With the news that television journalist Edwin Newman has died comes the realization that we have lost another friend and protector of the English language. Earlier this year, James J. Kilpatrick ("The Writer's Art") passed on. The two of them walked the walk (spoke the speak?) in promoting simple, proper usage. Fortunately, their writings will live on.
Newman, a fixture on NBC newscasts, began writing books in the 1970s, taking on the linguistic excesses of Watergate, sportscasters, academics and bureaucrats with wit and indignation, his AP obit notes. Both "Strictly Speaking" and "A Civil Tongue" were best sellers.
"A civil tongue ... means to me a language that is not bogged down in jargon, not puffed up with false dignity, not studded with trick phrases that have lost their meaning," he wrote.
"It is direct, specific, concrete, vigorous, colorful, subtle and imaginative when it should be, and as lucid and eloquent as we are able to make it. It is something to revel in and enjoy."
Words to live -- and write -- by. R.I.P. Edwin.