Hissy Fit: Careless use of language sets bad example

One of the gratifications that come from writing this column is letters from readers who care about the language and speak out about uses -- or misuses -- that they find objectionable.

One such reader is Larry McRae of Boone. He has written about what he sees as a perpetrator of abuses. Because of the limited space available, I don't often print comments as long as his, but I think his have uncommon merit. McRae wrote:

"I always enjoy your column and certainly appreciate your attempts to defend English from the pagan hordes. But a couple of items in your newspaper reminded me of the hissy fit you threw a few weeks ago about ‘issues' vs. ‘problems' and inspired me to wonder whether the problem isn't your fault. Not you personally, but journalists and their carelessness with language.

"On Nov. 4 we have two clear examples. Your headline writer wrote above Kathleen Parker's column, ‘Newspapers and good stories will persevere." Well, a newspaper as an organization might, but it's hard to see how a story could persevere. The … thought would have been conveyed much better with the word endure.

"Now, persevere and endure can in some cases mean almost the same thing, and the headline writer perhaps confused them. We could blame it on overwork from modern newspapers' understaffing or on ignorance, but it certainly represents carelessness and failing to make the not-so-fine distinction.

"In the same edition, an AP piece about the elections says that ‘interviews with voters … were filled with reasons for the Democrats to be concerned … particularly about independents -- the crown jewel of elections because they often determine outcomes.' Here, frankly, I am not sure what the writer meant by ‘the crown jewel.' Perhaps he confused it with ‘keystone' or with ‘holy grail'? Whatever he meant, he was careless in his choice of words.

"The relation to your hissy fit is that most people learn the meaning of words by reading or hearing them in context, not by looking them up in a dictionary. If writers confuse meanings, new readers will learn the wrong meaning, and it isn't long before there's no distinction in common use between issue and problem or between persevere and endure.

"I always conceived journalists as people who cared about language and its proper use -- think H.L. Mencken, Stewart Alsop or George Will. But that concern seems to have been lost on your tribe. I don't know exactly how ‘issue' came to mean ‘problem,' and it may have nothing to do with newspapers.

"Even so, perhaps journalists should take a break from proclaiming their duty to inform the public and spend some time contemplating their duty to preserve the English language. However much circulation may have shrunk recently, newspapers are probably still the print medium most people see most often, and television journalism is probably most people's most common contact with formal English.

"You all owe it to us to be more careful. And let's not get started on ‘begs the question,' ‘belabor,' ‘decimate' or dozens of other words and phrases that have quite lost their original meanings, often from the malign influence of a reporter looking for a colorful word to spice up an otherwise dull story."

I find little in McRae's letters to disagree with. I would say that journalists, like workers in any trade, vary in the amount of thought, care and precision in the use of their tools. Some care a great deal, some little. Some perpetuate bad usages by mimicking something that they have heard from others.

Theodore M. Bernstein, the author of The Careful Writer, put forth a sort of Gresham's Law applied to words. In Bernstein's application, bad words drive out good words.

By bad words he meant "secondary meanings that diverge from the true primary meanings of words, and that come into use because of ignorance, confusion, faddishness or the importunities of slang."

Richard Creed is a retired Journal editor. He can be reached at richcreed@triad.rr.com.