Notes

Tributes to a coach. Not a football, though it is that time of year. A writing coach. Don Murray, a man whose work and ideas influenced many of us in the business of writing and teaching writing, passed away Dec. 30. Writing gurus Roy Peter Clark and Chip Scanlon at the Poynter Institute have written fitting tributes to the man they knew personally and the one who talked and taught writing for all of his professional life. (There is a lot more about Murray on the Poynter website.) Murray won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in the 1950s -- the youngest ever to do so -- but he didn't let that stop him from a long and prolific career as a magazine journalist, newspaper columnist, fiction writer, and university professor. His idea about the five steps of the writing process have been referenced by JPROF here. The world could do with a few more like him. (Posted Jan. 2, 2007)

The Iraq war is like . . . a comma. Once again, commas are in the news. Well, make that once in a blue moon. In a speech the other day, George W. Bush said that eventually the war in Iraq would be seen as "just a comma" in the history books. He didn't offer any explanation for what he meant, and his detractors have pounced, claiming that he is trivializing a war that he began and that has cost the lives of more than 2,500 soldiers. (Here is the Washington Post story on all of this.) I'm not sure what he meant either, but as a card-carrying grammarian, I'm pretty sure that commas are important -- probably more important than Bush or his detractors seem to think. (Posted Oct. 5, 2006)

Redundancies in the air. If you're a collector in the word game (as I am), keeping your redundancy box full is a fairly easy matter. All you have to do is pay attention occasionally. That's what I was doing when I was driving along Sunday, listening to story on National Public Radio. The story was on the opening of the new Supreme Court term. The anchor was interviewing a law professor about the various cases the court would be hearing this year. At one point in the interview, the anchor -- in response to something the prof had said -- cut in with "Well, that's the key central point, isn't it?" The law professor, who may find redundancies the elixir of life, repeated the interviewer's words. "Yes, that's the key central point," she said and continued with her comment. I hope that both of these intelligent people have some regrets. Meanwhile, I have a new redundancy for my collection. (Posted Oct. 3, 2006)

Today's Word on Journalism. "In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates."
--Alexis de Tocqueville, French commentator on the American experiment, 1835

That quotation comes from Ted Pease's Today's Word on Journalism, a daily email that contains a quotation about some aspect of journalism. Ted is a professor at Utah State and has a world-class sense of humor, particularly when he directs it at himself. His email is always a delight to read. You can subscribe by sending a "subscribe" message to Ted at tpease@cc.usu.edu. (The drawing to the right is de Tocqueville, not Ted.) More quotations about journalism -- many of them coming from Ted -- can be found at this page on JPROF. (Posted Sept. 7, 2006)

An expensive comma. Commas don't look like they should should be very expensive, but this one in a strategic place in a contract is going to cost a Canadia company about $2 million. More (Posted Aug. 10, 2006)

Changing quotes. One of the continuing practical problems that arises often in the nation's newsrooms is how to handle direct quotations. Sometimes they contain profanity. Sometimes they don't make sense, but they are said by someone important in the story, and reporters and editors must consider using them anyway. Sometimes they sound one way said aloud and appear to mean something different when in print. And sometimes they are spoken by people who are not used to being quoted by the news media, and they have language that is not normally found in a news story. Such as the case with the quotes "They was good friends" and "They killed my young'un for slam nothing." Reporters and editors at the Raleigh News and Observer struggled with those, and their struggles resulted in an interesting column by the newspaper's public editor. (Posted Aug. 8, 2006)

Student writing skills -- worse than ever? Most of us who teach writing at a collegiate level believe that student writing skills have deteriorated. But most of us have as evidence only the writing we encounter (pretty strong) and the complaints of our colleagues (pretty weak). Lawrence Musgrove, an English prof at St. Xavier in Chicago, has stirred up a debate on InsideHigherEd.com with an article that says the empirical evidence to show that student writing skills have deteriorated doesn't exist. Students are making about as many writing errors as they always have. But there are many who disagree or have something to add to Musgrove's analysis. (Posted July 13, 2006)

Confidential sources, New York Times style. Bryon Calume, public editor of the New York times, devotes his column this week to assessing the new rules at the times for using confidential sources. Two major changes have occurred since Bill Keller took over as executive editor. One is that an editor must know (and approve) the identity of the person to whom confidentiality is granted. The second is that readers should be told why the source as requested confidentiality. This is a good policy for openness, but it can also lead to some awkward writing. It has given rise to some phrasing such as "a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because most staff members are not authorized to speak about the vacancy" and "two Pentagon officials who have worked on the project and were granted anonymity so they would describe the changes before an official announcement expected later this week." Sometimes, as readers have pointed out to Calume, the reasons given by the Times reporters in the story are undercut by the information itself. Still, despite its awkwardness, the Times is trying to be more transparent for its readers, and other news organizations should follow its lead (as they inevitably will). (Posted Nov. 22, 2005)

