Mary Bird, 65, of San Leandro, Calif., is another traditionalist, if a reluctant one. Make it, “be identified as an employee of either BP or the government.” The phrases following “either” and “or” should be parallel. Feinberg either be identified as an employee of BP or of the government. It notes that BP is paying his firm $850,000 a month to run the fund, and the lawyers want this fact to be made clear as well - that Mr. The motion, which does not ask Judge Barbier to change or interfere with the claims process, also questions Mr. Make it “each received for his items,” or rephrase. The players, who are all juniors, must pay between $1,000 and $2,500 to charity, depending on the amount each received for their items.Īgreement again “each” is singular. “Each” is singular make it “gain him induction …” Anderson hung up.”Įach of those players posted statistics that, under normal circumstances, would almost certainly gain them induction. Make it something like, “after he and Mr. About 15 minutes after hanging up with Mr. He turned on his new 40-inch flat-screen television. This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.Īfter Mr. The slang word “moniker” appears more than 90 times in our archives this year (compared with 18 in 1990 and 6 in 1985.) Today, remnants of Poetry in Motion still exist, thanks to bus advertisements purchased by the Poetry Society of America, which has raised money to keep the moniker alive in New York and other transit markets. This quiet, orderly man, who lives in a quiet, orderly house, in a very quiet tree-lined neighborhood, has caused a huge public stir here with his volatile book arguing that Muslim immigrants in Germany are socially, culturally and intellectually inferior to most everyone else.Ī subtler point, but this use of “most” in place of “almost” is also considered colloquial, and is usually avoidable. But let’s resist “java” as a stand-in for “coffee” with the same determination that keeps “the white stuff” The splash of scalding coffee was painful enough, but the real source of my anxiety was on the floor: My iPhone was soaking in a little puddle of java.Ī colloquial approach was clearly justified in this bright blog post. Adams …Ĭontractions may be all right, but even in the conversational style of this blog post, the slangy tone of “went down” seems jarring and unnecessary. Here’s how her selection went down, the new chancellor confides to Ms. Black, the newly named New York City schools chancellor, who appears to have broken her post-appointment media silence by telling all to the New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams. This faddish buzzword has crept into our prose eight times in the last year. Trying to tap into the consumer subconscious in the hope of moving more merch isn’t new. The march ended at the large outdoor mausoleum for John Garang, the war hero who died in a helicopter crash in 2005, where it swelled into a rally with political leaders and activists giving speeches lambasting the north. (“Swath,” by the way, while not colloquial, is another overused bit of journalese.) We’ve used it 73 times in the past year, often in straight-news contexts like these:īut a wide swath of public interest groups have lambasted the proposal as “fake net neutrality’’ and said it was rife with loopholes.
It’s also the sort of word that’s used far more often by journalists than by normal people. When used to mean criticize or denounce, this colloquial verb is overworked and usually hyperbole. So, for example, the stylebook has this to say about one journalistic favorite: Or trite - the opposite of the freshness and vigor writers are seeking. Beyond that, as The Times’s stylebook often points out, many colloquial expressions are tired, hackneyed
Even in features we should use them judiciously, for special effect.Ĭhatty or colloquial language, in news stories in particular, can undercut the serious tone we strive for.
As I’ve discussed often, we try to avoid colloquial or slang expressions in straight news stories.
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