Category Archives: News

September 16, 2010 · 8:28 am

Validation at last

I cracked open the new issue of Vanity Fair, which was fresh from the mailbox. I got as far as page 96, the October 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll, and found a teensy ray of sunshine. Which, by the way, I needed after reading Graydon Carter’s unusually grim editor’s letter.

If you’re a regular VF reader, then you know it shows how Americans weigh in on the poll’s 10 or so issues each month.

This time, 847 people answered questions on topics ranging from the war in Afghanistan to the likelihood that Sarah Palin would make an effective president; whether tanning salon services should be taxed and the extent to which Mel Gibson’s bad behavior would influence moviegoers’ seeing his latest movie.

Only 37 percent of those responding to the poll said they knew who Emily Post was and what she was known for. As sad as I am about the downward spiraling of etiquette awareness, I am not going to dwell on that here.

Why? Because I am so darned encouraged by the answers to another poll question.

The third question of the poll asked participants, “Of the following, which one do you think is the most overused word in the English language today?” The choices were “like,” “awesome,” “tweet,” “organic” and “hope.”

The top choice was [drumroll] “like.” Finally, it’s not just I being critical and whiny. Others’ ears are aching too.

As if I were not pleased enough to see acknowledgement that this nothingness word has run amok, here’s the cherry on top. Among those who said “like” is the most overused word in the English language, more than twice as many respondents were ages 18 to 44 as were 45 or older. Way to go, young people. Awesome. There is hope. Organic hope. Like, I’m so going to tweet it from the rooftops.

I’ll be optimistic that all of us who believe “like” is overused will stand up and take immediate steps to curb it. Let’s begin with not using “I’m like” in lieu of “I said,” shall we? Then maybe we can aim for good stats from the under 18 crowd.

Now please don’t go and burst my bubble by telling me that 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up.

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September 11, 2010 · 8:42 am

Weird news day

I don’t tweet much. Once a day or so, just to blast out blog updates.

On Twitter, I follow more than am followed. I follow 26 people and only 15 follow me. I really must do something about this.

The reason I follow most of the tweeters I do is to get information. While it might be mildly relevant to know where someone is lunching, I am more interested in newsier Tweets. These often include items that don’t make the major newspapers, are written with esoteric angles or are relevant to narrow industry sectors. Or they’re just plain funny. Those I follow are publications mostly—The New Yorker, Fast Company, Vanity Fair, Advertising Age, Politico. Freaknomics puts out good stuff. I’ll make another pitch here for Fake AP Stylebook.

One night recently, as I was scrolling the latest Tweets before bed,  the most bizarre collection of headlines jumped off the screen.

I wondered how these would look to someone having just awakened from a decade or two of hyperbaric sleep and wanted to catch up on the latest developments in fashion, politics, the environment, cable news or travel. Then again, Twitter in and of itself might buckle the brain of anyone who’s been out of touch for, say, 10 years.

Here is just a sample of the headlines I read within in just five minutes’ time:

New York Fashion Week to Include Designer Sex Toys

Barbara Boxer aide charged with possession of pot

China Beats U.S. to First Offshore Wind Farm

Scandal Glossary: The Complicated Past of Piers Morgan, Larry King’s Replacement

Airport “Naked” Body Scanners Get Privacy Upgrade to Anonymize Your Naughty Bits

Pinch me; I must still be dreaming.

Please remember, there are no blog updates on Sundays. I’ll be opening the Sunday paper with caution.

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August 17, 2010 · 8:26 am

City State Zip

The pledge I made recently to type one space rather than two following a period prompted several questions from readers. For example, they asked, if only one space is typed after a period, then what about the double space that has traditionally appeared after a colon or between a state abbreviation and zip code within an address?

As best I can tell, modern convention now dictates that only one space be used following a colon as well. Oh, great, another bad habit I need to break. Or, more positively, another good habit I need to form.

On the zip code question, however, my research opened up a small can of worms.

The U.S. Postal Service has come out with prescriptive standards for addressing envelopes, dictating that the full address appear in all caps, that there be no punctuation at all and that two spaces appear between state and zip code. So, there is your answer: two spaces between state and zip. Follow these guidelines as you wish, but I am more concerned with proper spelling and punctuation in writing than in envelope addressing.

But while we are on the subject of states, there is a rule I’d like to point out to those who may not be fully aware.

Many years ago, the Postal Service gave us two-letter, all-cap state abbreviations to ease in the sorting of mail. Unfortunately, these have spilled out of the post office and into the real world.

