Particularly to be shunned are cheap and obvious efforts at irony: Just on the eve of Labor Day, Joe Sixpack got the word that his factory was closing and his job was gone.
The rhetorical question
Have you ever wondered where reporters get their ideas?
No I haven’t, and since I have no intention of proceeding to a second paragraph, I guess I never will.
The clumsy misdirection
Laura Snapdragon eats turtles by the dozen.
The chocolate, caramel and peanut candies, that is.
The that is serves to say, “Looky here: I made a play on words.”
Onomatopoeia
Foom! Foom! Foom!
That was the sound of the rockets as they were launched into the night sky to burst into sprays of color to celebrate America’s birthday.
It’s recommended practice to avoid sound effects in the rest of the story, too.
The Jacobean gambit
For the love of Fowler, please do not ever attempt to imitate the language of the Authorized Version of the Bible (popularly the King James). You are apt to get the grammar wrong (the –eth suffix being grammatically proper only the with singular third-person form of the verb), or you will cloak some mundane secular phenomenon in the language of religion, giving offense to the godly.
The outdated allusion
As Jimmy Durante used to say, everybody’s trying to get into the act.
The reader doesn’t know what “the act” is, and, unless you have confirmed that your audience is geriatric, the reader is probably clueless about the Great Durante, who climbed that golden staircase in 1980 and whose last appearances on television dated to the early 1970s.
It’s a good idea to write for readers who are alive today.
The disproportionate comparison
Though 1968 is best known for domestic turmoil and the war in Vietnam, it also has a local distinction. That year Baltimore County began trying to rewrite its regulations governing outdoor signs.
One of these things is not like the other. ...
For fuller discussion, you should look at a compilation of cliche leads that Dick Thien offered to the American Copy Editors Society and a similar analysis at Bob Baker’s Newsthinking.
For some that I myself find particularly irritating:
Webster’s defines ...
First off, there is no Webster’s, or rather, no one Webster’s. Merriam-Webster is only one of a number of publishers using that name in the title. Second, giving a dictionary definition of a term as a starting point is such a fixture of low-grade sermons that a first-year seminarian, not to say a professional journalist, ought to blush at being caught resorting to it.
It’s official
It’s official means that some piece of information has been confirmed — meaning that you are telling the reader something already widely known. Usually readers expect a story to tell them things they don’t already know.
The conventional wisdom
The conventional wisdom is also something that the reader has already heard. When a writer starts by saying what the conventional wisdom is, it’s usually to move to some fresh take on the situation. Maybe the writer could just start with that fresh take.
The pathetic fallacy
If I ever catch you writing that storm clouds couldn’t dampen the spirits of any person or group at an event, or in any other manner attributing emotion to meteorology, I’ll see to it that you are locked in a room listening to recordings of Wordsworth’s later poetry until you scream for mercy.
Christmas came early
Unless a holiday has some direct connection with the subject of the article, it’s as relevant as the weather. Particularly to be shunned are cheap and obvious efforts at irony: Just on the eve of Labor Day, Joe Sixpack got the word that his factory was closing and his job was gone.
The rhetorical question
Have you ever wondered where reporters get their ideas?
No I haven’t, and since I have no intention of proceeding to a second paragraph, I guess I never will.
The clumsy misdirection
Laura Snapdragon eats turtles by the dozen.
The chocolate, caramel and peanut candies, that is.
The that is serves to say, “Looky here: I made a play on words.”
Onomatopoeia
Foom! Foom! Foom!
That was the sound of the rockets as they were launched into the night sky to burst into sprays of color to celebrate America’s birthday.
It’s recommended practice to avoid sound effects in the rest of the story, too.
The Jacobean gambit
For the love of Fowler, please do not ever attempt to imitate the language of the Authorized Version of the Bible (popularly the King James). You are apt to get the grammar wrong (the –eth suffix being grammatically proper only the with singular third-person form of the verb), or you will cloak some mundane secular phenomenon in the language of religion, giving offense to the godly.
The outdated allusion
As Jimmy Durante used to say, everybody’s trying to get into the act.
The reader doesn’t know what “the act” is, and, unless you have confirmed that your audience is geriatric, the reader is probably clueless about the Great Durante, who climbed that golden staircase in 1980 and whose last appearances on television dated to the early 1970s.
It’s a good idea to write for readers who are alive today.
The disproportionate comparison
Though 1968 is best known for domestic turmoil and the war in Vietnam, it also has a local distinction. That year Baltimore County began trying to rewrite its regulations governing outdoor signs.
One of these things is not like the other. ...
Monday, July 20, 2009
Things I wish I hadn't seen
On Twitter: “What I will drink for my (first) 39th birthday: Candied bacon martini.”
In addition to bacon baked with brown sugar, it includes vodka, applejack, amaretto and — brace yourselves — maple syrup.
In The Baltimore Sun: An article with an inane “They’re not alone” transition from the opening example to the body of the story.
It’s such a hackneyed device that it can always — and should — be deleted without any ill effect on the story whatsoever.
On Facebook: A newspaper copy editor saying that he doesn’t look at his own paper on his day off, because he’s not going to let his employer impose on his free time.
There’s not a lot that can leave me gasping in my chair, but for an editor to announce publicly that he chooses not to see what is in his own publication, as if laziness and unprofessionalism were a matter of principle, undercuts the effort of years to establish that copy editors should be taken seriously.
At You Don’t Say: Posts last week announcing that I had taped a recording for the weekend’s On the Media program on National Public Radio.
Evidently the producers of the show decided that I was not particularly interesting, a judgment that should not stun readers of this blog, and chose not to air the interview.
In addition to bacon baked with brown sugar, it includes vodka, applejack, amaretto and — brace yourselves — maple syrup.
