Elephant? What elephant?

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 12:15 am

Bill Walsh, my colleague and former boss, conducted an online chat on the Washington Post Web site to promote his new book, "The Elephants of Style." As usual, Walsh is almost always right. In the spirit of this site, though, I have a few nits to pick (like he cares.):
Washingtonpost.com Bill Walsh: To use "impact" as a verb meaning "affect" is generally frowned upon, though etymologists will tell you it was well established long before we were born. (And entomologists will acknowledge that it bugs you anyway. Ha!)***"Ha!" indeed.***
Arlington, Va.: Why do prestigious publications -- The Washington Post and The New Yorker for example -- more and more frequently make anexception to the old rule that a pair of compound verb are separated by "and" only with no comma before the latter of the pair? Why commas now in compound verbs?Bill Walsh: This dismays me, and adds precious minutes to my workload every night. (Oops!)***Stop it! You're killing me!***Washington, D.C.: What's the best thing about copy editing or being a copy editor?Bill Walsh: I don't need an alarm clock. ***Maybe you don't, but I find that 2:30 p.m. really creeps up on me.***Alexandria, Va.: Is there any area of writing that results in more additions to style standards than technology? Anything even close?Bill Walsh: There's slang in general, but technology is especially insidious because tech-averse writers and editors tend to grant a lot of deference to the geeks, as if keeping the hyphen in "e-mail" would crash the Internet or something. ***Well said.***Washington, D.C.: What's the hardest thing about writing a headline? And what are some of your favorite headlines?Bill Walsh: The hardest thing, of course, is conveying a complex idea in a very small space. It's a hard area to give advice on. I will share a couple of my favorite Bill Walsh headlines, one written when I was an intern (1982?) and one in the early '90s:On a story about how a lot of toll-free telephone numbers were based in Nebraska, and therefore Nebraskans had to dial an alternate local phone number:Except in Nebraska Rings in Ears of Cornhuskers.On a story about the dawn of capitalism in the former East Germany:Con Artists Find Easy Marks in Eastern Germany. ***Cough. The "Easy Marks" headline works, I guess.***Dallas, Tex.: How did you get into copy editing? What set you on that career path?Bill Walsh: I went into journalism school not knowing that copy editors existed. There were no copy editors on "Lou Grant"! ***Wasn't there an episode in which a copy editor refused to go into rehab or something? Maybe I'm confusing "Lou Grant" with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."Scranton, Pa.: Hi, Bill. Another quote-attribution question. Some reporters I've talked to insist on using "says" instead of "said," arguing that it's more conversational. A few years ago it wasn't all that prevalent, but now I see it more and more, even in an occasional AP hard-news stories. What's your take?Bill Walsh: "Says" doesn't bother me. I think "says" and "said" can peacefully coexist in the same story. One denotes a quote that represents a continuing thought ("I like boobies," Hefner says), and the other is more of a one-time thing ("She is my bride for life," Hefner said). ***News stories are written in the past tense. We're not in real time. (Hefner might subsequently have conveyed the continuing thought with other words). I once had to throw a soda can at a copy editor who habitually changed "said" to "says" if she thought the quotation represented "a continuing thought."***[ March 30, 2004: Message edited by: blanp ]

Jackie · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 12:35 am

Geez, Phil, I've only thrown sunflower seeds. And only at the city editor, so that probably doesn't count.My boss had forwarded that chat to us; I love Walsh for championing hyphens in compound modifers. Don't agree with him on impact/effect... I do agree with prolly 95 percent of what he says.

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 12:58 am

I hope you hit that editor, Phil.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:01 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Bumfketeer:
I hope you hit that editor, Phil.<hr></blockquote>The editor's skills were roughly on a par with those of a substutute high school English teacher. In fact, she had been one of my substitute high school English teachers, and was, incredibly enough, moonlighting on the copy desk.[ March 30, 2004: Message edited by: blanp ]

bwalsh · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 1:43 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>***"Ha!" indeed.***
***Stop it! You're killing me!***
***Cough.***<hr></blockquote>All right, so it wasn't "43-Man Squamish." <blockquote>quote:<hr>***Wasn't there an episode in which a copy editor refused to go into rehab or something? Maybe I'm confusing "Lou Grant" with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."<hr></blockquote>You could be right. Jack Bannon as Art Donovan could have been seen as playing the role, but he was an assistant city editor. <blockquote>quote:<hr>***News stories are written in the past tense. We're not in real time. (Hefner might subsequently have conveyed the continuing thought with other words). I once had to throw a soda can at a copy editor who habitually changed "said" to "says" if she thought the quotation represented "a continuing thought."***
<hr></blockquote>And if you "throw" the can every damn night, we'd be forbidden to say that? Only that you "threw" it on one occasion or another? Sounds like a "rule that isn't" to me.

