Let Us Give Thanks...For Copy Editors

We fully admit we are jealous we did not get to attend this swank White House party. This is why we got a good chuckle out of the New York Times blog post this morning making fun of the editing on the menu:

The White House pulled out all the stops in preparation for President Obama’s first state dinner on Tuesday night, hiring a new florist, selecting a renowned guest chef and even inviting a number of high-profile musicians to perform.

But one person the White House apparently neglected to hire was a spell checker.

The special dinner menu — a lavish mélange of Indian and American favorites as well as several excellent wines — was rife with typos.

The second course of the evening was paired, for example, with a delicious 2006 Brooks Riesling, which, the menu noted, was bottled in “Wilamette Valley, Oregon.”

A diligent copy editor would have changed that to the proper spelling, “Willamette Valley.”

For their third course, the 320 guests were offered a dish that, according to the menu, included potato dumplings with tomato chutney and “chick peas,” which should in fact have been “chickpeas.” That course, the menu noted, was paired with an excellent red wine, a “2007 Granache” from Beckmen Vineyards. The correct spelling of the popular varietal, one of the most widely planted types of red grape in the world, is actually “Grenache” with only one “a,” not two.

The last bottle of the night was equally impressive, a sparkling chardonnay from Virginia. It was listed as a “Thibaut Janisson Brut,” missing a hyphen between the first two words. And last but not least, the dessert may have been free of error in taste, but not so in spelling. It included, according to the menu, passion fruit and vanilla “Gelees,” the French word for “gelled,” which, when written correctly, includes an acute accent on the second “e.”

For future reference, SPOGG is always available for menu editing. We work for food.

On 'coinage'

Twice in two days we've come across an incorrect use of the verb "coin." Today's misuse appeared in Maureen Dowd's column.

To coin a phrase or word means to invent it.

Sarah Palin did NOT coin the phrase "bass-ackwards." The spoonerism has been around for years. For years! Let's not give Palin any more credit than she deserves. Feel free to interpret that as you will.

When Copy Editors Attack

Vanity Fair has edited Sarah Palin's resignation speech. Read if it you want to see red.

Sarah Palin, Grammar Failin'

Wow. You know Sarah Palin's in trouble for her abrupt resignation when conservatives are the ones making fun of her grammar.

We still object to the comma after the "but" on her T-shirt. Honestly!

That Swearing-In Thing

We admit we rolled our eyes mightily yesterday when CNN breathlessly reported Obama was having a do-over on his swearing-in. No doubt the same people who insisted he was ineligible to be president were eagely preparing lawsuits insisting this, too, meant he was illegitimately in office. Gah! Please get over it.

In any case, we thoroughly enjoyed this New York Times bit by the brilliant Steven Pinker, which not only blames the goof on the Chief Justice--but also speculates what really was behind it: a tendency toward hypercorrect grammar.

This Seems Sort of Mean

We get spam, er, helpful promotional marketing in our inbox for all sorts of pop culture happenings.

This arrived yesterday, on Wednesday, Oct. 29.

Thursday, October 29, 2008 – One week before the national polls open, tens of thousands of texting moviegoers have spoken! Senator Barack Obama beat out Senator John McCain by moviegoers when polled via text message "who would
you rather take to the movies?"

Does it mean Obama, provoked by a text-message poll, attacked John McCain when standing by a group of moviegoers? We hope not.

It would be terribly unsportsmanlike to attack an elderly veteran who lost a lot of arm movement when he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. And Senator Obama has been so restrained up to this point (though in a fistfight, he would totally beat McCain and possibly hold his own against Sarah Palin's inevitable eye-gouges and hairspray attacks).

Or does the sentence mean Obama beat McCain among moviegoers polled by text messages? We rather suspect it's the latter. What a relief. Prepositions, people. Use them with care.

And don't forget to vote next week.

"Grambar" from the Campaign Trail

Slate posted this gem from the McCain campaign:

Thursday, October 23, 2008
ORMOND BEACH, FLORIDA
Event: John McCain Participates in "Joe the Plummer" Tour Rally
Location: All Star Building Materials, Inc. 1361 North Highway U.S. 1 Ormond Beach, FL 32174
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2008

Let's hope they're not worried real Americans wouldn't recognize a properly spelled (let alone licensed) plumber....

Presidential Candidates Pontificate on Punctuation

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran something we wish we'd thought of:

Effective writing: If presidential candidates debated use of punctuation
By STEPHEN WILBURS, Special to the Star Tribune

March 16, 2008

Wouldn't it be fun to hear the two Democratic candidates and the Republican candidate debate one another? To keep things balanced, we've asked former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to join. Rather than discuss the future of our nation, they will address the issue on everyone's mind: correct grammar and punctuation:

Q What are your thoughts regarding the appropriate use of the semicolon?

