It’s not known if William Safire, who wrote the “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine for 30 years till earlier this month, was conversant with the ways of social media, but it is safe to presume that he would have been horrified at how his demise last night was coveyed to readers…
Category Archives: Language and Style
‘How can you say it better in your own style?’
James Thurber, the legendary New Yorker writer-cartoonist, in a 1959 memo on editing: “Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, “How can I help this writer to say it better…
‘A grammar book by grammatical incompetents’
April 16, 2009, marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Elements of Style, the landmark book by William Strunk and E.B. White. In The Chronicle Review, Geoffrey K. Pullum, a professor of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh, uses the occasion to stick a long, deep, and well honed knife…
If you’re working hard to put food on your family
Fouler? Fullare? Fullo? Foiled?
The blood stains of a language murdered
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, the former editor of The Statesman and a wordsmith par excellence, in The Telegraph, Calcutta: “Speaking many years ago at Secunderabad’s Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages on editing an English-language newspaper in India, I recalled having to explain to young journalists that a district is a geographical term and does…
Because the Bombay Duck is not a duck
‘Get me copydesk on the other side of the globe’
Outsourcing medical operations to India is understandable because our doctors have a well-earned reputation for being among the best in the business. Outsourcing backend telephone work to India is understandable because we know how to talk—or we think we know how to talk. Outsourcing film editing and post-production to India is understandable because the skills…
Rest in peace: Jyoti Sanyal
Sans Serif records with regret the passing away of editor, teacher, writer and language terrorist, Jyoti Sanyal, in Calcutta on Saturday, 12 April 2008. A former assistant editor with The Statesman, whose stylebook he wrote, Sanyal spent 30 years in the Calcutta newspaper, where he gained a well-earned reputation, in his own words, of being…
Can a language teacher use profanities?
What’s in a word? Don’t ask the poor ‘sod’
As if cricket’s byzantine “Laws” weren’t enough, the lexicon is becoming a potent weapon in the wars of words that have enveloped cricket in recent months. Down under, the use of labels like “monkey” and “obnoxious little weed” by rival players sent cricket correspondents scurrying to their dictionaries. Back home, the use of a three-letter…
In a dark subway, an unlikely grammar figure
Louis Menand, an English professor at Harvard, has called its use “impeccable”. Lynne Truss, the author of Eats shoots and leaves, has called it a “lovely example”. Geoffrey Nunberg of the University of California at Berkeley sees it as a burgeoning sign of “punctuational literacy”. On the pages of The New York Times, Neil Neches,…
Hot for Words: Why colonel is pronounced kernel
How not to write in the year ahead
The department of English and comparative literature at San Jose State University has announced the winner of the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, and the winner is Jim Gleeson of Madison, Wisconsin, for this passage. The goal of the contest is to submit bad opening sentences for imaginary novels. “Gerald began—but was interrupted by a piercing…
KISS, as in Keep It Simple, Stupid
The obese feline reclined on the linoleum = The fat cat sat on the mat. According to Dave Barry, “Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies of prematurated isolates indicates that a causal relationship exists between groundward tropism and lachrimatory, or ‘crying,’ behaviour forms” = It is noticed that kids cry when they fall down.…
Subs of the world unite. You’ve commas to lose…
On National Public Radio, Laura Conway invites readers to sharpen their red pencils for this paragraph from The New York Times: Yet deep down in his soul, the transplant will hold on to the notion that umbrellas are to be used only as protection against the rain, which is wet and, when it drenches the…
Of the 22 best writing tips, No. 15 is a good idea
There are writing tips. And then there are writing tips. And there are some more. Writing Forward has 22 of them. 2. Read as much and as often as you can. Remember, every writer is a reader first. 3. Keep a journal or notebook handy at all times so you can jot down all of…
Getting penny wise for just a little dime
Intelligence is sexy: Hot for words
Is there a connection between the word evil and the word medieval? Katie Gonser gets an eyeful and an earful by way of a response for the grammar girl.
Why do (old) reporters end stories with ‘-30-‘?
“Some say the mark began during a time when stories were submitted via telegraph, with “-30-” denoting “the end” in Morse code. Another theory suggests that the first telegraphed news story had 30 words. “Others claim the “-30-” comes from a time when stories were written in longhand — X marked the end of a…
IJR 