By Bob Yearick
Where Are the Editors?
• Andre Lamar, in The News Journal, describing Adam Driver in Megalopolis: “With one foot hovering over the ledge, Driver leans forward and yells ‘time stop!’ Now shaking terribly, the command allows Driver to pause time and catch himself from meeting his demise.” In the first sentence, there should be a comma after “yells.” More seriously, in the second sentence, the misplaced modifier “Now shaking terribly” describes the command, when it is meant to describe Driver.
• Aaron Carter, in The Philadelphia Inquirer, suffered from a similar modifier malady: “Despite shooting poorly in the first two games, Thibodeau said Brunson had been running the team’s offense efficiently.” “Despite shooting poorly . . .” describes the New York Knicks coach, Tom Thibodeau, when it’s meant to describe the player, Jalen Brunson.
• David Murphy, in The Inky: “So, yeah, the Phillies are playing at an historical pace.” The usually uber-literate Murphy not only forgot the rule about using “a” before a noun that starts with a consonant sound (“an” is for nouns that start with a vowel sound), he also used historical (the general term for describing history) when historic (reserved for important and famous moments) was the correct choice for the Phils’ early season success.
• Jarrett Bell, in USA TODAY: “Cousins also squashed any hint of a suggestion that he won’t embrace the presence of Penix . . .” The preferred word here is quashed, meaning “to suppress or put an end to something.” Squashed means “to crush or flatten something.” And hint of a suggestion is a tautology.
• USA TODAY also allowed this to seep into its sports pages (Regarding Payton Wilson, a Pittsburgh Steelers draft pick): “There’s no way to game out the injury factors that seemingly sunk Wilson’s stock. . . . His litany of red flags were mostly widely known.” Three points: Regrettably, sunk now seems to be accepted as the past tense of sink, but sank is the choice of picky purists (guilty!). Litany is over-used by lazy writers wanting to sound smart to refer to any list, when it really means a tedious recital or repetitive series. And finally, the verb in the second sentence refers to litany, not flags, so it should be was.
• Reader Debbie Layton found this in J. D. Robb’s novel Random In Death: “Most of the crowd disbursed.” The crowd dispersed (broke up). It did not pay out any funds.
This and That
• I recently came across a 1942 film titled “Busses Roar” (Didn’t watch it, but the plot involves a time bomb on a bus). Aside from being a bit clumsy, the title misspells buses. A buss, with the extra s, means kiss. It’s an old-fashioned word that’s rarely used nowadays.
• Some in the TV and radio media pronounce Moscow as it’s spelled: Moss-cow. The correct pronunciation is Moss-co. Think Costco.
• Speaking of pronunciations, primer is pronounced “PRIMM-er” if you mean “a small book” or “a short informative piece of writing.” It’s pronounced “PRY-mer” if you mean “an initial coat of paint.”
Department of Redundancies Dept.
I recently began noticing these common redundancies having to do with time:
• I’ll see you in two days’ time
• At this point in time
• Period of time
And the ever-reliable mass media gave us these:
• Hoda Kotb on NBC’s Today, reporting on a June heat wave: “The city of San Antonio has opened up 30 different cooling stations.” Different is inserted in such phrases so often that we often don’t notice it, but it’s just a throwaway word.
• An Associated Press online headline: “A visual look at Trump’s hush money trial.”
• Scooby Axson, in USA TODAY: “[Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison] Butker used his 20 minutes on stage to opine his thoughts, starting with Pride Month and what he called ‘dangerous gender ideologies.’” Opine means to state one’s opinion (or thoughts).
And finally . . .
I leave you with this, from Delawareonline: “A 27-year-old man in a small pickup truck was flown to Christiana Hospital by a Delaware State Police helicopter.”
Word of the Month
corrigendum
Pronounced cor-a-GEN-dum, it’s a noun meaning a thing to be corrected, typically an error in a printed book.
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