In The Baltimore Sun: An article with an inane “They’re not alone” transition from the opening example to the body of the story.
It’s such a hackneyed device that it can always — and should — be deleted without any ill effect on the story whatsoever.
On Facebook: A newspaper copy editor saying that he doesn’t look at his own paper on his day off, because he’s not going to let his employer impose on his free time.
There’s not a lot that can leave me gasping in my chair, but for an editor to announce publicly that he chooses not to see what is in his own publication, as if laziness and unprofessionalism were a matter of principle, undercuts the effort of years to establish that copy editors should be taken seriously.
At You Don’t Say: Posts last week announcing that I had taped a recording for the weekend’s On the Media program on National Public Radio.
Evidently the producers of the show decided that I was not particularly interesting, a judgment that should not stun readers of this blog, and chose not to air the interview.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
How could this have happened?
There’s only one explanation: Mistakes were made:
Crocs
Microsoft Vista
Jon and Kate Plus 8
Fanny packs: Perhaps the last thing that broad-of-beam Americans needed was an accessory that emphasized their girth.
Abstinence-only sex education
The Apprentice: And any other television program, contemplated or actual, featuring Donald Trump.
McDonald’s McRib
Bruno
The Atkins diet: And the Metabalife diet, the South Beach diet ...
AIG
Knight Rider: All versions.
Jell-O shooters
Gladiator flip-flops: Actually, any flip-flops worn anywhere but to the shower or the pool.
Sport utility vehicles
Chocolate martinis: Actually any cocktail labeled as a martini containing anything other than gin or vodka and vermouth.
Tattoos
Crocs
Microsoft Vista
Jon and Kate Plus 8
Fanny packs: Perhaps the last thing that broad-of-beam Americans needed was an accessory that emphasized their girth.
Abstinence-only sex education
The Apprentice: And any other television program, contemplated or actual, featuring Donald Trump.
McDonald’s McRib
Bruno
The Atkins diet: And the Metabalife diet, the South Beach diet ...
AIG
Knight Rider: All versions.
Jell-O shooters
Gladiator flip-flops: Actually, any flip-flops worn anywhere but to the shower or the pool.
Sport utility vehicles
Chocolate martinis: Actually any cocktail labeled as a martini containing anything other than gin or vodka and vermouth.
Tattoos
Friday, July 17, 2009
Two warnings
Be careful about what you write: Mike Memoli, one of my former students, now covering the White House for Real Clear Politics, sent out a tweet this week warning journalists to be careful what they say in e-mail, because that correspondence can be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
The State in South Carolina got hold of e-mails to Gov. Mark Sanford’s staff by that means, and some of what came to light was not pretty.
Be careful about what you listen to: Unless the program directors have turned up someone more interesting in the past three days, a short interview with me on the parlous state of copy editing is to be broadcast on this week’s On the Media at National Public Radio.
The program’s Web site will help you find when the program is being broadcast in your area, and you can download the program from the Web site if it’s not possible or convenient to listen to the broadcast.
The State in South Carolina got hold of e-mails to Gov. Mark Sanford’s staff by that means, and some of what came to light was not pretty.
Be careful about what you listen to: Unless the program directors have turned up someone more interesting in the past three days, a short interview with me on the parlous state of copy editing is to be broadcast on this week’s On the Media at National Public Radio.
The program’s Web site will help you find when the program is being broadcast in your area, and you can download the program from the Web site if it’s not possible or convenient to listen to the broadcast.
C'mon, AP, tell us about the Olden Times
It’s the little touches that make newspaper/wire service journalism look as if it was written exclusively for people who remember the Eisenhower administration. For your inspection, this Associated Press headline:
Senate saw carbon copy of courthouse Sotomayor
Feel free to mention in comments the last time you used carbon paper or saw someone use carbon paper. Full marks if you have had to explain to a child what a carbon copy is. Extra credit if you have had to explain to an adult what a carbon copy is. And please name any newspaper that was lazy enough to use the AP headline in the print edition.
And now I have a busy day of writing ahead and have to sharpen my quills.
Senate saw carbon copy of courthouse Sotomayor
Feel free to mention in comments the last time you used carbon paper or saw someone use carbon paper. Full marks if you have had to explain to a child what a carbon copy is. Extra credit if you have had to explain to an adult what a carbon copy is. And please name any newspaper that was lazy enough to use the AP headline in the print edition.
And now I have a busy day of writing ahead and have to sharpen my quills.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Is nonlife threatened?
From The Baltimore Sun: The woman was being treated at the station for nonlife-threatening injuries and was expected to be taken to a local hospital, according to an MTA spokeswoman [emphasis added].
The woman, this sentence tells me, has injuries that are threatening nonlife. That, of course, is nonsense, and a reader would have to be thicker than a plank to understand the phrase as other than non-life-threatening injuries, with non modifying life-threatening. Still, it’s an awkward-looking construction, and I think I know where it comes from.
The Associated Press Stylebook says that the prefix non is generally attached without a hyphen. So a copy editor who applies “rules” without thinking will make sure that the reader gets nonlife-threatening.
But the AP says also to use a hyphen to avoid “awkward constructions.”
That would require judgment.
The woman, this sentence tells me, has injuries that are threatening nonlife. That, of course, is nonsense, and a reader would have to be thicker than a plank to understand the phrase as other than non-life-threatening injuries, with non modifying life-threatening. Still, it’s an awkward-looking construction, and I think I know where it comes from.
The Associated Press Stylebook says that the prefix non is generally attached without a hyphen. So a copy editor who applies “rules” without thinking will make sure that the reader gets nonlife-threatening.
But the AP says also to use a hyphen to avoid “awkward constructions.”
That would require judgment.
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