Speaking of Wimbledon, ignorance of the "comma of direct address" apparently isn't confined to the States.
Just as countless American teens write "hi mandy" and "hi jason," as though Mandy and Jason were "hi," one of the British tabloids lent support to adopted Brit Greg Rusedski by printing a full-page sign for spectators reading "COME ON GREG." Comma. Please. Otherwise it's the title of a gay porn movie.
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Thursday, April 03, 2003
Fakery
I trust that journalists will be unanimous in condemning the idea of faking pictures. Perhaps we can channel our outrage over such an incident into something better than 50 percent opposition to faking quotes.
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Protestors and Demonstraters?
Attention, online news sites: It's protester, with an e. Demonstrator has an o. I don't make the rules; I just enforce them.
Friday, December 20, 2002
We Have a Winner
I've made a very unscientific study of what language tics are bothering me most as 2002 wanes, and at the end of the day, the winner for cliche of the year is . . .
"At the end of the day."
Days do end, and sometimes it's necessary to refer to that, so I'm not advocating a search-and-destroy mission for those words. But the phrase appears to be taking over the world as a substitute for other cliches, such as "When all is said and done" and "When the dust settles." In a slightly more scientific study, I searched the LexisNexis database for appearances of "At the end of the day" in The Washington Post. The growth of the cliche was striking: The phrase appeared 39 times in 1980, 140 times in 1995 and 273 times (so far) in 2002.
The cliche is not a 2002 phenomenon, of course. The most significant leap appeared in 1998, with 213 appearances -- up from 142 in 1997. This year just happened to be when this irritant, at least for me, leapt from the background, like the one-minute-unnoticeable, the-next-minute-intolerable noise from the newsroom TV that nobody from the day side ever bothers to turn off.
What to use instead? Ultimately comes to mind as one possibility. You're the editor. Use your imagination.
"At the end of the day."
Days do end, and sometimes it's necessary to refer to that, so I'm not advocating a search-and-destroy mission for those words. But the phrase appears to be taking over the world as a substitute for other cliches, such as "When all is said and done" and "When the dust settles." In a slightly more scientific study, I searched the LexisNexis database for appearances of "At the end of the day" in The Washington Post. The growth of the cliche was striking: The phrase appeared 39 times in 1980, 140 times in 1995 and 273 times (so far) in 2002.
The cliche is not a 2002 phenomenon, of course. The most significant leap appeared in 1998, with 213 appearances -- up from 142 in 1997. This year just happened to be when this irritant, at least for me, leapt from the background, like the one-minute-unnoticeable, the-next-minute-intolerable noise from the newsroom TV that nobody from the day side ever bothers to turn off.
What to use instead? Ultimately comes to mind as one possibility. You're the editor. Use your imagination.
Friday, October 18, 2002
But, But, But ...
This sentence appeared in my newspaper, The Washington Post:
The sniper has struck morning, noon and night, but his most recent targets have been near highways.
Police were looking on the "time" side of the time-space continuum, I suppose, so he eluded them by striking in "space" instead.
I don't mean to pick on editors who probably had very little time to go over this story; I'm just using a handy illustration of a common error:
"But" is not a toy. When you see it as an editor or are tempted to use it as a writer, ask yourself whether it's actually pointing out a seeming contradiction or whether it's just there for decoration. Does the highway thing contradict the "morning, noon and night" thing? Of course not. Usually, then, you could repair the damage by changing "but" to "and." In this case, however, the two parts of the sentence aren't even that closely related. Get me rewrite!
The sniper has struck morning, noon and night, but his most recent targets have been near highways.
Police were looking on the "time" side of the time-space continuum, I suppose, so he eluded them by striking in "space" instead.
I don't mean to pick on editors who probably had very little time to go over this story; I'm just using a handy illustration of a common error:
"But" is not a toy. When you see it as an editor or are tempted to use it as a writer, ask yourself whether it's actually pointing out a seeming contradiction or whether it's just there for decoration. Does the highway thing contradict the "morning, noon and night" thing? Of course not. Usually, then, you could repair the damage by changing "but" to "and." In this case, however, the two parts of the sentence aren't even that closely related. Get me rewrite!
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