What’s Wrong With This Sentence?

No Comments

As I sit here at my desk reading today’s Los Angeles Times, I marvel at how easy it is to misuse a word or otherwise let a writing error slip by, even at multi-million-dollar operations. Check this out:

Angela Spaccia, the $564,000-a-year deputy to the disgraced former city manager of Bell, was found guilty Monday of 11 felony counts related to her role in the corruption scandal, becoming the seventh official convicted of enriching themselves at the expensive of the working-class residents.

Other than leaving a first-time reader wondering about which “corruption scandal” the writer is referencing, the sentence uses an adjective when it needs a noun.

An expensive mistake, no doubt.

Categories: Grammar Notes

Online Piracy: Does It Matter?

No Comments

Before anyone gets ruffled, let it be said that I’m not advocating copyright infringement or piracy of copyrighted works online. After all, I’m a writer, and in the past year I’ve published four copyrighted e-books.

On each occasion, however, when Amazon asked if I wanted to turn on DRM (digital rights management), so these works couldn’t be shared, I declined. In addition, if I somehow learned that my e-books were being offered for free download on a file-sharing site, I’d frankly be honored.

My guess is that, of all the piracy that’s occurred since Napster began the file-sharing trend,  either zero percent of the alleged pirates, or as close to that percentage as possible, would ever have actually paid for their downloaded products had they not been available for “free.”

So piracy, to my way of thinking, is a zero-loss game for the copyright holders. In fact, if you game the piracy system as an author or entertainer, there are even ways to increase your reach and your revenue. (Which could bring up a discussion of “freenomics,” but I’ll spare you.)

At any rate, this long musing comes courtesy of the recent $80-million settlement by file-sharing service Hotfile over its alleged enabling of piracy of copyrighted works.

As TechDirt Editor Michael Masnick notes in his review of the settlement, however, it will first of all never be paid, and if any funds do transfer hands, no artist or movie-maker will see a penny.

I suggest reading Masnick’s “MPAA ‘Settles’ Another ‘Victory’ Against Hotfile.” His conclusion is particularly cogent and spot on:

I don’t see how it’s a victory for anyone. It won’t decrease the amount of infringement. It won’t stop cyberlockers. It won’t help consumers. It won’t help movie makers. It won’t do anything, other than letting the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] declare victory.

Categories: Grammar Notes

Origins of the Word ‘Filibuster’

No Comments

When Senate Democrats acted last week to end filibusters as we know them (at least for certain appointments), cries and sighs were heard on both sides of the Congressional aisle.

Sighs came from the Dems, who now could put in a federal post any person living or dead, criminal or upright.

Cries of injustice rang from the GOPers. Had the Republicans pulled the trigger on the so-called “nuclear option” back in the mid-2000s when they controlled the Senate, however, roles would’ve been reversed with Dems crying affront to democracy and Repubs cheering, at least under their breaths.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was livid earlier this year when State Senator Wendy Davis filibustered the legislature in Austin over an abortion bill. The good guv called it “nothing more than the hijacking of the democratic process.”

Which brings up the origins of the word filibuster, and for this I rely on the research and writings of Merrill Perlman in the Columbia Journalism Review:

Of “filibuster,” The Oxford English Dictionary says, “the ultimate source is certainly the Dutch vrijbuiter,” or “freebooter,” “a privateer … a piratical adventurer, a pirate; any person who goes about in search of plunder.” From the 18th century to the middle of the 19th, the OED says, the preferred term in English was the French “fibustier.” But about “1850-54,” the OED says, the form “filibuster,” from the Spanish filibustero, “began to be employed as the designation of certain adventurers who at that time were active in the W. Indies and Central America.”

The word filibuster began taking on a legislative slant about mid-century (1850s or later) when “someone in the Congressional Globe wrote: ‘I saw my friend … filibustering, as I thought, against the United States.'” (Note the verb usage.)

In 1889, the noun version of  filibuster appeared, referring to the person blocking the action, not to the act itself. Within a few years, the noun filibuster was being applied to “an act of obstruction in a legislative assembly,” the OED says.

In other words, as Perlman notes in his article, equating a filibuster with a hijacking is not without historical and linguistic justification, regardless of which side of the aisle you or your senator sits.

Categories: Grammar Notes

As Simple as 12345

No Comments

dear-santaThe United States Postal Service (USPS), that darling of Benjamin Franklin and his vision for America now gone virtually bust in the face of the digital revolution, created the ZIP code in 1963.

The Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) was introduced in 1944 by Robert Moon, but it took nearly 20 seasons of moons for the USPS to finally got around to implementing the system.

ZIP codes were designed to speed delivery, as we all know. When the service assigned the ZIP numbers, it awarded 12345 — the simplest to remember — to General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y.

As a result, GE gets thousands of “Dear Santa” letters each year from kids who think “12345” is Santa’s personal ZIP Code.

The good news is that employees at the plant volunteer to answer the letters.

The bad news is, well, that USPS is going bust despite its Zone Improvement Plan.

