Language Corner
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June 29, 2009 02:46 PM
What’s All the Fuss?
Describing an uproar with fun words
Journalists love words, and many will go out of their way to find “special” ways of using unusual words. Sometimes the words are obscure—using “palimpsest” in a movie review, for example—but more often the words are perfectly understandable, just rarely used in everyday speech. When was the last time you heard someone in casual conversation describe a discussion as “acrimonious”?...
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June 22, 2009 03:09 PM
False Alarms
What the fire department doesn’t tell you
The fire department was having a busy day. First it was the “two-alarm” fire and then came the “six-alarm” one. The reporter knew there was time and space for only one story, and chose to cover the “six-alarm” fire. After all, as the commercial says, “more flags, more fun.”
Except that the “six-alarm” blaze was a grass fire, burning some...
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June 15, 2009 03:17 PM
Jumping Off ‘Allege’
The criminalization of a word
It’s virtually impossible to pinpoint when the misuse of a word or phrase becomes so common that it’s no longer deemed a misuse. But if mere repetition were the main criterion, “alleged” would have lost its stigma a long time ago.
When someone is arrested or accused of a crime, journalists commonly refer to that person as the “alleged murderer,”...
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June 08, 2009 05:12 PM
Compounded Interest
Pick your prefix: “dis” or “un”?
You’ve gotten into a dispute with a merchant, who sold you what you think is defective merchandise. Because the merchant is a member of the Better Business Bureau, you agree to settle the dispute in front of a “disinterested” arbiter.
Wait a minute! You don’t want someone who is “disinterested” to hear your case; you want someone who is “interested.”
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June 02, 2009 08:00 AM
As You Like It
Avoiding “such as” problems
Journalists often have difficulty with highly focused grammatical concepts like subject-verb agreement, dangling participles, whether “none” is plural or singular, and whether to introduce this kind of list with “like” or “such as.”
There are two schools of thought on this. The strict school maintains that the previous sentence was incorrectly structured. That school believes the list of problems that...
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May 19, 2009 10:54 AM
Sick-Out
What do you say when you call?
You’re not feeling well. Maybe it’s the swine flu—or the Mexican flu or H1N1—but you don’t want to take any chances.
So you phone your boss, reporting that you won’t be in that day.
Did you just “call in sick”? Or did you “call out sick”?
The more common expression is “call in sick,” because you’re calling “in”...
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May 15, 2009 01:05 PM
Freelance-A-Lot
Defining the terms of employment
What happens to many journalists who are laid off? in many cases, they become “permalancers,” sometimes even for their previous employers. “Permalancer” (the noun) and “permalance” (the verb and adverb) are a conflation of “permanent” and “freelancer,” and that’s what those journalists are—they freelance full time at a single company.
While “permalancer” may have first appeared in the late 1990s,...
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May 11, 2009 03:13 PM
I Want to Be Alone
Why one transition should disappear
Journalists are pack animals. If someone does a story, others often follow. So it is, too, with words and phrases. One will spot a new, fresh-sounding word or phrase, and pretty soon there is a stampede to rival anything outside the Drew Peterson court proceedings.
There are fad transitions, too. Among the most popular of these, if not the...
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May 04, 2009 03:50 PM
Caution! Merge Ahead
How two words become one
Two-word expressions often cause trouble when they are combined with yet a third word, becoming compound modifiers. Most journalists have heard of the “small businessman” who is supposed to become the “small-business man” to avoid having readers think, even for a second, that the businessman is height-challenged.
Many style guides, even those that try to avoid hyphens, recommend putting...
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April 28, 2009 10:35 AM
Let’s Not Fight About It
It’s arguably not worth it
For unknown reasons, English speakers insist on making the language more difficult than it already is, by modifying words to use in different ways. Who was the genius, for example, who decided that “irregardless” was better than “regardless”?
Those people are “arguably” not well educated. Wait! Does that mean we’re saying that they are not well educated? Or is it...
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April 20, 2009 03:54 PM
The Golden Years
Happy fiftieth birthday, Strunk & White
April 16 was the fiftieth anniversary of the release of The Elements of Style, the “little book” that so many people remember from English classes.
In reality, of course, The Elements of Style is much older than that, since it was originally published in 1918, by William Strunk Jr. One of his students, E.B. White, he of Charlotte’s Web and...
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April 13, 2009 11:00 AM
Serial Killer
Why the 'serial comma' isn't important
You know it, and you love it or hate it—it’s the last comma in a simple series, the one before “and,” “but,” or “or.” (Or, the one before “and,” but” or “or.”) It even has aliases: the Harvard comma, or the Oxford comma. As mentioned here on numerous occasions, many people are more passionate about the “serial comma” than about...
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April 06, 2009 01:36 PM
Hopefully Yours
Is “full of hope” full of it?
“Hopefully,” Americans have been watching the first overseas visit of President Barack Obama.
Those Americans who were taught English and grammar between the 1960s and 1980s have probably been watching “in a hopeful manner.” Those who were taught at other times have probably been thinking that “it is hoped” others were watching.
“Hopefully” spurs discussions that, like those about the...
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March 31, 2009 03:54 PM
Firing Blanks
Is everyone who loses a job “fired”?
The day Brenda Starr has been dreading has arrived. Her new boss, Mr. Bottomline, says she has become too expensive. “You ... you .. you’re firing me?” she says incredulously. “I’d never do that, Starr,” the cigar-chomping boss replies. “But I can’t afford to pay you anymore. So I’m putting you on furlough.”
Our heroine, however, will have, none...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Amplifying the Drumbeat on the “Overdraft Protection” Racket The issue picks up momentum in the financial press
- Journal: Wall Street Pay Could Set Records
The Observatory Science
- Some Optimism for the Future of Science Journalism And especially for international collaboration
- NSF “Underwriting” Coverage… And other controversies from the World Conference of Science Journalists
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- More PitneyGate Fallout? Press focused on who asked questions at Obama town hall
- The Economy Today: School’s Out With Money Tight, Classes Are Slashed