Blogslot

We Use Frankfurters in Our Hot Dogs!

2008-07-04T12:34:00.001-04:00

I have trouble even stomaching the smell of Subway outlets, but I have to hand it to the folks at the mega-chain: Corned-beef Reubens really are the best kind of Reubens. (If only somebody would break it to them about the grilled rye bread.)

I'm hoping the ubiquitous eatery follows up the Corned Beef Reuben with something equally distinctive: perhaps a roast-beef French dip, or a bacon BLT, or even a peanut-butter-and-jelly peanut butter and jelly.

Obama Calls America Wicked

2008-07-03T00:31:00.000-04:00

OK, not really. But there was this:

Obama emphasized what he called "the enormity of the American accomplishment," touring Peterson Air Force Base here, viewing the ultra-secretive North American Aerospace Defense Command, U.S. Northern Command headquarters and the Air Force Academy.

It's not quite "misunderestimated," but it could be a little disappointing to . . . "some."

A 10-Yard Infraction

2008-07-02T01:33:00.002-04:00

This headline works well -- if the story is about a penalty in American
football.

But enough about helping verbs. What's new with you?

No, I Don't Have Any Blue Oyster Cult

2008-06-30T01:58:00.006-04:00

I came across a refreshing usage at work last night.

Mark Rozell, a professor of political science at George Mason University, said the similarity of the attacks suggests a concerted effort to "build a picture" about Obama's character before the political newcomer has a chance to convince people of the truth of his rhetoric.

Yes! For once, concerted means "concerted"! The story was about various McCain operatives working together, in concert. That's right: To make a concerted effort, despite widespread usage, isn't to try really, really hard to do something. That would be, perhaps, a determined effort.

Even the notoriously permissive Merriam-Webster's dictionary doesn't accept the "trying rully, rully hard" definition.

Hello?

2008-06-26T17:59:00.004-04:00

If you're reading this blog, you don't need to be told this. But just in case:

Copy editors must check all telephone numbers in the material they're editing. That means picking up the phone and calling the number. Telephone-number corrections should be virtually nonexistent. (As you also no doubt know, they're pretty common.)

The same goes for Web addresses.

Mission Viejo Masala

2008-06-25T09:53:00.006-04:00

Welcome to the OC, bitch.

They Like Us; They Really Like Us

2008-06-21T19:41:00.005-04:00

On the heels of Lawrence Downes's sincere elegy to copy editors in the New York Times, Gene Weingarten tips his hat as only Gene can do in the Washington Post.

UPDATE: Chris Wienandt and David Sullivan respond to the Times piece.

More Fun With (the Lack of) Helping Verbs

2008-06-19T00:28:00.003-04:00

No structural problem here, just a humorous linguistic coincidence that makes me think the headline writer was a robot, not a human.

Presumptions, Presumptions

2008-06-09T11:59:00.003-04:00

Yes, it's wrong to call either Barack Obama or John McCain a nominee until the conventions decree them so. They've clinched, claimed and even secured their parties' nominations, but they haven't received or accepted those nominations. So go ahead and insert "presumptive" before "nominee," but don't feel the need to repeat "Presumptive nominee! Presumptive nominee! Presumptive nominee!" like a parrot forced to watch MSNBC. It's especially silly to write about how Sen. Barack Obama is planning his strategy for the November general election against Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Obama is just as "presumptive" as McCain is, the currency of his headlines notwithstanding, and that hedge after the mention of McCain isn't much of a hedge at all -- it's basically saying that Obama is going to face McCain in November whether McCain gets the nomination or not. But a truly prudent sentence would be truly comical, so how about we just let hypotheticals be hypotheticals and talk about the November matchup between McCain and Obama? I'd rather be presumptuous than type "presumptive" a few dozen more times.

LOL

2008-06-05T19:24:00.002-04:00

(More LOLcats here.)

Why I Am Not a Cartoonist

2008-05-28T15:05:00.003-04:00

Hey, I was 15. (I'm proud to see that I included the comma in "No, they didn't.")