But I’d better shut up. I’m beginning to sound too much like Scrooge.

Categories: Grammar Notes

The End of Reading?

No Comments

Tina-BrownLetter writing has definitely gone bye-bye in favor of 140-character Tweets, misspelled and garbled emails and text messages, and shout outs in all their various forms, but now a noted editor and journalist has driven the last nail in literacy’s coffin by declaring the end of reading.

Tina Brown (pictured),  recently departed from both Newsweek and The Daily Beast, has come out against the printed word by observing that we’re “going back to oral culture where the written word will be less relevant.”

Blame it on the digital revolution, of course. And personally, Ms. Brown doesn’t even read magazines anymore.

“The habit has gone,” the one time editor of Vanity Fair, The New YorkerTalk and Newsweek told reporters in Goa, where she was speaking at the THiNK festival. “I think you can have more satisfaction from live conversations.”

Ms. Brown, coincidentally, is leaving print publishing for a new career in live conferencing, so she’ll no doubt be involved in lots of oral conversations here on out.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep writing. No one wants to listen to me blab anyway. Unfortunately, they probably don’t want to read my writing either, but one must always have hope in life.

Categories: Grammar Notes

‘Silly Remarks’ at Gettysburg

No Comments

Gettysburg-speech-editorial-apologyI don’t know what they do today in public schools, but back in the Pleistocene when I studied Latin, trigonometry and the classics (or pretended to anyway), they made us all memorize and perform Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Not sure about classroom recitals these days, maybe students memorize Jay Z lyrics or lines from Quentin Tarantino movies. Perhaps they just Tweet and send Instagrams, and the teacher retweets.

Anyway, 150 years ago a Gettysburg newspaper (see image) characterized Lincoln’s address as a compilation of “silly remarks.”

The Patriot & Union devoted all of one paragraph to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them, and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.”

On the cusp of the speech’s 150th anniversary, the newspaper — now called the Patriot-News — this week issued an apology, which read in part:

“Our predecessors, perhaps under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time, called President Lincoln’s words ‘silly remarks,’ deserving ‘a veil of oblivion,’ apparently believing it an indifferent and altogether ordinary message, unremarkable in eloquence and uninspiring in its brevity.”

The “strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time” is one of the great reasons I became a journalist. Not sure what journalists drink today, maybe Obamaian Kool-Aid. But pardon my silly remark, please.

Categories: Grammar Notes

‘That’re’ Contraction Not Real English

3 Comments

Contractions are a handy feature in English grammar, allowing us to combine a couple of words into one. Contractions such as we’re and they’re are fine, but I just received an email using the would-be contraction that’re, which is completely bogus and not acceptable in standard English.

Another such unacceptable contraction would be there’re.

Though I know by ear and experience that that’re and there’re are both incorrect English, finding a rule to explain why isn’t so easy to do. I did a Google search on “rules for contractions in English” and found all kinds of sites showing examples of how to correctly use contractions, but not a single site that could cite a rule concerning when contractions shouldn’t be used.

If anyone finds the rules, please let me know.

Meanwhile, remember this: Contractions should never be used in formal writing, whether a college essay or a business proposal. In fact, contractions should generally be confined to oral communication.

Categories: Grammar Notes

Is Objectivity Even Possible in Journalism?

No Comments

Rashomon-posterAs I write this, I’m in the midst of reading a back-and-forth between proponents of so-called “objective” journalism and what I call “emerging” journalism, a brand that doesn’t mind revealing its voice or point of view and relies a lot on online publication.

These two proponents are Glenn Greenwald, he of Edward Snowden NSA-leak fame, and Bill Keller, with whom I’m not familiar but who appears to be as “old school” as it gets when it comes to reporting. (To note as an aside: Greenwald has just been promised $250 million from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to spread Greenwald’s brand of “activist” journalism.)

If the company’s paywall doesn’t block you, you can read “Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?” in today’s New York Times.

My Perspective

Fresh out of the Navy and Vietnam, I got a job as a cub reporter for the defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, and I’ve been involved in journalism in its oh-so-many (some odious) forms since. Let me get to the bottom line: There is no such thing as objectivity in journalism, nor can there be. Merely by the selection of the stories they report, the media of our day reveal their bias. On top of that, the slant they give to these stories is definitely left-friendly. →

Read More

Categories: Grammar Notes

‘Satisfries’ Yes, ‘Floasted’ Never

No Comments

Burger King just came out with a lighter version of French fries that it named Satisfries. I like that. The concoction works both as a word and a concept conveying quick meaning. You can even say, “I’m satisfried,” and it works. (Plus, I’ve had Satisfries, and they’re delicious.)

Now, on the other hand, Quizno’s just came out with a TV commercial in which it touts its sandwiches as being Floasted, a combination of flavorful and roasted. Even the TV actors struggled with the word and the concept. It’s that bad — and that hard to figure out when you hear it. Fortunately, I think Q’s may already have dropped the commercial and hopefully the concept.

Hats off to Satisfries, rest in peace Floasted. ♦

Categories: Grammar Notes