Unca Darrell

MAY 31 / Style, usage, journalism

Deficit

Never mind that the Legislature refused to even touch its Rainy Day Fund during a budget cycle with a monsoon-sized $27 billion deficit [read gap between projected spending and projected income]. (Patricia Kilday Hart, "Straus learns risks of trying to appease extremists," Houston Chronicle, May 30, 2012)

Ms. Kilday Hart, one of the cleverest of the Clever Ones, needs to . . .

APRIL 30 / Style, usage, journalism

Cultural allusions

Because Republicans oppose high-speed rail, therefore they would have opposed industrialization in the 19th century. They do plan to build a wayback machine[read WABAC machine?] to the Gilded Age, however, by handing a $150,000 check to every American millionaire, a million-dollar check to every billionaire, and a billion-dollar check to every trillionaire. (Editorial, "Paul Ryan's Hunger Games," Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2012)

APRIL 12 / That horrible crash you heard on the front lawn this morning . . .

. . . was all these figures of speech and cliches slamming into each other: 

MARCH 31 / Style, usage, journalism

Fact checking: calling things by their right name

As the reality of [R. Allen] Stanford's Ponzi scheme came to light three years ago, watchers and whistleblowers claimed that the Security [read Securities] and Exchange Commission was well aware of potential problems with Stanford's business. (Editorial, "The Stanford verdict," Houston Chronicle, March 7, 2012)

This mistake had to go through at least one writer and one editor, neither of whom was sufficiently familiar with the 78-year-old SEC to know its proper name. It's bad journalism, of course, but also faintly ironic: A newspaper that promotes big government should at least bother to keep up with the names of the many agencies it loves, even when, as here, one proves unworthy. 

Straitjacket

I'll get my way even if I have to put the entire process in a straight jacket [read straitjacket]! (Nick Anderson, editorial cartoon about City Council member Helena Brown, Houston Chronicle, March 4, 2012)

Garner: "The strait in this word means 'close-fitting.' Straightjacket is a common but undesirable variant for straitjacket."

Notice that Mr. Anderson not only got straight/strait wrong but also incorrectly split the compound word -- straight jacket instead of straightjacket. These mistakes disappeared when the cartoon migrated from chron.com to the printed newspaper, but as I write the version on chron.com is still wrong.

I'll leave it to the Chronicle's high sheriff of civility to sort out the propriety of using mental illness as a descriptive category for a disfavored politician. And the logic of applying that label to a lone conservative when the left provides such a target-rich environment of candidates for the honor. 

Stylebooks

All writers need help. Careful writers need it most because they understand the difficulties. To Garner, Chicago, and the other standards, add The Economist Style Guide. It's $50 at the Economist's Web site; less than $20 at amazon.com. The newspaper -- as the Economist calls itself -- also has a delicious blog on matters of style and usage. Here is a righteous takedown of Rush Limbaugh's apology to Sandra Fluke. The February 25 issue of the print version of the Economist said the stylebook was online at economist.com/stylebook. As I write, it's not there. Maybe the posting has been delayed.

FEBRUARY 29 / Style, usage, journalism

Fact-Checking a Benighted NYT Columnist

Although it is unlikely that Thomas Jefferson ever read the writings of [Roger] Williams when he was formalizing the separation of church and state in the Constitution, he was, nonetheless, influenced by him . . . . (Joe Nocera, "A Revolutionary Idea," New York Times, February 24, 2012)

Thomas Jefferson did not write, much less . . .

JANUARY 31 / Style, Usage, Journalism

First-Person Pronouns

It's always nice to meet a world leader who has bigger ears than me [read I]. (Barack H. Obama, speech, Disney World, January 20, 2012)

The world leader to whom Mr. Obama was referring was, of course . . .

NOVEMBER 30 / Style, usage, journalism

New book for style, usage, and grammar nerds

Who decides whether it's acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition or to use the word "infer" as a synonym for "imply?" Who decides whether the phrase "free gift" is redundant and therefore incorrect, and whether it's proper to speak of a "mutual friend" since "mutual" refers to a relationship between two, not three? Most literate people still want these questions decided for them by some authority, whether H.W. Fowler, the usage notes in the American Heritage Dictionary or the guy in the next cubicle who knows a lot about grammar. This urge for clarity remains despite the efforts of academic linquists and other "descriptivist" grammarians who dismiss the notion of grammatical "correctness" and insist that "rules" are wholly determined by usage. 

The trouble with descriptivism -- the idea that the grammarian's job is to describe the language, not to issue judgments about propriety -- isn't that it's theoretically unsound. Rules really are just conventions. The trouble with descriptivism is that it's inhuman. People will always want to know the right way to say a thing.

(Barton Swaim, "Grappling Grammarians," Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2011, reviewing Henry Hitchings, The Language Wars (2011)). 

For the record, Mr. Swaim incorrectly characterizes most of his examples as issues of grammar. Except for the one about a preposition at the end of a sentence, they're really questions of style and usage, not grammar. But the book still sounds interesting.   

Collective nouns

But the couple fears [read fear] they will be forced to close their shelter . . . . (Cindy Horswell, "Homeless shelter trapped between needs and rules," Houston Chronicle, November 15, 2011)

Should couple be treated as a singular or plural noun? The Chronicle's answer is yes. In the same sentence, the verb fears is singular, but the corresponding pronouns they and their are plural. 

Couple is always difficult. Logically, it is singular. Logically, we should say couple fears it will be forced to close its shelter. But what is logical is also awkward. Bryan Garner gets it right when he says "the plural construction is . . . far more convenient" (Garner 206).   

Facts

When Herman Cain began singing "Amazing Grace" (read "He Looked Beyond My Fault") at the National Press Club . . . . (Harry Jackson, "The Churches of Cain and Obama," Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2011)

Lots of journalists mistook "He Looked Beyond my Fault" for "Amazing Grace," which bespeaks both religious and cultural illiteracy. What was amazing about Mr. Jackson's mistake, however, is that he is senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland. Did he not know? Or did he just take some journalist's word for it? Either way, where was the WSJ factchecker? A blogger at the Houston Chronicle got it right and pointed a finger at those that didn't.  

NOVEMBER 27 / As the 400th-year anniversary . . .

. . . of the King James Bible draws to a close, National Geographic reminds us how that holy book molded the English-speaking world:

You don't have to be a Christian to hear the power of those words -- simple in vocabulary, cosmic in scale . . .

 

NOVEMBER 16 / "Diversity? Most certainty!"

In honor of the Houston Chronicle: 

Diversity? Most absolutity! Most certainty!  

OCTOBER 31 / Style, Usage, Journalism

African American, African-American

Jones and Robinson are both [see Both below] black Democrats running for a seat traditionally held by an African-American [read African American]. (Chris Moran, "Challengers new and old for Jones," Houston Chronicle, October 19, 2011)