Neil deMause: The Website

From an article in amNewYork (Newsday’s free daily) on how European tourists don’t tip enough at New York restaurants:

Some restaurants have wizened up and now put gratuity right into the bill.

Unless they’re talking about really old restaurateurs, amNewYork’s editors need to wise up and get a dictionary. Not to mention an article for “gratuity,” which isn’t a collective noun like “coffee.” Two grammatical errors in one sentence - now that’s giving readers their money’s worth.

What is it about journalists and homonyms? From today’s Newsday story on the passport kerfuffle:

A Passportgate scandal swept the presidential campaign Friday as the State Department revealed it is investigating unauthorized peaks into the passport files of all three White House candidates.

No word on whether the files contained unauthorized valleys as well.

A two-fer from Tom D’Angelo in the Palm Beach Post:

Loria, making his first appearance at spring training, is so eager to start construction that “I’d like to hit the button,” he said when asked about the razing of the Orange Bowl. The $615 million stadium project will be built on the Orange Bowl sight.

Followed a bit later by:

The Marlins could loose its fans from Palm Beach County when they move into the new stadium.

Freedom at last for Marlins fans imprisoned in Palm Beach? Now that would be a site for soar eyes.

Never let it be said that the journilliteracy watch doesn’t cast its net far and wide. From the Kane County Chronicle in Kane County, Illinois, comes this report:

Geneva High School is taking safety precautions after a threat was found written on the wall of a student bathroom, eluding to violence at the school tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the offending graffiti got away.

Tuesday’s amNewYork had this to say about late-night shows’ attempts to get back on the air despite the writers’ strike:

Noticeably absent from the hoopla is David Letterman, who is trying another tact, according to Tom Keaney, spokesman for the host’s production company Worldwide Pants Incorporated. Keaney said the production company is trying to secure an interim agreement with the Writers Guild.

For Letterman to use tact certainly would be another tack.

Here’s Emily Friedman of ABC News going all spoilery in her piece on the controversy over “The Golden Compass”:

As Lyra gets closer to her goal of reaching the Magisterium – located in the alternate universe of Bolvanger – she realizes that they have been capturing children, removing their souls and preventing them from being touched by “dust,” a substance that is eluded to be representative of the free will the Magisterium is trying to avoid and eliminate.

What’s eluding Emily Friedman (and the ABC News copy editors): the word “allude.”

Here’s another story that popped up on Google News, and which caught my eye because I couldn’t make head or tail of the lede:

The ex-wife of a Bolingbrook police sergeant found drowned in her bathtub three years ago was murdered, according to a noted forensic pathologist who autopsied her remains Friday at the request of her family.

Initial attempts at interpretation:

• The police sergeant was a lesbian who drowned three years ago, and now her ex-wife has turned up murdered.
• The police sergeant drowned in his ex-wife’s bathtub three years ago, and now the ex-wife has been murdered.
• The Chicago Tribune copy desk needs a refresher in misplaced antecedents.

Transcribing quotes seems to especially vexing for some journalists. Here’s today’s Boston Globe quoting Mitt Romney:

“The monster is this McCain-Feingold bill and it has to be repealed and it just points how in infective it has been in removing the influence of money and underhanded politics,” Romney said.

Admittedly, it’s hard to understand what Romney means at the best of times, but even without the benefit of having heard the interview in question, I can pretty well guess what he actually said.

(Thanks to Chris Tate for the pointer to this story.)

In an article in today’s Newsday on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease:

ALS destroys motor neurons and gradually leads to loss of speech and paralyzation.

Coining new words when there are perfectly good old ones is a time-honored tradition - it’s what got us normalcy, after all - but sometimes it’s just plain wrong.

Interestingly, the above is how the phrase appeared in the print edition of Newsday (and its Google cache), but the website has been updated to read:

ALS destroys motor neurons and gradually leads to loss of speech and leaves people paralyzed.

Which is correct and all, but leads one to wonder if Newsday’s post-layoff copy editors have just never heard of the word “paralysis.” Or maybe they’re being paid by the word.

Headline in today’s Washington Post:

Turkish Troop Dies; Kurd Rebels Trapped

My first thought: An entire troop of Turkish soldiers died? No - only one soldier. Or as the Post calls him, one troop - in defiance of longstanding English usage that a troop is a group.

Apparently this has been a growing (mis)usage for a couple of years now, though this is the first time I’ve noticed it. Give it another decade and you might see singular “troop” working its way into more lenient dictionaries; until then, the Post is just wrong.