According to most style books, two-letter, all-cap, no-period postal abbreviations are just that—postal. They are used on envelopes and in the address blocks of letters. They may also be used in address lists, but are not to be used in text.

In text, names of the 50 United States should be spelled out when they stand alone; essentially, when they are mentioned without cities, as in “Virginia is for lovers” or “Maryland is for crabs.”  

When it is necessary to abbreviate a state, such as in a dateline or when noting the party and state of an elected official, traditional abbreviations are used. These are written in caps and lower case and followed by periods as follows:

Ala., Ariz., Ark., Calif., Colo., Conn., Del., Fla., Ga., Ill., Ind., Kan., Ky., La., Md., Mass., Mich., Minn., Miss., Mo., Mont., Neb., Nev., N.H., N.J., N.M., N.Y., N.C., N.D., Okla., Ore., Pa., R.I., S.C., S.D., Tenn., Vt., Va., Wash., W.Va., Wis., Wyo.

Eight states are always spelled out: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Texas and Utah.

In summary, on the envelope, postal abbreviations (two-letter, all-caps, no period) are used. In plain text and standing alone, state names are spelled out. In datelines, party-state affiliations and isolated instances where abbreviation is necessary, traditional state abbreviations are used.

If this is news to you and you are interested in getting it right in the future, I suggest you do what I did years ago, print out the list of state abbreviations and tack it on to your bulletin board. Or perhaps file it away on your computer for easy reference.

Sorry if you think I’m being crabby about this; I’m just the messenger–from Maryland.

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August 13, 2010 · 8:55 am

Disastrous dialect

Something has been bothering me and I wonder if I might run it by you.

Has anyone else noticed that people who are interviewed on television after witnessing a disaster or other extraordinary occurrence often use horrendous grammar?

I don’t know if it’s television news media exploiting innocent bystanders, whether disasters tend to occur more often in places inhabited by the less educated or if the combination of trauma and a news camera causes people to bungle their speech.

It seems to me that, far more often than not, when asked what they saw, these witnesses begin with “I seen it…”  Whether it’s a tornado coming at them or a crime taking place before their eyes, they say they “seen it comin’.” 

I have noticed this consistently over time, on local stations, major morning programs and network evening news. It pains me to be so judgmental but the pattern is too prevalent to ignore.

You might have heard that yesterday severe storms hit the Washington, D.C., area, crippling much of the Metro region with fallen trees and power lines. As one of the fortunate few who had electricity, I was able to watch the news coverage on television. I heard “I seen it” from multiple witnesses on multiple channels throughout the day.

Not only do these witnesses say they “seen” something, but some also use “come” as past tense, as in, “it come up behind me.”

One doesn’t have to travel far to find pockets of people who either never learned the basics or have chosen to abandon them. It troubles me enough that I find such poor speech distasteful, but it troubles me even more to see the spotlight on people who speak this way. I can’t quite pinpoint why.

Please don’t dismiss “I seen it” and “it come up” as colloquial because frankly, I’m tired of colloquialism being used to condone poor grammar. Admittedly, I am the first to begin a sentence with a conjunction or end one with a preposition when style authorities allow it in certain instances. It’s a fine line but, if we accept “where are you at?” before long every violation of good grammar will be embraced in the name of popular culture. 

If any members of the media happen to read this, perhaps they’d be willing to offer insight into why the witnesses they interview so often seem to speak this way. Perhaps they could also explain why, when people appear in the studio after seeing someone fall into a well or take a steak knife through the temple, they almost always appear in t-shirts and ball caps. If you were being interviewed on national television, from a studio in Midtown Manhattan, would you show up in shorts and a cap? Do producers believe this lends some particular folksy charm and, if so, are they intentionally making witnesses look like bumpkins? Worse, are they coaching people to say “I seen it?” 

I doubt this is the case. Either way, if anyone has answers, I am eager to put these haunting thoughts to rest.

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August 9, 2010 · 7:50 am

H’lo? H’lo?

Everybody’s talking. They’re saying that nobody’s talking.

In the past week, there’s been some news and commentary about shifts in the ways people communicate. Many are giving up their land line phones in favor of cell phones and some aren’t using their cell phones at all–for talking, anyway. 

In “The Death of the Phone Call,” published in Wired magazine, essayist Clive Thompson puts the bottom line in simple terms. Today, he says, we are in “constant, lightweight contact,” following a dramatic decline in the number of calls made from telephones—especially cell phones. Essentially, we call less but talk more, but we’re “talking” via other media—text messaging, instant messaging, social media and, to a lesser extent, e-mail.

