Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style. (Some frequently asked questions are here.)
My colleague Patrick LaForge remains on the prowl for clichés — particularly the clichés of journalese, employed primarily by journalists reaching for the quick and easy phrase on deadline.
A few of his recent examples:
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We’re feeling dizzy. “Reeling” was once a vivid word, but it has been cheapened by overuse, often in partnership with “still.”
Still reeling from the highly publicized resignation of Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs executive, the company and others on Wall Street are now facing a recruiting problem…
The Lady Blazers, still reeling from the death of a teammate before the season began, held off hard-charging McKee/Staten Island Technical High School, 56-48, in the Public Schools Athletic League AA finals at Madison Square Garden.
But given the battering the Congress Party has taken in the recent state assembly elections, still reeling from a string of corruption scandals last year, it’s evident that Mr. Mukherjee has decided to pull out the stops and deliver a pre-election budget this year, fully two years ahead of the expected election date.
Hurricane awareness has not been a hard sell to people still reeling from Hurricane Katrina.
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Then there’s the ever-popular journalese term “slated.” Try something conversational — perhaps scheduled, set or planned.
Jay is slated to be the team’s starter in center field this season coming off a .297/.344/.424 campaign in 2011.
The grocery is slated to open in mid-2013.
Mr. Obama’s finance chairman, Matthew W. Barzun, was slated to be in attendance, as were donors active in the technology industry or gay community, such as Timothy E. Gill, a philanthropist and funder of gay rights initiatives around the country, and John Frank, a deputy counsel and vice president at Microsoft.
In a Word
This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.
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This week is the two-year anniversary of Mr. Obama’s health care law, and Republicans in Washington are planning to celebrate with a series of attacks.
“Year” is implicit in “anniversary.” Make it “second anniversary.”
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This year, Mr. Adelson has given at least $10 million, along with his wife, to support Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign.
Two readers asked if Henny Youngman edited this story.
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Mr. Bloomberg’s hourlong visit, first disclosed by the mayor’s eponymous news agency, came as Goldman struggled to cope with an onslaught of negative publicity after a former executive’s scathing Op-Ed article in The New York Times accused the firm of wanton greed and excess.
As we have often noted, in precise usage, the giver of the name is “eponymous,” not the receiver.
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It has long been assumed that filmmakers should tread carefully in the wake of tragedy …
The phrase is trite as a synonym for “after,” and the watery allusion is even worse when the topic is a tsunami, as it was here.
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Unanswered questions remain from a 2006 episode in which 10 people, including a 5-month-old boy, were killed in an American raid.
Lose the “unanswered.” If they had been answered, they wouldn’t remain as questions.
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More details are emerging about the sergeant accused of the killing spree.
The word “spree” rarely appears these days far from its companions “killing” or “shopping.” Remember that its original sense is “a lively, noisy frolic,” a bit light for a story about violence. Better: “the killings.”
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Eventually, Wang was diagnosed with a torn shoulder capsule and underwent surgery, missing most of the next two years while the Yankees allowed him to become a free agent.
As The Times’s stylebook says, the disease or injury is “diagnosed,” not the patient. Also, “had” surgery is more natural than the jargony “underwent.”
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On TV One’s “Washington Watch,” Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, the parents of Trayvon Martin, the slain Florida teenager who was shot by a man who claimed that he acted in self-defense, and their lawyer, Ben Crump, will speak about the case.
“Slain” is avoidable journalese. Better: “the Florida teenager who was fatally shot…”
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And Ebell’s input shows that there are plenty of things to agree on even as the fight over carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases plays out — in this case the utterly irrational, and persistent, federal incentives for building in harm’s way.
This once-poetic phrase — usually in articles about soldiers or police officers — has become overused. Here, we meant something more precise, perhaps “flood zones.”
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Haney admits there is some bad blood after he made the first public acknowledgment of Woods’s sex-addiction therapy in an interview with Jim Gray for the Golf Channel.
Let’s try to avoid this hackneyed expression.
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If he can keep the job and fill in capably in the middle of the back line until Leonardo (in April) and Gonzalez (maybe by August) return from knee injuries, he could the Galaxy’s unsung hero — not that anyone will notice with Landon Donovan and David Beckham on the field.
