The Blog Reads

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. This is Joshua from Palo Alto, Pennsylvania.

Hello, from Palo Alto, Pennsylvania.

Yes. Yes, we are the anti-tech hub of the world.

I see. Okay, well, great. Well, we’re glad to talk with you. What’s up, Joshua?

I have a question. I got into a disagreement with my editor.

I work as a blogger, and I have for a number of years. I’ve been writing for 15 years.

And he came back to me with something that I had written in a recent post.

And what I had written was about a company, and we’re citing their blog.

And I said, in my post, the blog reads, and then entered the quote, the direct words from the blog.

And he said, that’s not right, because blogs can’t read.

Much like how people, especially from where I am, say the newspaper says it’s going to be snowy today.

Oh, my goodness.

He’ll say the newspaper can’t say anything.

Oh, my goodness.

Which I’ll agree with that.

Well, when he goes to get gas, does he ever say the meter reads $20 or the meter reads 15 gallons?

Or says?

That I don’t know.

The thermometer reads 75.

He’s wrong, basically.

You’re hearing the incredulousness in our voice because he’s wrong.

Every major dictionary of English allows this use of the verb read.

It’s a transitive verb.

I mean, he might just out of pure cussedness decide not to allow it.

But words have more than one meaning.

And if you don’t think that they do, it’s on you.

Yeah, Joshua, do you think that he’s tweaking you maybe?

Well, I mean, he could be because we have been working together for a long time and he’s very overworked.

So I know when I share this with him and he’s going to be like, oh, I can’t believe you let me do this.

He’s the boss.

Yeah, but that’s not how it works.

I know.

And when we talk about it, I’m sure that we’ll come to some sort of he’ll be right.

And I’ll just have to follow along.

By all means, put this in your style guide and make it part of your institutional practice.

But if it’s just a capricious, momentary decision by an editor, that’s the wrong way to go about it.

It needs to be kind of discussed and resolved so that henceforth you can all do it the same way.

And that’s totally cool.

I don’t think that’s what we’re driving at, where we don’t want to have everybody using say, says, or saying, or anything like that.

I think it’s more of like we’re trying to formalize a style guide.

What are you going to put instead?

What are you going to put instead? The newspaper stated or the newspaper, what else do you use?

And I think that stated comes off as a little too formal and almost pretentious.

Yes, it does.

But I would recommend a week’s vacation for him.

Oh, thank you very much.

That’s what we prescribe for both of you.

Maybe not together.

Paid, of course.

Paid vacation, yes.

Okay, well, that’s official.

And you’re not allowed to do work either while you’re on vacation, so I forbid it.

No work at all. Okay.

Step away from the phone.

You know, if your editor wants to pop us a line and, like, tell us what really gets under his skin, we’d love to see that.

I just really would be interested about what his difficulties with that.

Because sometimes the story is they were told by an editor earlier in their career never to do it, and it stuck.

Sometimes it is.

There was a particular heinous piece of editing, and that was just one of many things that bothered them.

They kind of latched onto that, and forever after that’s the thing that is, like, the hallmark of bad writing for them.

You just never know what an editor’s story is.

That’s true, and we have a lot of history, so while we’re getting up there.

So, yeah, I can probably pinpoint a person or two that it could be tied to.

Oh, interesting.

Very good.

Very good.

I want to thank you for your time and your call and sharing this dilemma with us.

All right?

All right.

I appreciate your time, and I love the show.

Thank you.

Take care now.

Thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Call us with your language questions and disputes from the workplace, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.