Facebook is a prime example of this constant, lightweight contact. It allows us to know what and how our friends are doing–their successes, worries, vacation plans, and cute things their kids said. We like knowing about these things, but we might not have 30 minutes to spend on the phone hearing about it.

The topic popped up a few other places this week and made me think. If I suspect my son hasn’t read an important e-mail, I usually text him that there is a message that requires his attention. If that doesn’t work, I shoot an instant message across the bow. If that doesn’t work, he gets the dreaded phone call.

It seems, by all accounts, no one wants the call.

An article in The Washington Post yesterday dug deeper into why this is so.

People interviewed for the piece cited a few reasons they don’t reach out and touch someone. Whether or not these are really why the kids don’t call, I don’t know. But, as the caller and the callee, I get it.

The immediacy of the phone call strips the callee of control. By dialing the phone, the caller is saying, I want a block of your time right now–when it is convenient for me. In contrast, texts and e-mails can be sent at the sender’s convenience and read at the recipient’s.  

Those interviewed also said they viewed calling as impolite and intrusive, “more of an interruption than the blip of an arriving text.” Another observed that answering the phone requires a certain amount of psychological energy.

To a large extent, I agree. What disturbs me, though, is a trend that appears to go along with the new communications order. The Post article also noted that people avoiding the phone are often guilty of two sins–not returning calls and ignoring invitations.

Those of us who retreat from a ringing phone are by no means excused of our obligations to behave politely. 

I don’t care what generation we occupy, how busy our schedules are, what time zones we live in or how happy we are to receive a particular call, the rules remain clear:

If someone leaves a message, we return the call.

If someone calls inviting us to something, we R.S.V.P., even if it is by text message.

Postscript:  As it happens, my son called last night, after I was asleep, to share some good news, which he received while reading his e-mail. I welcome that call, day or night.

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July 31, 2010 · 8:30 am

Dear Chelsea

Dear Chelsea,

Please accept my very best wishes for you and Marc on your wedding day today. 

You and I have never met, which explains why I wasn’t invited, though I have met your parents a time or two.  Your future mother-in-law used to be a television news reporter here in my area, so I do feel a remote connection.

I’ve been a fan of yours since you arrived in Washington in 1993 at the tender age of 12.  You endured undue ridicule about your appearance and later, the sex scandal of the century, with grace and maturity and without any siblings to share it with.

You grew into a beautiful woman, excelled at Stanford and landed a high caliber job.  I enjoy the occasions on which you step to a podium and speak with intelligence and poise.

I trust no detail of your lovely affair has gone unattended.  Just arranging all those helicopters to transport your guests to the event must have beeen a challenge. 

Because we can always  count on the public to jab political figures and those they love,  I imagine there will be snickers about the $15,000 you are reportedly spending for Porta-Potties for your Rhinebeck affair, but then you would also take heat if you neglected to make arrangements for your guests’ comfort.  Damned if you do… 

I too had a ridiculously large wedding.  I had no wedding planning consultant or technology to help me.  I did have great parents who helped.  Besides picking up the ridiculously large tab, my father picked out the dinner menu and made sure the reception venue was perfect.  My mother, while not Secretary of State, arranged for all of the flowers and centerpieces and thoughtfully selected the church music (even though the church music director snubbed her requests and played what he wanted anyway).  My husband and I did everything else ourselves. 

I was in charge of arranging transportation for everyone.  Two hours before the ceremony, I stood by to make sure our parents and the wedding party and the groom were picked up on time.  When they had all left, I realized my oversight.  I had forgotten to arrange transportation for myself.  So I threw my wedding dress in the trunk of my car and high-tailed it to the church.

I tell you this, Chelsea, as one bride to another.  It’s just something you might want to check on.

Blessings to you on your special day.

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July 24, 2010 · 8:37 am

Centesimal celebration

I am tired of talking about me.  When I posted my first blog entry in late March, I expressed discomfort about blogs in general, because people tend to use them as platforms for talking about themselves, and I just didn’t want to do that.

Today, on the occasion of Word Nymph’s 100th blog entry, let’s take a look at some others.

If you are reading this from the Word Nymph site (as opposed to a subscription e-mail), look toward the right of the screen and scroll down just a bit.  You will see a section entitled Blogroll, and a list of half a dozen blogs I visit regularly.

But first, let’s talk about me—and why I’ve chosen these six.

I am interested in broadcast news, as a viewer of course.  Not just the Holly Hunter movie, but live television news.  I watch as much of it as a working person can fit into a day.  In Advancing the Story, veteran journalists Deborah Potter and Deb Halpern Wenger provide an enlightened glimpse into broadcast media—the art and the science, the complexities and the nuances.  Their recent piece on interviewing victims was inspired.