An Anti-Child Law

2008-05-19T11:14:00.002-04:00

Yahoo appears to be describing a pornography law as "anti-child." What the headline writer meant, of course, was "anti-child-pornography law." Be against hyphens if you like (I say "child-pornography law," you say "child pornography law"; potayto, potahto), but once you deign to use one, you have to agree to the terms of service. Hyphens join, and you need two hyphens to join three groups of letters. You can get away with health-care systems analyst as opposed to health-care-systems analyst (yes, it's an analyst of health-care systems, but it's also a systems analyst in the field of health care), but the law in question is against child pornography, not against children.

I'm not a big fan of the en dash, by the way, but in more bookish prose you could theoretically get away with anti–child pornography law.

The Onion: Brilliant as Ever?

2008-05-18T22:18:00.001-04:00

Hillary Clinton and the Dead Parrot

2008-05-14T01:42:00.004-04:00

I love Monty Python. I love writing headlines for Dana Milbank columns. The twain met yesterday, and the options were too many and yet too few. I chose This Is an Ex-Candidate, but it wasn't my favorite Milbank headline. There were a number of runners-up. Did I choose correctly? Do you have a better idea? My other options:

Preaching to the Choir Invisible
Pining for the Rose Garden

Pining, or Passed On? (Jacqueline's idea)

Hello, Polly!

White Americans and the Norwegian Blue

The Palindrome of 'Clinton' Would Be 'Notnilc' (for true enthusiasts)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Talking

2008-05-05T01:21:00.003-04:00

One of the more arcane (but nearly universal) shibboleths of the copy-editing profession is the knowledge that that thing that everybody else calls a podium is actually a lectern.

It's hard to argue with the pod-/ped-* root, but, as I keep saying, please use your brain and not the search-and-replace function. OK, fine, a politician doesn't stand behind a podium to make a speech, but he or she most certainly could take the podium. (Who's to say such a reference is necessarily to the thing the speaker is standing behind, as opposed to the thing the politician is standing on?) Of course, you have to make sure the context is a rally, or something of that sort, rather than the White House press room, where the lectern simply stands on the floor, but if you're going to get all eggheady about what podium means, you should stick around in that frame of mind and acknowledge that it does mean something, and you should realize that there are plenty of cases in which either word would work.

*One of my favorite stupid everyday jokes goes something like: "We're going to be walking a lot, and we'll want to know how far, so don't forget to bring your pedophile!"

Leaving Room

2008-05-02T10:01:00.003-04:00

I've been waiting all night for someone like you
But you'll have to do.
-- The Psychedelic Furs

We maintain distinctions not only to get things right this time, but also to leave room for next time, when we might mean the thing we don't mean this time. Did the youth in the (entirely correct) headline above lose his job? Of course not. But that's what readers are trained to read if publications omit helping verbs from headlines willy-nilly.

Does the above lyric make you smile, or at least make the slightest bit of sense? It does, but only if you have some inkling that like is not the same thing as such as.

See? It's Not So Hard.

2008-04-30T22:54:00.002-04:00

With more resources than most other publications, the New York Times is able to afford the necessary helping verbs.

As I Saying . . .

2008-04-30T15:49:00.002-04:00

Okay, so two people fired guns toward a school building and then the cops hauled in somebody who was learning to use Microsoft spreadsheets?

[Yes, there's something missing from my headline. A helping verb.]

Rules That Are

2008-04-28T13:04:00.002-04:00

If you've read many of my rants or attended any of my presentations, you've probably heard me address "rules that aren't" -- those little superstitions have become the public face of grammardom even though they have little or no basis in fact. Split infinitives? They're just fine, and often preferable to the alternative. Ending sentences with prepositions? Beginning sentences with conjunctions? Nothing inherently wrong with either practice.

But I'm far from being entirely descriptivist. There are plenty of very common usage habits that have to be called inadvisable or just plain wrong, even when they produce perfectly understandable sentences. One such no-no is the dangler. I sometimes draw a blank when I have to come up with an example of a dangler, but I came across a couple of them in quick succession as I started to read the autobiography of Muhammad Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee, and I thought I'd share.

Unable to renew his unrenewable youth, Ali's skills had declined during his enforced layoff.

It was Ali who was unable to renew his unrenewable youth, not "Ali's skills." Recast.

Awkward and rugged, it seemed as if Ali had underestimated him and his strength.

It was "him" (opponent Oscar Bonavena) who was awkward and rugged, not "it." Recast.

