THE VILLAGE WORDSMITH
A compendium of second-guessing for the San Antonio Express-News
copy desk and other interested parties
December 2007-January 2008
Vol. XI, No 9
Watch those wire services
Please be alert to the fact that the wires, including the New York Times, are just as fallible as everyone
else, and we need to be doing some backstopping on assertions they make. In one recent week, I've seen wire
stories asserting that Al Gore received a majority of the popular votes cast in 2000; that of Hispanics born
outside the United States, Puerto Ricans have the highest rate of English acquisition; and that the United
States did not sign the Kyoto Protocol.
Not one of those assertions is true.
Alas for Cox wire service, Al Gore received 48.4 percent of the popular vote in 2000. That was more than
George W. Bush received (he got 47.9 percent), but it was not a majority, it was a plurality, because it did not
reach the "50 percent plus one" threshold for a majority. Ralph Nader’s Green Party got the rest.
Alas for the former home of Jayson Blair, Puerto Ricans are not "Hispanics born outside the United
States," because Puerto Rico is part of the United States. Puerto Ricans are citizens of this country just as
surely as New Yorkers are.
Alas for the Associated Press, the Clinton administration did in fact sign the Kyoto Protocol at the United
Nations on Nov. 12, 1998. What never happened was ratification of the treaty, which for a variety of reasons
was never submitted to the Senate. In March 2001, soon after taking office, President Bush rejected the treaty
anyway.
Please be just as skeptical of wire copy as any other copy; it's just as likely to contain errors.
—Dan Puckett
Alphabet soup
Whose request?
. . . the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known by its
Kurdish acronym PKK. (Oct. 26, caught on the rim)
Internet acronyms JK or NSFW. . . . (Sept. 13,
Page 3F)
Many sources, including the editors of Webster’s
New World College Dictionary, do not believe an acronym is merely a random group of initials, but that
those initials must spell a pronounceable word, such
as radar (radio detecting and ranging), ROK (Republic of Korea) or ERA (equal rights amendment). By
that definition, such readily recognizable combos as
FCC or CIA are not true acronyms.
In fairness, it must be said that the MerriamWebster Online Dictionary doesn’t agree. It says: a
word (as NATO, radar, laser) formed from the initial
letters of each of the successive parts of a compound
term; also: an abbreviation (as FBI).
Webster’s New World, however, is the official
and definitive dictionary adopted by this newspaper,
and this is one of its definitions we fuddy-duddies believe in.
Johnson’s allegations proved an alternate reality.
After requesting the hand history, Absolute Poker
sent him something entirely different. (Oct. 25, Page
10C)
Earlier paragraphs in this article about cheating in
computerized poker explained that player Marco
Johnson e-mailed an on-line poker site, Absolute
Poker, to ask for a history of the hands in which he
suspected cheating. But the gerund makes it sound
like the poker site was the one that did the requesting.
A simple fix could have made it read he requested, and cleared up the whole confusion.
Moon language
A waxing gibbous moon framed by tree branches
rises Tuesday night over the Sacred Heart Conventual
Chapel at Our Lady of the Lake University. (Photo
caption, Oct. 26, Page 1B)
Gibbous is a word you don’t see in the paper every day. It simply means bulging, or in moonspeak,
more than half of the moon shining. And isn’t it a
marvelous word?
Page 2
THE VILLAGE WORDSMITH
December 2007/January 2008
Monster creations
Grinchmanship
Iowa may have created a Frankenstein
to handle loans for its college students (Dec. 9,
Page 19A headline)
In the 1818 novel by that name, Mary Shelley
created a scientist that became the prototype of scary
stuff. But Frankenstein wasn’t the monster. Frankenstein was the doctor who sent Igor out to rob graves
for parts so he could create the monster. So one
doesn’t create a Frankenstein. Frankenstein (and
Hollywood) created the monster.
Webster’s New World Dictionary’s second definition of Frankenstein is “popularly, Frankenstein’s
monster” the way the cited headline uses it. But lots
of us fuddy-duddy purists know better.
Several years ago, Dr. Wordsmith implored his
readers to forgo the annual clichés about the Grinch
whenever Christmas rolls around.
Alas, the plea, if it were ever heeded at all, has
fallen away. Between the cracks, to use another outworn cliché.
According to the EXFiles EZ Search, there were
24 Grinches in 2005, 21 in 2006, and (sob!) 31 in
2007, up through Dec. 24. The current year’s crop
began in June with a simile, like the Grinch plotting
to foil Christmas, and the latest one was if weather
doesn’t turn into a Grinch. (Dec. 24, Page B2)
Enough already! How about a New Year’s resolution (no matter how tempting) to make 2008 a
Grinchless year?
You is or you ain’t
Meanwhile, he began creating his art – some of
which is considered so unique it has attracted a national following. . . .(Dec. 11, Page 1B)
This may have been mentioned before. Unique is
a state of perfection. That is, it cannot be compared.
Something cannot be more unique, or most unique, or
so unique. It is either unique (one of a kind) or not.
So unique is like saying something or somebody
is more circular – or more pregnant.
History repeats itself
Many of the nation’s editorial cartoonists are students of history. The only thing wrong with that is
they expect their readers to be as well.
Observers were reminded of that in the few days
before Christmas when dozens of editorial cartoons
mirrored the same theme – harking back to the 1919
Black Sox baseball scandal and comparing it to the
present-day flap over steroids.
Most specifically, they cartooned a baseball player with a small head and gigantic arms and shoulders
(in one case it was a steroid beefed-up Santa Claus; in
others it was ballplayers plural) looking at or listening
to or paying attention to a small child who was saying
some version of “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” or Roger or Bill
or a dozen other names.
For the benefit of some folks weak on sports history, this was a take-off on the kid who uttered that
deathless quote to a very popular ball player of the
day, left fielder Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Chicago
White Sox. Jackson was banned from pro ball for 20
years, but the preteen fan, pictured by some sports
writers as crying big tears when he said it, made
Shoeless Joe even more famous.
And almost a century later, his memory lives on.
Final edition
The first issue of the Village Wordsmith saw light
in April 1997. It talked about the difference between
convince and persuade, then-congressman and former
congressman, copspeak and several other malapropisms that appeared (and sometimes still do) in the
columns of the San Antonio Express-News.
And for the next 10 years and a bit more, Dr.
Wordsmith has tried to lead Express-News writers
and editors on the paths of righteousness as defined
by the Associated Press and Express-News style
books, the dictionary and countless English teachers
at elementary and secondary schools, colleges and
universities – many of whom are on this publication’s
mailing list and some of whom have graciously contributed examples of our writers’ shortcomings.
We’re grateful for all such observations.
Thanks to a retirement offer from the ExpressNews’ Mohogany Row, this is our last offering. It’s
been a delightful decade, pointing out as humorously
as possible the foibles of my co-workers, and I’m especially grateful to my colleagues Bob Kolarik and
Clay Reeves, for proofreading behind me and pointing out mine. Without them, I likely would have been
embarrassed each and every edition.
I also would like to express my gratitude to my
supervisors, and especially to Bob Rivard, our editor,
all of whom have encouraged me from Day 1 and
have never failed to be complimentary.
And the same to my e-mail and snail mail readers,
without whose correspondence and offerings I
couldn’t have filled up a lot of these columns.
Thanks to all of you.
—John Means