I am a lover of words, a lifelong learner and maker of mistakes.  I try to be tolerant of others’ mistakes but draw a big fat line between an earnest slip and steady patterns of egregious violation.  I have peeves that make me itch like a case of poison ivy.  I commend to you two blogs that illustrate blatant assaults on our language.  Please visit Apostrophe Abuse, study it and tell all your friends—be militant about it—that apostrophes do not make words plural.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, an “s” makes a noun plural, NO APOSTROPHE needed, or wanted.  My family and I are the Welches, not the Welch’s.  We are not having the Nelson’s over for dinner and we won’t be serving clam’s.  The blog will give you a good laugh and, I hope, a good lesson.  Let’s stop the abuse.

I am serious about punctuation.  What I’ve said about the apostrophe, likewise with quotation marks.  If we keep using them unnecessarily, they will become endangered and we won’t have them when we really need them—for quotations.  Please visit The “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks and notice how silly it looks to wrap serious punctuation around ordinary words willy-nilly.   If you want to make words stand out, there are plenty of text formats available, including italics (CTL + i), bold (CTL + b) and underline (CTL + u).  And if you must—and only if you must—ALL CAPS.  Please do not use quotation marks for emphasis.

I love English, but realize what we speak in the United States is American (I love that too).  I am also interested in all things international.  The Economist is a magazine that is read and respected by intelligent people throughout the international community.  It maintains a high standard of thought and writing, so when it launched a language blog, Johnson, earlier this summer, naturally, I signed up.  Check it out.

I love humor, possibly above all else.  My motto is “laughter heals” and I need a steady diet of it or I’ll die.  If you too need a chuckle a day, log on to The Sticky Egg.  The Egg posts every day, providing a full week’s worth of minimum daily hilarity, as the clever Carla Curtsinger muses about the entertainment biz and life in New York City.  She’ll also explain the origin of her moniker.  Be sure and check out her Blogroll.

I miss my kid.  He grew up in the blink of an eye, probably because I worked 12 hours a day and traveled regularly for the first 15 years of his life.  To bring back memories of having a child in the house, I get great enjoyment from the colorful tales of Cara Garretson, a  mother of two young kids, a gifted storyteller and a writer who works at home.  Time Out will make you smile.

But enough about me.

See you Monday.

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July 21, 2010 · 8:09 am

Last words

Is anyone else a creature of habit when it comes to reading the newspaper?  I don’t mean that you read it but, rather, how you read it.

I’ve been reading The Washington Post every day for 27 years and still read it in print.  First the Business Section, then Metro, followed by the main section and, for dessert, Style.  On Tuesdays, the Health section comes first; Wednesdays it’s Food.  The Crossword page gets torn out, folded in quarters and filed chronologically in a bedside folder for later enjoyment. 

Recently, when honey they shrunk my paper, Business was folded into the main section.  And it just isn’t the same.

During my years as a corporate lobbyist, the Business section was everything.  All stories high tech and financial, where I focused, were to be devoured and responded to as part of a day’s work.  That’s why it still comes first–old habits die hard.  Mondays were especially fun in those days, when the announcements ran—and still do—about major players changing jobs around town.  It used to be that I knew about 75 percent of the movers and shakers whose names and job changes appeared in this feature.

These days, I recognize more names in the obituaries than I do in Washington Business.

I’m not  kidding.   At least once a week, I see a familiar name or face in the obits.

When I started reading the death section years ago, my parents (Mom lives out of town; Dad travels a lot) appreciated my letting them know when a family friend or neighbor had died.  More and more, my own contemporaries are making appearances in the back of the Metro section.

But even when they aren’t my acquaintances, I have come to really enjoy reading obituaries.  This might sound twisted, but I also enjoy attending funerals.  Please don’t get me wrong.  I grieve the losses of my loved ones as deeply as anyone.  But I appreciate the words that are written and spoken, and the music played, when they pass.

It is hard to sum up one’s life in mere words.  The fact is, the words that are chosen, and they way they are put together in final tribute, are an art.

To me, the most interesting obituaries typically include an unusual profession coupled with an odd or obscure hobby, musical talent or second language.  While the heading might read “Church Member,” we may learn that the deceased also made a mean pound cake or could whistle Bach’s Fugue in G Minor.

It’s hard, when reading the obits, not to wonder what will be written about oneself after passing.  It makes me approach my life a little more conscious of what might be said about me when I’m gone.

