Style Guide Echo Chamber

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carrie from Trinidad.

Yeah, I was listening to your show and thinking back to when I was copy desk chief of a pretty good-sized newspaper.

And we would go to the dictionary when we needed to really be certain that we’re changing a word in the right way or choosing the right word for a headline.

And one of the things that surprised me as we got to bigger dictionaries was how often early usages from newspapers were cited.

And I found it sort of scary to realize how circular that whole process could be,

Because I also knew what could get through our desk when we were very busy.

I saw the potential for us being kind of an echo chamber for our own errors.

Oh, good point.

So you worked on the copy desk for a big newspaper.

I love your description of the editing process, because when I was in newspapers, it was exactly the same.

Something could go through six or seven people, and still there would be errors in it the next day.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It was inevitable.

There’s no such thing as perfect.

There’s such a thing as a deadline, and there’s such a thing as perfect,

And you’ve got to pick between the two.

Yes.

This is really familiar to me for a variety of reasons.

One, from the journalistic history that I have,

And Martha probably has encountered the same thing.

We both have a journalism background after a fashion.

And I call that poisoning the well,

Where the newspapers, for example, all use the Associated Press

To make their style consistent across the newspaper,

And then the newspaper goes to print,

And then the next time the Associated Press has a question about what to do

When a new issue comes up, they look at the very newspapers that use their own style guide to decide what to do.

And that’s a problem.

I don’t think they do style that way anymore.

This AP style book is very interactive now, and there’s an ask the editor question,

And you can send your questions in, and they will give you some sort of definitive answer on,

Yes, we hyphenate this.

But this goes directly to your question, Carrie.

The Associated Press is the best example that I know of, of this kind of misuse of quoting newspapers.

But other newspapers have the same problem.

I personally probably have contributed to a similar poisoning the well.

Every year I do a new words column for the New York Times for 10 years now,

And I am persuaded that some of the reason that some of these words continue to be used

Is because the New York Times printed them,

And I somehow was a part of legitimizing this brand new word

And kind of ensconcing it into the language.

And that bothers me. It bugs me.

It ruffles my feathers quite a bit to think that I’m no longer the impassionate, dispassionate observer,

But somehow I’m actually out there affecting the language change on the very things that I’m observing.

It’s a problem.

Then you must love social media because it’s taking that power away from newspapers

And handing it straight to the people.

Well, right, and this is how language is properly observed.

The best thing about using newspapers as sources on what to do with language

Is that at least the text is considered, and I use that word very carefully.

That means that somebody consciously thought about the structure, tone, and so forth of that passage,

And probably more than one somebody.

And it’s really nice to look at a body of professionally edited text,

Despite what errors may creep into there,

And to know that everything that you’re looking at was thought about.

It’s carefully put upon that page.

And that, to me, is a real good comfort.

On the other hand, it represents only one particular register of English.

That’s it. It’s journalese.

It does not—I mean, there’s some variations there.

Sports tends to be a little looser, and the editorials tend to be a little tighter.

But for the most part, it’s just this one registrar, whereas there are probably 15 or 20 other registrars of English that never show up in the newspaper.

And that’s what we get from social media and the last 20 to 30 years of the online world.

We can observe the language a little more closely to the way people actually speak and write it and not in this kind of stilted, professional tone.

I think good editors are worth their weight in gold.

But anyway, we appreciate your calling, Carrie.

Sure. Well, I appreciate the show. It’s a lot of fun to listen to.

Thank you, Carrie.

Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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