Judge Roberts, grammarian. He may be a conservative ideologue or a moderate (or even a liberal!) in right-wing clothing, but U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts has been outed as gramarian. An article in the New York Times this week (In Re Grammar, Roberts's Stance is Crystal Clear) says that after a review of thousands of pages of Roberts' briefs and memos, one thing is certain: he is a precise user of the language and demands the same precision of others. The article describes his obsession as wryly humorous and occasionally sarcastic. Grammarians everywhere (conservative, moderate and liberal) can take comfort. More (Posted Sept. 1, 2005)

Changing context: Burn, baby, burn! The 1960s seem to be always with us. Rarely do you hear or see a television ad that doesn't have some sixties rock hit as its theme or background music. Now there's going to be a hot sauce that uses a phrase that was anything but benign in that decade: Burn, baby, burn. For those of us who lived through the sixties, the phrase conjures up images of Watts, Detroit and a dozen other places whose conflagrations had deep political meanings. Leonard Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Miami Herald, has written an elegant piece about the way the context of this phrase has changed.

Your first thought is to wonder what's next. Power to the People Electric Company? Off the Pig pork rinds?

Your second thought is to marvel at how that which was once dangerous and intimidating has become safe and unthreatening enough to sit on a supermarket shelf. Maybe you remember the title of that old Doobie Brothers album: What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. To that you can now add a corollary: What were once threats are now marketing slogans.

(Posted Aug. 14, 2005)

Invisible writing. One of the best mystery novelists around today is William G. Tapply, creator of the Brady Coyne mystery series. Tapply's novels live up to the cover blurbs -- well-formed characters, tightly woven plots and elegant writing. Tapply practices what many of us who teach writing often preach, and he gives voice to some of those practices in an essay on his web site called "Invisible Writing." The essay tells the story of what Tapply learned from his father -- also an excellent writer -- when he was beginning his craft. The essay emphasizes two major points I make with my students: pay attention to verbs (see below) and try to make your writing invisible to the reader. The term I use for the second point is "modesty." A good writer should try to put the content in the foreground and the writer in the background. Tapply's essay and his novels are well worth reading. (Posted Aug. 13, 2005)
Update: Tapply has emailed saying that an updated version of his essay will be published in an upcoming issue of The Writer magazine, which is also a great resources for writers and teachers of writing. (Posted Aug. 14, 2005)

Expensive misspelling. Tell your students (as you undoubtedly do) that they need to spell correctly and that they should check their spelling. Not doing so can turn out to be an expensive proposition. That's what the folks in Livermore, Calif., found out in 2004 when they spent $40,000 for a mosaic for their new library. The artwork contained 175 words, many of them names of writers, scientists and artists. Some 11 of those words were misspelled. They included Shakespeare (Shakespere), Einstein (Eistein), and Gauguin (Gaugan). The Miami artist who executed the work at first claimed artistic license (maybe some of your students have used the same excuse) but later said she would fix the problem words. Unfortunately, the city of Livermore is having to pay her $6,000 plus expenses to do that. California law requires that public artwork cannot be changed without the consent of the artist. Some people are blaming city and library officials as well as the artist, saying they should have checked the spelling before approving the artwork. You can read more about this in the news stories of the San Francisco Chronicle and the Contra Costa Times. (Posted Aug. 10, 2005)

Idea. Collect. Focus. Draft. Clarify. Roy Peter Clark, one of the Poynter Institute's writing gurus, has done it again. He has given us another excellent article about writing. This one concerns the writing process itself, and he begins with Donald Murray's five-word outline of what writing is: idea, collect, focus, draft, clarify. This simple model universalizes the process, whether the writing is for the annual report of a stock brokerage company or the most compelling piece of journalism. A writer begins with the idea (often, in a journalist's case, the assignment); collects the information necessary to support the idea (reports); at some point decides what the writing is to be about; writes the piece; and then edits it. Clark has his own revision and expansion of Murray's outline, but this is a good way to begin thinking about the writing process. Sometimes students are mystified by what writing is; this outline might help them clarify it.

(Posted April 16, 2005)