Chances are, when I go, I’ll leave my own write-up behind.

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July 20, 2010 · 7:53 am

Beware of age

Yesterday’s disappointing news from the Gulf of Mexico has had me fixed on a particular word, one that seldom appears in good news. 

Not long after it seemed the cap on BP’s spewing oil well was going to hold and finally begin to contain the massive spill, something troublesome was discovered—seepage.

Seepage is never good.  It’s unintentional.  It’s messy.  It often means something is going somewhere it’s not supposed to.  If seepage is in your story, chances are, you’re in trouble.  Just when the higher-ups at BP were looking forward to exhaling, along came seepage.  The last thing the poor citizens and businesses along the Gulf Coast want to hear is seepage.

Yesterday, for whatever reason, the word leapt off its prominent spot on the front page and created little puddles in my brain.  But with every lame attempt to blot them up, more disturbing words ending in “age” came at me. 

“Age” is a common suffix, used, among other ways, to turn verbs into nouns, such as seepage.   It is also used to turn singular nouns into uncountable nouns, such as signage and plumage.  Signage and plumage are good things, and, if you were delivering news, you wouldn’t mind them in your story.  Acreage, coverage and cleavage are also nice things to have.

But all I thought about yesterday after reading about the seepage were all the other “age” words—most, oddly, beginning with “s”—that one would not want to have to use in his or her story, nor want to hear when receiving news.

Sewage isn’t something you want to hear about.  Steerage isn’t a desirable place.  If you are relying on your work or the product thereof, a stoppage is bad news, as is a shortage.  Don’t tell me about spillage, spoilage or soilage.  Slippage is unacceptable.  And absolutely no one wants to have to explain shrinkage.

Those are the “s” words.  Please don’t send me back to the beginning of the alphabet or we’ll have to talk about blockage, bondage, breakage and carnage.  So let’s not go there.

Before we move off yesterday’s front page story, let’s add “burbling” to the list of words that aren’t usually used in good news.

Note:   I first thought burbling was a portmanteau for bubble + gurgle, because isn’t that what the seepage is doing?  As it turns out, burble is also a scientific term.  It’s a turbulent eddy in fluid flow caused by roughness near the boundary surface or loss of energy in the laminar flowing fluid.  But then you all probably knew that.

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July 13, 2010 · 7:33 am

Spywear

Here in the nation’s capital, just as it seems things can’t get any weirder than our weather dominating headlines, we’ve busted open a ring of Russian spies and, over the weekend, began trading Russia theirs for a couple of our own.

As this was happening, I had the same gut reaction I had last summer when our government was battling Somali pirates.  Pirates?  Really? 

Russian Spies?  The Cold War ended 20 years ago, so I confess, I haven’t given spies much thought since.  Except, of course, during the arrest of Robert Hanssen, who sold U.S. secrets to the Russians for diamonds and cash.  That was fun.

Before that, though, I had not given Russian spies any thought since, oh, the last time I watched Bullwinkle.  Or Get Smart.  I was a child of the 1960s but never experienced firsthand an air raid drill.  In essence, I never felt the threat of potential communist attack personally.

At a young age, my frame of reference came from bumbling television spies.  Agents 86 and 99 were the good guys, fighting the fictitious enemy, KAOS, an international organization of evil.  And the real reason I rooted for the good guys was that, at age of seven, I wanted to be Barbara Feldon.

Back then, the enemy could be pretty sexy as well.  Take Natasha Fatale, for example.  Natasha’s character on the Bullwinkle cartoon was svelte and always wore a clingy cartoon cocktail dress.  She and Boris were wily spies from the fictitious nation of Pottsylvania, trying to outsmart a stupid moose.  We didn’t know where Pottsylvania was but its spies spoke with Eastern European accents.  

This summer, as the recent spy-busting events unfolded, national attention zoomed in on one particular accused Russian spy, 28-year-old Anna Chapman, nickname, Lady in Red.  Va-va-va-voom!  When she wasn’t collecting secrets she was posing for suggestive photographs (the most famous of which looks like she’s wearing Natasha’s cocktail dress), working as a real estate agent in New York City and living a seemingly normal life on Facebook.

Apparently, she let her guard down one time too many and, before she knew it, her cover was blown, along with the covers of her compatriots.  Whoops. 

Obviously, I am not the first to make the Anna-Natasha connection.  You can’t ignore the parallels.

But I am betting Natasha never came out of that red cartoon cocktail dress.  It was the 1960s after all, people had their modesty.  Plus, Facebook hadn’t been invented yet.

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