I keep a list of favorite authors, books, songwriters and Web sites. My mom taught me the value of this, with her little index file with handwritten notes on books that she’s read over the years. What’s more, I love to snoop around on lists that others keep.
If you’re interested in language, grammar and usage, take note. John McIntyre from The Baltimore Sun keeps a list of resources. And it’s a great one.
McIntyre is the longtime director of the Sun‘s copy desk, a former president of the American Copy Editors Society and an affiliate faculty member at Loyola College of Maryland. He loves language. He writes a blog for the Sun called “You Don’t Say.” And he describes himself as a “veteran drudge” who “writes about language, usage, journalism and arbitrarily chosen subjects.”
In this edited interview, I talked with McIntyre about the resources he uses and recommends most. You’ll find more on these and others in a blog entry titled, “Editors don’t like anything.”
Sara Quinn: Are there examples that you use over and over as illustrations of really good writing?
McIntyre: For years, I’ve loved John McPhee’s books. McPhee is a brilliant writer in explaining things with clarity and precision and imagination. (McPhee writes for The New Yorker and is the author of more than 25 books).
One of his books on geology has a sentence in it that basically says if he had to summarize all of geology in one sentence, it would say that the rocks at the summit of Mount Everest contain marine fossils. (NOTE: The exact sentence is: “The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.”)
There are things like that throughout his work.
Do you use examples of good writing and editing when you teach?
McIntyre: Actually, in my copy editing class every semester, we spend 13 or 14 weeks editing dreck. Because, you know, that’s what copy editors do. We are pathologists.
But, on the last day of class, I hand out the one good story that they get to read all semester. It is Bill Glauber’s article in The Baltimore Sun about the funeral of the British mobster, Ronnie Kray. His account of the funeral is meticulously constructed and irresistible to readers.
Can you share an excerpt of that story?
McIntyre: I can quote the first two paragraphs, which will give you a good idea.
“LONDON — The streets of the East End were filling with kids and grandparents, shoppers and photographers, all following the six black-plumed horses, the Victorian glass hearse awash with flowers and the 27 Daimler limousines on a final journey from funeral home to church.
Yesterday, Ronnie Kray — mobster, murderer, paranoid schizophrenic — was given a funeral fit for a king.
So, for the bad stuff … do you keep a ready supply of dreck for teaching?
McIntyre: Oh, my lord! I’ve been an editor for 28 years. … I have an entire class in copy editing constructed out of substandard work provided by professional journalists.
Besides your blog, what other resources can you recommend for people interested in language?
McIntyre: There are a few things that I’ve found to be extremely useful.
The first is “Garner’s Modern American Usage.” I read it for amusement. Sometimes when I’m having lunch at my desk I open it at random and read through it. You would be insane to read it straight through. It would be like trying to read the entire Oxford English Dictionary.
What is it that amuses you?
McIntyre: I’s clear. It’s entertaining. It is straightforward. It gives good advice. It’s a sensible book, and the examples are appropriate. And there are things in it that are fun — like his entry on superstitions. They’re all the things that you were taught about English usage that were flat wrong.
The other thing that has increasingly informed the way I write about language and usage is following “Language Log.”
Is that a blog for linguists?
McIntyre: Yes. I haven’t studied linguistics myself. Some of the stuff they write about is more technical than I am fully qualified to understand.
But, I think it’s important for people who are writers and editors and have been brought up in that kind of English-major, literary, journalistic background to understand what linguists know about language and discover about language and can advise about language.
I have adjusted a lot of my opinions and recommendations on the basis of what I’ve learned from eavesdropping on their conversations.
Who hosts the blog?
McIntyre: Basically, it’s for professional linguists. It’s hosted by Mark Liberman from the University of Pennsylvania. Geoff Nunberg, Geoffrey Pullum, Arnold Zwicky and a number of others contribute regularly to it.
If you go there and you are a sort of journalistic maven, then you’ll want to look at an entry called “Prescriptive Poppycock.”
And other resources?
McIntyre: Another book is Stephen Pinker’s “The Language Instinct.” It’s about how language works and how people learn to use language.
If you were to capsulize your blog, how would you describe it?
McIntyre: Well, it would depend. If you talk about grammar and usage, you immediately kindle the interest of all of those English majors out there doing valet parking or whatever it is that they do with an English degree anymore.
But there are a lot of people who are interested in language. … I usually say that it’s a blog about language.
How do you articulate the importance of copy editing? At some places these days, it’s not even a topic that’s on the table at this point.
McIntyre: I agree.
Doug Fisher (a former broadcaster, newspaper reporter and wire service editor) has written about this at “Common Sense Journalism.” The trap that we have fallen into is that we believe that the accuracy and clarity of the writing contributes to the quality of the paper. And it is the quality of the paper that attracts and retains readers. I think we are right to believe that.
The problem is that nobody has been able to quantify that. Philip Meyer (professor emeritus from UNC Chapel Hill) made a valiant effort in “The Vanishing Newspaper,” but there just wasn’t enough reliable and complete data for him. And, given the atmosphere in which newspapers are operating, if you can’t quantify the contribution you make to the overall effort, you are seen as superfluous, or even an obstacle.
You can quantify the number of briefs in the paper, or the number of photographs, but when it comes to polishing words and grammar …
McIntyre: Yes. But nobody sees the things that the copy desk catches.
(McIntyre shares more thoughts on the current state of copy editing in a blog entry titled “Give me back my legions!”)