The garble only calls attention to a phrase that has become shopworn in sports — and everywhere else.
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For the couple, the small ceremony, a commonplace occurrence in New York since the state legalized same-sex marriage last year, has uprooted their lives, and created a firestorm of controversy in which church doctrine, employment, love, law and the passions of school parents have all come into heated conflict.
Yes, firestorms are warm. And in connection with controversy, “firestorm” seems overused.
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TOMORROW: Clouds and sun. High 63. Low pressure will be moving away and another high pressure system will start to build in. The day is expected to turn be rain-free with clouds breaking for some sun.
The weather ear is one of the most widely read bits of copy on the front page. We should proofread it carefully to avoid garble like this.
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According to Crump, the father was told that one of the reasons Zimmerman wasn’t arrested was because he had a ”squeaky clean” record.
“Reason … because” is redundant. Make it “one reason … was that…”
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The look, shorthanded here as “emo,” has flourished on Baghdad’s streets as an emblem of greater social freedom as society has begun to bloom after years of warfare.
“Shorthand” is not a verb, and the adjective “shorthanded” is not the same as saying something in shorthand.
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To date, neither Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg nor Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly have publicly discussed why Officer Schoolcraft was thrown into a psychiatric ward.
Make it “has discussed.”
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KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai insisted Thursday that the United States confine its troops to major bases in Afghanistan by next year as the Taliban announced that they were suspending peace talks with the Americans, both of which served to complicate the Obama administration’s plans for an orderly exit from the country.
Both of what? Better to break it up: “… with the Americans. Both developments served to complicate…”
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The group says they are not promoting illegal drug use, just confronting the reality that many people use. Still, such openness can make their work difficult, as can their name, Mr. Jackson said.
A group is an “it.”
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Last year, BET asked Mr. Cornelius if it could honor him with a lifetime achievement on the Soul Train Awards show, which they had begun to show each year.
BET is an “it,” not a “they.”
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Ms. Rondeau visited, by now wheeling not just little Ada, 3, but a second daughter, Josie, 1, in a double-decker stroller. It fit easily through the door.
The stylebook and the dictionary prefer “fitted” as the past tense.
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In an odd twist, the time change due to Daylight Savings apparently continued to depress television ratings among the networks for the fourth night in a row on Wednesday.
Our style is “daylight saving time” — lowercase and without the S — or just “daylight time.” Rephrase.
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Fruit flies apparently self-medicate just like humans do, drowning their sorrows or frustrations for some of the same reasons, scientists reported Thursday.
Make it “as” or rephrase.
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Before 1990, pay for the chief executives of financial firms were on par with those of chief executives of the largest traded companies, or even slightly lower.
Agreement. Make it “pay … was.”
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To try and close that gap, Mr. Sarkozy has been fishing for far-right voters by assailing foreign immigrants, foreign imports and even the dietary laws of French Muslims.
No reason for the colloquial expression; make it “try to close.”
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But Mr. Santorum may have earned the ire of Puerto Ricans by telling a local newspaper that if the territory becomes a state, it will have to make English its official language.
The stylebook says this:
Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States; do not describe it as a territory, possession or colony. Puerto Ricans are not immigrants or foreign-born. Puerto Rican describes ethnic or cultural heritage, not nationality; the nationality of Puerto Ricans is American. Puerto Ricans are United States citizens with a special status: they do not pay federal taxes or vote in presidential elections, but they send one nonvoting representative to Congress.
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Some new parents are going to extreme lengths to protect their children from household toxins. But how far is too far?
The stylebook says this:
toxin, toxic. A toxin is a poison produced by a plant or an animal. Do not use the noun to mean any other kind of poison (mineral, for example). The adjective toxic applies more broadly, to any poison, and may be useful in a headline about a substance that is not a toxin: Toxic Spill, for example.
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A few Wall Street titans were particularly hard hit. (Of course, at the end of the day, what’s a billion here or there among the top rungs of the 1 percent?)
We should expunge this cliché — one of the most common in journalism — from our copy.
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After Deadline examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times. It is adapted from a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual.