Entertainment For Lively Minds
A Pedant Writes
Plenty of terrific stuff in the latest issue (November 2009) of The Word, but in the spirit of nitpicking...
On page 22 Jude Rogers refers to Bernard Sumner, in "Synth Britannia" talking "...glowingly about how Wendy Carlos's soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange affected him as a child...". Well, given Sumner's age, if he was a child, this must have been at the time of the original release of the soundtrack, which was under the name of "Walter Carlos". Later reissues have adjusted the sleeve credit to the composer's changed name "Wendy Carlos", but to use the latter name in the context of Sumner's original encounter with the album is unwelcome revisionism.
Then on page 27, we have "Independent" editor Roger Alton waxing lyrical on the theme "God is in the detail", bemoaning the lack of accuracy in many younger journos' writing. Then, during his next point, he says "In fact if I could produce a paper a fraction as good as Manchester United I'd die happy". Well, unless the "goodness" of his paper is zero, it must be SOME fraction of the "goodness" of Manchester United, even if it's, say, a billionth as good. A billionth is still a fraction. He was doubtless trying a "smarter" variation on saying something like "...a tenth as good...". But failed, dismally.
Ah, that feels better...
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I do like that third paragraph, Paul.
I'm just smarting that I didn't spot the error first.
If we're engaging in hair-splitting...
...let's do some proper quadripilectomy.
Rather than picking on the phrase 'a fraction', I'd be more bothered about the fact that the phrase "...if I could produce a paper a fraction as good as Manchester United..." seems to imply that Manchester United is a newspaper. It wasn't the last time I looked.
Shouldn't that read "...if I could produce a paper a fraction as good as Manchester United are a planet shagging money-making juggernaut, sorry, football team..."
Have I missed something or am I anal enough to retrain as a sub-editor? :)
"...let's do some proper quadripilectomy."
Illuminatus my dear chap.. I did not receive a classical education so please correct me if I'm wrong but quadripilectomy is, I believe, the removal of four entire hairs.
The splitting of a single hair into four parts would, I suspect, be a piloquadrisection.
I don't know if this goes beyond subeditorial standards of pernicketyness because beyond that there lies only lawyers. Hereinafter and theretofore ipser alter de facto ad hominem ripsi loquatsiem bingo bubblegum wheelbarrow lamb bhuna stella artois caesar adsum jam forte.
I stand gladly corrected
I think quadripiloctomy is the word I misremembered. :)
One coat, duly collected.
Retrain as a subeditor
I wouldn't bother your hole doing that, subs really are the dictionary definition of a dying breed. Retrain as a multi-media content editor might be a better line of attack. And in that job redefinition may lie the problem with increasing inaccuracies across the print media 'eco system'.
Speaking as a sub
I'm sorry to say that yr entirely correct. Entire tranches of management see us frantic pendantic types as a luxury - entirely superfluous to the production process. After all, reporters can spell, write cogently, literately and legally appositely as well as even pen headlines, can't they? Oh.
An editor writes...
Subs are essential. Never let it be said you're not. Some writers - and I'm talking about big names you will have heard of - can't string a sentence together. Subs make it all better.
Sure, we all know that
Sure, we all know that modern reporters can write straight on to a page and can be trusted on all things legal etc. Don't we? THE most soul destroying experience of my professional life was trying to get an idiot time and motion man to understand the role of a sub editor/ newspaper designer. Lucky enough to have got out soon after.
'Pendantic'?
You wear medallions as well?
You're not wrong...
about the pedantry. I mean, really, Paul, while I'm no fan of facetious, smart Alec comments such as "you're kidding, right?" I honestly don't know whether you posted this as a joke. If you didn't, I'm amazed you thought it worth pointing out.
A bored man writes
why?
Not wishing to be pedantic but...
..shouldn't that be "A bored man ASKS 'why?'"?
Another pedant suggests
that to ask is essentially a verbal construct, whereas to write indicates a form of written communication which is read by the recipient audience, as shown above...although the post in question wasn't technically written, but entered on a keyboard.
Okay, okay, I'm going :-)
Pedants' revolt
Blimey - I'm a professional pedant but even I'm in awe of these levels of nit-picking.
Holy S**t!
Am I on the Radio 4 message bored?
Is that a pun
or a Freudian slip?!
*edit* just read your comment below :-)
A pedants favourite film?
"The Pink Panther"
um....
wouldn't that be possessive...?
i.e. " a pedant's favourite film..." complete with apostrophe.
I can only apologise...
A quick poll of our sub editors
reveals you have too much time on your hands, Paul.
They also point out 'bored' and 'pedants' in the posts above.
My 'bored'
was just a wee jokie...
I'm bored (I'm bored, I'm bored)
...with exposées and LSD...
Context is all
The Indy bloke not expressing himself as clearly as he might (let's be kind) would be unremarkable if he wasn't moaning about the quality of the writing of others at the time. My copy of the new issue hasn't arrived yet, so I don't know if this appeared in a piece by him, in which case, yes, it should have been subbed into some sort of serviceable shape, or as a quote, in which case there's not a fat lot you can do with it, except perhaps remove the quotation marks and gloss the point being made.
Paul's quite right about Walter/Wendy Carlos, though. We wouldn't say, "'Morning Has Broken' is perhaps Yusuf Islam's best-known song" or "Sanandra Maitreya's first hit was 'If You Let Me Stay'", so Wendy's pre-op name should indeed be used if that's what was printed on the sleeve in readers' record collections.
You got it, Archie!
The nit-picking was but the Trojan Horse by which I smuggled in my real points about being hoist by one's own petard, and about creeping revisionism.
These all sound like instances of
Muphry's Law (yes, the spelling's right!) which states:
Any article, comment or post that passes judgement on the poor spelling, grammar or usage of others will, inevitably, contain at least one example of poor spelling, grammar or usage itself.
At the risk
of being a didactic dullard, I probably would use the phrase 'Yusuf Islam's Morning has etc'; after all, that's the nomenclature he goes by these days. Obviously, I would use 'former Cat Stevens' later in any piece I was penning. I suspect very few people would discuss Cassius Clay's boxing career in reference to Muhammed Ali. to use one less-than-abstruse example.
No offence meant, and any grammatical faux-pas are, quite evidently, deliberate.....oh yeah.
Reasonable point
But aren't the names that those people are most recognisable under Cat Stevens and Muhammad [sic - gotcha!] Ali?
And wouldn't it be reasonable to refer to Chris Evert's final Grand Slam victory in 1986, even though by then she'd been going by "Chris Evert-Lloyd" for years?
(I'm now arguing against myself here, I realise. I think I've changed position from "use the name they used at the time" to "use the name they're best known by".)
Touche
I knew I spelled the boxer's name worng, but just couldn;t be arsed to check! My membership of the Shining Path Order of Pedants has been revoked - revolver and glass of scotch await!
Touche
away! :-)
I know
for i was that turtle
Oh no..
Oh my..
I knew that was going to happen.
Applauds
next up: the immortal genius of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie. That's mah boy.
"Sanandra Maitreya"
Are you telling me Terence Trent D'Arby has had a sex change? Or has he just changed his name?
Name change
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Trent_D%27Arby
"Unwelcome revisionism"?
It may have been composed before gender reassignment but it remains the soundtrack that Wendy Carlos recorded back in 1971 - even if she happened to be Walter Carlos then. "The Clockwork Orange soundtrack by Wendy Carlos" would be more problematic, but Jude uses the possessive: Wendy Carlos's soundtrack. And it is.
It's a murky issue, not a straightforward error - unlike Roger Alton's fraction confusion (which was his mistake. The Word was simply transcribing his comments).
Face it Paul, you're just showing off.
It
passes the time!
Surely
Sumner has simply thought up a quick "cool" reference to deliver as a talking head and got it wrong. I bet he never heard a beep from Wendy or Walter as a child, he's just trying to position himself. As in people who maintain their first album ar age 6 was "Abbey Road" or whatever.
Not a child but a teenager
If Wikipedia is correct in saying that Sumner was born in 1956 then he'd be 15 or 16 when the soundtrack was released in 1972. I'm sure that hearing such strange sounds made an impact at that age. I still have the 'Switched-on Bach" that I bought at about that age just a few years later.
Here's a laugh
find a group of sub editors and accuse them of 'pedanticness'
Then run away fast with the words "I think you'll find..." ringing in your ears.
Shouldn't that be...
sub-editors?
I'm running away now, before someone hits me. Hard.
And
accuse them of 'pedantry', not 'pedanticness'....I'm a sub, suprisingly enough - and a wow at parties, donchaknow.
ps an ex once accused me of being the most pedantic man she had ever met. I replied: 'Actually I think you'll find I'm the second most pedantic.'
Pedantry
I know, I was... oh never mind. Are you quite short, or did I aim too high?
Neither
I just thought you were a typical reporter.......
I thought that
'pedanticness' was, you know, the point. Seeing as it was...oh what do you call those things? ... a joke and all.
And. Some. Fell.
On. Stony. Ground.
Whoo
Tough crowd tonight. Is this thing on?
Don't Save It For Later
I've got a weak finish.
Absolute
arfarfarf... very good
I'm not sure about sub-editors
Our subs' desk wouldn't like the inference that they are 'sub-' or under an oik like me (like sub-contractors or sub-postmasters).
They are the editors who make substitutions so perhaps they should be subs. editors. I don't know.
I could go and ask them but I've woken them up once today already.
Ah, but they're not sub to us
they're the subordinate editors (I've just checked, for added anal tendencies in OED online). We would be mere minions below them. So the hyphen is, apparently, correct.
Such is life, I suppose.
Attendees
A greater pedant than I(though I do like a bit of pedantery) once explained to me that "attendees" as in at a meeting is incorrect. What should it be? Attenders?
Ooh, all sorts of options
Depending on the type of meeting: participants, directors, board /committee/group/department members, shareholders, audience, public....
(In case anyone's wondering, "attendees" is a nasty word and so to be avoided because it implies the existence of a counterpart "attendor", as in "lessor/lessee", "licensor/licensee" and so on - in other words, someone who has been "attended" - which is obviously a bit, like, bollocks.)
I think you'll find the correct terms is
'unwilling victims' mostly.
You lot
are good!
Have you thought about getting together and making your own rival magazine?
But..
there would be nobody to edit it
Interestingly
the original post has been marked down to a -5 score, yet the thread lives on and thrives.
Presumably, this proves that the voting system is an interesting diversion but not much more than that... but not the end of free speech and debate as has been styled in some corners.
Another pedant* writes...
...to point out that in Giles Smith's review of the Alan Bennett box-set, the character that James Fox plays in 'A Question of Attribution' was Anthony Blunt, not Guy Burgess. Burgess was the subject of Bennett's play 'An Englishman Abroad'.
* assuming that it's pedantry rather than accuracy. I'm sure someone will put me straight.
Top issue by the way.
Anal
I blush slightly when someone lightly in conversation claims to be
"anal". Seems to have entered into mainstream language and I am not ready for it.
Perhaps
your analyst can help you with that?
Anal-ist?
Coincidence Dr. Freud?
Perhaps
I should have flagged the gag with an "ooo-er missus!" and a clutch of smiley emoticons. Sheeeesh!
"
"
Sorry...
I was just joining in.
I shall not bother next time.
I've been patronised in better places than this, you know.
I wrote immediately
to support you, then thought better of it (hence the non-message above) because
(a) it may have been presumptuous of me to think you might need support when you can probably answer for yourself;and
(b) I may have given replies in the past which could possibly, albeit unintentionally, be construed as patronising, and would undoubtedly have been brought to book with comments of the pot/kettle variety.
But my feelings remain that this was an unnecessarily nasty and condescending response to your query. Please don't let the inadequate social skills of a minority put you off :-)
Thanks.
My response to the OP (The 'Holy Sh*t' remark) was a bit rude, I s'pose. But, I was joking. And it wasn't aimed at one person.
People claim to be?
I've heard people point out that other people are anal, but I can't think of a time when anyone has said to me that they are anal about something.
They do!
It's almost a badge of honour in the teaching profession. Usually relating to tidiness of cupboards & neatness of display boards!
The people who say it are generally annoying idiotholes, though,,,
Yes! That's exactly what I mean
People are increasingly describing themselves as "anal" about good customer service, accountancy, garden sheds - you name it.
My proctologist
is a prime example of this. He's always describing his tendencies as "anal".
Language check
Why do British journalists feel the urge to insert some "German phrase" into articles about Krautrock, David Bowie or the Third Reich when they don't know the language at all? And are too lazy to check.
Like the Kraftwerk snippet in the latest issue - I assume the non-English bits are supposed to be German (they don't make any sense to me). And the writer can't even spell the band name...
Or does this belong in the 'Lazy journalism' thread?
I find the
term Krautrock patronising and lazy, and it is a ridiculous generalisation as well.
Krautrock
I'm German, so I'm allowed to use it.
(And no, Germans in general don't object to the term, we only object to foreigners demanding that we find it patronizing.)
Fair enough.
A German girlfriend of mine used to get very annoyed by the term and gave me the impression that it was generally unpopular . I stand corrected .