Sen. Barack Obama: Our movement is real, change is coming to America and the time has come to use semicolons appropriately.

Sen. John McCain: Although I've never minded the role of the underdog, we must get used to the idea that semicolons are the front- running punctuation mark.

Huckabee: A lot of people have been trying to say this is a two-mark contest between semicolons and colons. Well, you know what? It is. And I like them both.

Read the rest of this story....

NPR on Candidates' Grammar

Daniel Schorr had this to say on NPR this weekend:

Candidates Need to Clean Up Their Language
March 9, 2008 · Call it fuddy-duddy, but indulge me in a few pet peeves about language usage by politicians, and yes, the media. This with a bow to my friend Bill Safire, the reigning usage maven.

First, the Obama and Clinton camps recently squabbled over an ad showing a hypothetical 3 a.m. phone call to the White House asking: "Who do you want answering the phone?" Whatever the crisis, I would like them to say, "Whom do you want answering the phone?" Grammar 101. Ernest Hemingway didn't write For Who the Bell Tolls.

Then the word "nation." The media report that President Bush has landed in the nation of Liberia. No, he has landed not in a nation, which is a social concept, but in a country, which is a geographical concept. The nation may also have organized itself into a state. But you land in a country, not a nation.

Then a phrase which is on its way to becoming a cliche: "up for grabs." In its original meaning, "up for grabs" was meant to denote some disorganized situation in which there was no way to tell who might end up with a majority of votes or supporters.

But "up for grabs" has evolved into a catch-all phrase for "in contention." It is customary now to hear that "so many convention delegates are up for grabs in the primary contest." They are not up for grabs. It is known who the contenders are. There may be so many delegates at stake, but they are not up for grabs.

Finally, the commonly used "protest of" some action — wrong. To protest is to proclaim or announce, as methinks thou dost protest too much. What you mean is to protest against.

I'm not sure how many people care about language usage in the political arena. But I would like to see a little elegance in the words of politicians and the media.

Celebrity Grammar Poll

It's not easy being in the public eye all the time, having your every move and statement recorded. You can't even leave the house wearing an extremely short skirt and no underwear without the darned paparazzi photographing your posterior for posterity.

Still, this is no excuse for bad grammar. Our task now is to decide which celebrity deserves to win the SPOGG Award for Most Appalling Celebrity Grammar. The contestants:

President George W. Bush
We're not the sort to kick a man when he's down (frankly, we're not fond of upright kicking, either). But President Bush really ought to know the plural of the word child. After all, he's the father of twins.

While running for president, he asked, "Is our children learning?" Then, on Sept. 26, 2007, he proved that this wasn't a one-time fluke when he said, "Childrens do learn." (Not all of them, though. Not all of them.)

Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton produced a T-shirt that said, "THATS HOT," cheating the poor apostrophe from its rightful place on her bosom. What's more, she sent Lindsay Lohan a text message that said, "i chill with perez, but not enough for your name to get broughten up." Broughten? Is she the only text-messager who likes to lengthen words?

Courtney Love
It's perhaps unfair to judge Courtney Love by her grammar. It's not even English she's writing on her blog. And we quote:

have a beer with?
i would never votefor a presidenty based on the "person id most like to have a beer witH" Fox transparently obvious talking point. Its maddeningly sexist and mostly its DUMB.Beer isnt even GOOD. i mean REALLY. "ahh ahm a gonna belly up to the sports bar and have a brewski y'all want one?" i mean who has really had more than TEN beers in thier life on my blog?
It's entirely possible there are too many errors to correct. In any case, vote here:

Oh, Barack

Yes, Barack Obama gives good speeches. His improv skills need a bit of improvement, though. This comes from the New York Times:

“If we have an E.M.T. in the house, I think somebody got faint,” he said calmly when a woman keeled over in front of the stage in Cincinnati. “They just need a little water and some juice.”

Unless this woman was a gender enigma like Pat from "Saturday Night Live," he should have said "she," not "they."

Somebody is a singular pronoun and needs to be paired with another singular pronoun. Sometimes, this is tough--particularly when you don't know the sex of the somebody in question.

There are also plenty of examples of great writers who've ignored this principle and use "their" as an all-purpose possessive pronoun. This doesn't make it right. For those of us who like a little precision with our speech and writing, keeping sentences parallel is the goal.

We don't love the "he or she" construction as a workaround. It's pretty darned stuffy. But this doesn't mean we shrug our shoulders and give up.

The better alternative is to use the plural when you really don't know the sex of the person in question. And when you do—let's say, when a woman has fainted at your glamorous feet—there's no need to further rob her of her dignity and neuter her.