Help Yourself to a Helping Verb

2008-04-10T10:01:00.004-04:00

USA Today tells us that 150,000 scrambled after more flights canceled. After more flights canceled what? You can scramble after more flight cancellations, or after more flights are canceled, but you can't scramble after more flights canceled, just as politicians can't say a bill bad. That's an improper headline shortcut.

Some more, from elsewhere:

Dad arrested after
dispute over which
gang right for baby

Comic says studios fear
femme flicks not funny

Watchdog group
says law violated

Doing Without Us

2008-04-10T09:04:00.003-04:00

As copy editors gather in Denver to talk of many things, including the reality that publications are getting less interested in copy editing as we know it, there is news of a rather drastic example of that trend.

The graphic above, of course, is a joke. For now.

'I'm Calling From the Trib'

2008-03-27T22:17:00.011-04:00

I was delighted to find that Hulu, the television networks' remarkable answer to YouTube, includes the first season (22 episodes) of "Lou Grant," the newspaper-centered series that ran for five seasons and ended in the middle of my college journalism studies.

If you're of roughly my vintage, you might enjoy Tony L. Hill's Canonical Lou Grant Episode Guide (founded in 1995, just like The Slot!). That's where I stole the screen grab above. Bannon's character, Assistant City Editor Art Donovan, was smart, funny, well dressed and, in a goofy-kid-stuff way, my journalistic role model. (Bannon's mother, I just learned, was Bea Benaderet, an actress whose claims to fame include being the voice of Betty Rubble.)

The saga of Lou, Art, Joe Rossi, Billie Newman, Charlie Hume, Animal and the other staffers at the Los Angeles Tribune is one of the series I've been waiting in vain to see on DVD, so this is a special moment for me. A second special moment came when I searched Amazon.com to confirm that the series still isn't on DVD: Although that's still true, Amazon does offer low-cost downloadsof episodes from the first three seasons (you can also buy a season at a time). So, if your favorite episode is from Season 1, it's free on Hulu. If it's from Seasons 2 or 3, it's a couple of bucks at Amazon. (Tony Hill tells me Lou also shows up on iTunes.)

Unfortunately, the following episode is from Season 4:

EPISODE 71 - Nightside (22 September 1980)
Written by: Michele Gallery; Directed by: Gene Reynolds

SYNOPSIS: Lou takes a turn filling in on the night shift and sees an unusual side of the paper.

UPDATE: I'm finally getting around to watching. Here's a bit of plus ca change dialogue:

Art Donovan: "Mrs. Pynchon is very interested in endangered species."
Lou Grant: "Yeah. That's why she owns a newspaper."

That aired on Jan. 3, 1978.

Love and War

2008-03-26T11:23:00.002-04:00

Just as you celebrate a wedding anniversary and not a marriage anniversary, the recent milestone in the "war" in Iraq was the fifth anniversary of the invasion, not of the war. I'm just not sure what the fifth anniversary of a war (or a marriage) would be; it sounds like an observation of the full event -- the end, not the beginning.

In other news, a "terrorist suspect" would be a suspect who is a terrorist. (Maybe the guy with the Glock on that 7-Eleven surveillance tape looked like Osama bin Laden?) A person suspected of terrorism is a terrorism suspect, or, if you must, a suspected terrorist. It's murder suspect, after all, not murderer suspect.

Ask Merrill

2008-03-24T11:55:00.003-04:00

Merrill Perlman at the New York Times is once again up to bat for "Ask the Editors." Any questions?

When Style Gets Serious

2008-03-13T23:36:00.002-04:00

If you can't fix a broken leg, I'm not calling you "doctor."

For many years that was the smart-aleck, in-a-nutshell version of my honorifics policy when it comes to Ph.D.s. In "Lapsing Into a Comma," I got more precise:

Doctors are doctors. People with doctorates are people with doctorates.

It's best to avoid the issue altogether, and unless your publication routinely uses courtesy titles (Mr. Clinton met with Mr. Kohl), it's a pretty easy issue to avoid. If Marcus Welby is a physician, say physician Marcus Welby. Otherwise you have to make tough decisions on where to draw the Dr. line. Dentists? Veterinarians? Chiropractors?

If you think I'm being a Nazi about this . . .

At least seven U.S. citizens working as researchers in Germany have faced criminal probes in recent months for using the title "Dr." on their business cards, Web sites and resumes. They all hold doctoral degrees from elite universities back home.