paulwiggins · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:22 am

I was about to post on that very subject, Bill.
Lou Grant ran while I was at college. Art Donavan was pointed out to me by places where I had paid inernships as being someone who epitomised a copy editor, probably on the basis of a few sections of dialogue.
As for career moves, I blame Deadline USA and The Front Page.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:45 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Bill Walsh:
And if you "throw" the can every damn night, we'd be forbidden to say that? Only that you "threw" it on one occasion or another? Sounds like a "rule that isn't" to me.<hr></blockquote>Trickery! If I say, "That ain't clever, it's cute with a 'k,'" you had better write that I said it even if it represents my "continuing thought." You might write, "He throws a can every night, co-workers said." How else would you know?

nstockdale · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:06 am

OK, if one night I say "Let's get crunk," you should write: She said, "Let's get crunk."But if I say it all the time, it can be a character trait. I think it's appropriate to write " 'Let's get crunk,' she says."I infer different things from past tense and present.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:24 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Nicole Stockdale:
OK, if one night I say "Let's get crunk," you should write: She said, "Let's get crunk."But if I say it all the time, it can be a character trait. I think it's appropriate to write " 'Let's get crunk,' she says."I infer different things from past tense and present.<hr></blockquote>I challenge you to use that sentence in a coherent paragraph.

ADKbrown · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:49 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Bill Walsh: There's slang in general, but technology is especially insidious because tech-averse writers and editors tend to grant a lot of deference to the geeks, as if keeping the hyphen in "e-mail" would crash the Internet or something. <hr></blockquote>When e-mail first became common, I argued that our style should be "E-mail." I lost that battle, perhaps rightly so. Clearly, I was on the wrong side of history. But I'd like to know if any papers used to uppercase the e or still do. Do any TCEs think, even at this late date, that it should be uppercase?

nstockdale · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:55 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by ADKbrown:

Do any TCEs think, even at this late date, that it should be uppercase?<hr></blockquote>Funny, I was thinking about this just last night. In one of Bill's recent rants on why e-mail gets the hyphen, he points out that E is there as the letter E, not some E-sounding syllable. You don't see xray or aframe squashed together.But in X-ray and A-frame, the caps are retained. So why isn't the E in e-mail? I just looked up X-ray in my at-home dictionary, and it prefers the lowercase X for the verb (but not the noun). As for A-frame, that refers to the shape of a building like the letter A, not the like the lowercase a. (In the same category is T-shirt and T-top.)O-ring also springs to mind. It's capped in my dictionary. And the shape of an O is the shape of an o, so why does it retain a cap? But none of these are really parallel examples of words that have been truncated to one letter, like electronic to e. Can anyone think of something similar?

SeaRaven · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:03 pm

f-bomb

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:06 pm

"F-word" is rendered both ways. I don't know which is prevalent. (Of course, I reject the term as baby talk.)

SeaRaven · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:59 pm

f-stop

nstockdale · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:42 pm

There's G-string (origin unknown), H-bomb and A-bomb. G-man (from government). And T cell (from thymus-derived).I'm not sensing a pattern yet.

tomciav · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 4:53 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Nicole Stockdale:
Funny, I was thinking about this just last night. In one of Bill's recent rants on why e-mail gets the hyphen, he points out that E is there as the letter E, not some E-sounding syllable. You don't see xray or aframe squashed together.But in X-ray and A-frame, the caps are retained. So why isn't the E in e-mail? I just looked up X-ray in my at-home dictionary, and it prefers the lowercase X for the verb (but not the noun). As for A-frame, that refers to the shape of a building like the letter A, not the like the lowercase a. (In the same category is T-shirt and T-top.)O-ring also springs to mind. It's capped in my dictionary. And the shape of an O is the shape of an o, so why does it retain a cap? But none of these are really parallel examples of words that have been truncated to one letter, like electronic to e. Can anyone think of something similar?<hr></blockquote>Webster's New World lists "C-section" as an informal usage for "cesarean section." Webster's says "c-section" is also used to abbreviate this procedure, but the capitalized term is the main entry.AP has an entry for "U-boat" that doesn't explain where the "U" comes from (underwater, yes?)

paulwiggins · **Posted:** Tue Mar 30, 2004 6:52 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>
AP has an entry for "U-boat" that doesn't explain where the "U" comes from (underwater, yes?)[/QB]<hr></blockquote>Macquarie Dictionary says:
U-boat noun a German submarine. [G : half adoption, half translation of U-boot, short for Unterseeboot undersea boat] As for patterns, you won't find them on such matters. Life is not that fair.

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