Archive for the ‘Journilliteracy’ Category

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How many troops in a troop?

October 29th, 2007

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.

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Journilliteracy: Why Johnny can’t grammaticize

October 19th, 2007

I’ve been seeing so many awful grammatical/spelling mistakes in my daily newspaper reading that I’ve decided to start keeping a running log here. Today’s offender: Newsday’s Ken Davidoff, who is otherwise one of my favorite baseball columnists.

Torre was a great broadcaster from 1985 to 1990, when no team would give him a chance to manage. Imagine how much cache he would have now, after 12 years leading the Yankees.

That’ll sure improve his processing speed!

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