What I read this week: Aug. 4-10, 2013

Here are some of the things I found interesting or helpful this week:

Teresa Schmedding, the president of ACES, wrote a post on her personal blog titled “What are you reading to stay up on journalism/digital trends” that highlighted great places on the Web for those interested in journalism.

I read Anne Curzan’s Lingua Franca post about “impactful” and Mark Lieberman’s Language Log post in response. I love to read linguists’ take on words that some of us find ugly or wrong. Nobody is ever going to get me to like “impactful,” but I recognize that my distaste is not universal and it may not even be justified. On the jargon front, I spent some time this week trying to get to the heart of the many uses of “leverage” in business speak. This sentence appeared in an article about executive pay:  Overly leveraged incentive plans can drive aggressive management decisions, while putting too little pay at risk can promote a “pay for pulse” culture. I wondered whether companies were paying their executives with debt, but what it meant was that some compensation plans depend too much on taking risks. In other works, the incentive plans are tied heavily to increasing value for the shareholders. I think our readers for that particular article (mostly management accountants) probably understand “leverage” — it’s just the literal-minded copy editor who has a problem with it.

I learned something new from Constance Hale’s Lingua Franca post on literary techniques “There’s parataxis, and then there’s hypotaxis.”  Copy editors need to pay attention to the devices that writers use so that when we need to help them smooth out the rough spots, we don’t rub away all the best parts.


Keep the copy editors, Jeff

As a copy editor, I was heartened that Jeff Bezos’s memo to the staff of the Washington Post after he bought the venerable newspaper included this:

We will continue to follow the truth wherever it leads, and we’ll work hard not to make mistakes. When we do, we will own up to them quickly and completely.

One way he can achieve his ideal is to ensure that the Post keeps its copy editors. I hope he will see the short-term value in having dedicated on-staff, on-site professionals who will keep harmful and embarrassing mistakes from being published and the long-term value of the deep credibility that comes from having a well-edited publication in all its platforms.

Copy editors are essential to that credibility. They are committed to truth, too, and their skeptical and pointed questions and thoughtful editing along the way will help the Post build itself back up.

I want Bezos’s Post to succeed, and I want it to succeed with copy editors as part of the team.

 

 


Let’s get ready to wrangle — er, wangle?

I am creating a grammar/usage game in a quiz show format to present at my workplace. It’s just for fun, and I am being somewhat prescriptivist in my questions. Some of you will disapprove, I am sure, of my advice (and that’s all it is — advice) on, for possible examples, enormity and comprise.

I thought about adding the tricky wrangle/wangle in the second, more difficult round, but whenever I have used that distinction in the past, I usually get this response: Nobody says wangle!

Read the rest of this entry »


Pardon me, but your editing is showing

Seeing evidence of editing in a published work gives me a little thrill. We copy editors strive to make sure that our editing is not noticed — that is, we try to maintain the writer’s voice when we smooth out sentences and correct usage. Depending on our role, we might also try to make sure that the writer’s work is accurate. But we try to do this as unobtrusively as we can. Like the ladies of another generation who were mortified when a slip peeked out from beneath their skirt, we are embarrassed if our editing shows.

One recent Sunday, as I read journalist Helen Thomas’s obituary in the New York Times in print, I saw this:

thomasobit-7212013

As you can see, someone who handled that story asked whether the reference to Thomas’s parents’ origin in a part of Syria should be changed to the Ottoman Empire. It’s a great question. The Ottoman Empire held the territory that is now Syria and Lebanon into the 20th century. An earlier sentence in Thomas’s obit refers to her parents immigrating to the United States from what is now Lebanon.

The question could have been inserted anytime in the editing; I like to imagine a sharp copy editor on the job. The problem, of course, is that the editing system somehow turned a note into published text. We are sometimes betrayed by our technology. Also, we can’t tell whether the question was answered, dismissed, or merely missed, although the reference in the online version hints at what the solution was. Here is that paragraph in the online version:

Helen Thomas was born in Winchester, Ky., on Aug. 4, 1920, and grew up in Detroit, one of 10 children of George and Mary Thomas. Her father, who could not read or write, encouraged his children to go to college.

Even though the question showed up in print in a way that I am sure led to some chagrin, I am glad that it was raised.

 


Check out the new Grammar Guide quiz (inspired by good usage)

I often use published mistakes for my Grammar Guide quizzes, but today I was inspired by writers and editors who got things right. All of the sentences in today’s Grammar Guide quiz (It’s No. 71) come from The New York Times. I read the national edition in print on Sunday mornings. This quiz will betray my reading interests; I turn first to the Sunday Review, the Book Review and Sunday Styles (I love the wedding reports).

As usual, the quiz is more about usage and copy editing than about the mechanics of grammar. And I am somewhat prescriptivist in my outlook, so some things that I call attention to on the quizzes are not errors; they are merely choices that a writer or editor would make. I try to add notes and disclaimers in the quiz answers to let readers know that just because the answer they chose was “incorrect” doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.

Take my advice — or don’t. The quizzes are designed to give people practice and perhaps to impart knowledge that copy editors and writers might find useful. You sometimes have to know the “rules,” even the zombie ones, so you can defend against them. (By the way, there is a sentence about zombies on the quiz. Does that pique your interest?)

And, as long as I am revealing my perhaps elitist bent, I will recommend reading Frank Bruni’s column, “America the Clueless.” It will curl your hair.

But first, try the quiz.