Language Corner — November 13, 2012 06:50 AM

Of storms and ships at sea

Let’s not take them personally

By Merrill Perlman

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"Language Corner" is an obsolete column. It will not be possible for the writer to work out of the corner.

Here is some text from CJR: "Part of what makes journalism good is accountability; part of what makes it fail is clouded judgment and ill-judged reactions to external pressures. Creating a culture that supports both within a newsroom is not something easily imposed from outside."

I admit that I am so lazy as a reader that I did not even try to focus "both." What could it mean? Apparently it slipped in without consideration.

The goal of the writer of a language column should be to promote language sensitivity. The writer of the quoted matter could easily have made a mistake, but should have worked back over the text to make sure that it was coherent.

"Language Corner," just as "The Journalist's Rule of Thumb for News Coverage," is Stone Dead.

Teaching textual insensitivity is common in schools and colleges. A graduate of one got mixed up in a bad Random House mess. He wrote an essay in The New York Times Magazine in June based on his foreword to the 2012 Modern Library "Absalom, Absalom!" In 1993, Modern Library reset the 1986 Corrected Text without notifying the editor, Noel Polk, and made 20 major errors.

The 2012 "edition" is a botched reissue. John Jeremiah Sullivan, having been carefully nurtured in textual insensitivity, temporized, and then got angry, alluding to the bureaucracy of Random House, and throwing in a few insults.

Programming young people into insensitivity to language failed at the "On Language" column at The NYT because the silly thing collapsed.

"Language Corner," with its notes on usage, trivia, and minutiae passing for language knowledge among journalists, is not good enough. It is a category mistake.

When you are wrong, but you know that you are right, then there is no hope.

claytonburns@gmail.com

#1 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Tue 13 Nov 2012 at 05:05 PM

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