You Don't Say - English grammar, language, usage and journalism blog by John E. McIntyre

Joke of the week: "Last Wishes"

In a word: embonpoint

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:

A bad week for Joan Acocella

Since Joan Acocella of The New Yorker reviewed The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings, which she appears not to have understood, she has been subjected to a rare old pounding.

Best-of joke of the week: John McIntyre shares his favorite jokes

A rather subdued day yesterday at Casa McIntyre: The Son and Heir spent most of the day in his room with some sort of gastric distress that he generously shared wth me, and She Who Must Be returned ill from a conference. Today's main excitement will be experimenting with food other than soda crackers and plain pasta.

Cheap shot

At Throw Grammar From the Train, Jan Freeman alerts us to an article by Joan Acocella in The New Yorker on descriptivism vs. prescriptivism that will not enlighten you.

In a word: autochthonous

You might have looked it up first

It's not that I mind being treated as an oracle — it's a little flattering to be consulted on points of language and usage. But I sometimes wonder why people write to me for answers that are, or ought to be, near at hand to them.

The Kentucky drinking game

If the julep ceremonial previously described is too fussy for you, I offer a traditional drinking game from the Commonwealth.

The mistake of taking the hard line

Commenting from Albion, the estimable Picky recently wrote: "As I look back on a very privileged life I note that although the language I spoke mostly as a child was that of the London streets, my parents (typically of the upper working class in those days they enriched English by reading Dickens and Trollope and Austen to each other in the evenings - anyone do that nowadays?) and my school together provided me also with something very close to standard English, and I traded on that, essentially made my living from it, for the rest of my life. People who tell me that 'ain't' is perfectly good English dating back to Hengist and Horsa or Whoever are right, of course, but more important is knowing when 'ain't' is OK and when it ain't. People who shy from passing that sort of stuff on to others may be very clever and very knowledgeable about language, but they are not doing their fellows any favours at all."

A day for the julep

Watch your mouth

Ashley Montagu wrote a thoroughgoing and readable study of our potty-mouth propensities in The Anatomy of Swearing (1967). Jesse Sheidlower published a book on our favorite expletive, The F Word, in 2009 (reviewed here). Now Grant Barrett, a lexicographer, a trained professional, not a smut hound, people, wants to know what bad words you favor, when you use them, and with whom.

Reading all the way through

Had you heard that the Kenyan Keynesian socialist Muslim sleeper agent in the White House is trying to kill off the nation's sparrows? At HeadsUp, FEV examines a Washington Free Beacon article that makes such a claim, which turns out (you did see this coming, didn't you?) to be entirely bogus.

Take me to your leadership

At one end of a shelf in my office at the paragraph factory a plaque collects dust, through which it can be seen that John E. McIntyre successfully participated in The Times Mirror Leadership Institute for Managers. Twelve years ago, when there was still such a thing as Times Mirror.

Signs you're being misled

Last week at Ragan's PR Daily, Steve Vittorioso published a little article, "20 (more) signs you're a word nerd," which neatly encapsulates the combination of sound counsel, ineffective generality, and downright error that marks much of the current writing about language and usage.

In a word: crotchet

Is it morning already?

Posting after midnight will catch a handful of copy editors and insomniacs, my natural audience, but some of the rest of you may overlook things. So I draw your attention to a late-night, early-morning post at which I chime in with Stan Carey on banned words, before, having been wakened at eight o'clock by the plumber coming to call, I go on with a roundup of items for today.

Moist slacks

In an antic moment last week, The New Yorker pitched an appeal to readers: What word would you most like to eliminate from the English language? Awesome and epic won some votes because of overuse, phlegm from disgustingness, but moist, which has recently taken on an evil odor, overwhelmed. In its wisdom, however, The New Yorker chose slacks as a word worthy of extinction.

As good as it gets

Steve Buttry meditated yesterday on recapturing the joy and excitement of journalism, offering some valuable suggestions. I have another. Relish the work.

Hey, AP Stylebook, I found another one

Editing an article for Wednesday's editions of The Sun, I let through a reference to an automobile that "collided witha guardrail," then paused and doubled back to the Associated Press Stylebook. Like an insect preserved in amber, the entry was still there:

The bloom on the locust

The locust trees are in bloom today. That's the black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, one of the last trees to bloom. In eastern Kentucky, where the tree is plentiful, those delicate white blossoms perfume the countryside, and it is by their appearance that I know that spring has well and truly arrived.

In a word: minatory

Holding the line

A BBC article this week on language issues quoted me briefly on who/whom, but you already know what I think about that. Some of the other issues mentioned in the article, though, are worth considering as we consider where we want to draw the line.

Degenerates welcome

At Salon.com, Mary Elizabeth Williams is not happy with the Associated Press Stylebook's abandonment of the nonsensical prohibition of hopefully as a sentence adverb, and collaterally not happy with me for my part in prodding the editors toward that decision.

Hopefully, someone might learn something

In a New Yorker cartoon from thirty years ago, a man turns to another in a bar and asks belligerently, "Hopefullywise? Did I understand you to say hopefullywise?"

Things unseen

Some of you have commented, vigorously, on the frustrations of attempting to comment at this blog, and have further commented that your comments are then invisible. It is regrettable that, at the current stage of development of the software, the little "Comments" label at the top of the post regularly registers zero when there are in fact comments below that you cannot see.

In a word: subvention

The difference between God and a doctor

God doesn't think he's a doctor.

A moment of personal triumph

It's the day after American Copy Editors Society's New Orleans conference, the cat has grudgingly conceded that I still live here, and Haydn's Symphony No. 90 is bouncing away in the background. Life is good, and ACES was grand.

About John McIntyre

John McIntyre, mild-mannered editor for a great metropolitan newspaper, has fussed over writers' work, to sporadic expressions of gratitude, for thirty years. He is The Sun's night content production manager and former head of its copy desk. He also teaches editing at Loyola University Maryland. A former president of the American Copy Editors Society, a native of Kentucky, a graduate of Michigan State and Syracuse, and a moderate prescriptivist, he writes about language, journalism, and arbitrarily chosen topics. If you are inspired by a spirit of contradiction, comment on the posts or write to him at john.mcintyre@baltsun.com.

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