Column: A Word, Please: Wrong word choices can appear in leading news outlets

A politician quoted in a national news story recently said he was “wracking” his brain to recall something.

A few days later, a different national news publication reported that a senator had “honed in on” a person involved in an investigation.

A few weeks earlier, a major international news outlet reported on an elected official who’d planned to “forego” taking a salary.

Language experts will tell you that English is not in decline. Changes over time look like problems only in the short term. A long-term view proves that gradual changes in word use are just part of the natural evolution of the language.

But those language experts are linguists and scholars. They’re not editors. They track usage trends, not editing standards.

I, on the other hand, am an editor. As such, I can report that I’m starting to see a slide. That first typo was in the venerable Atlantic magazine. The second was in The Hill. And the third, well, I forget (sorry). It was a news outlet of similar stature.

Though my data collection and analysis are far from scientific, anecdotally, the picture isn’t pretty. So as I watch my only marketable skills get devalued on the open market, here’s the rundown on these three editing errors, plus a few more that crop up.

The words “to wrack one’s brain” would go unnoticed by most readers. But it’s exactly the kind of word-choice issue that makes us copy editors feel worthwhile.

So the article sent me running to my reference guides, eager to confirm whether the rule I’d long ago committed to memory had in fact been properly committed.

It had.

Here’s how Merriam-Webster’s defines the verb “wrack”: “to utterly ruin; wreck.”

It’s possible to do that to one’s brain, I suppose. But a quick check of “rack” puts that possibility in perspective: “to torture on the rack; to cause to suffer torture, pain, anguish, or ruin; to stretch or strain violently.”

If that’s not enough to convince you that the writer wanted “rack” instead of “wrack,” usage guides and editing stylebooks don’t mess around on the subject: “To wrack is to severely or completely destroy: a storm-wracked ship,” advises the Chicago Manual of Style. “To rack is to torture by means of stretching with an instrument — rack the prisoner until he confesses — or to stretch beyond capacity — to rack one’s brain.”

To “hone in on” something is common wording. In fact, a liberal reading of a few good dictionaries justifies it. But for copy editing purposes, “hone in on” just won’t do.

The original term, to “home in on” something conjures the idea of a homing pigeon. You set your course for a target and head straight to it.

As for “to forego a salary” — I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this word used correctly. To do without something, you forgo it. There’s no E in that one.

The spelling with an E is also a word. Here’s Webster’s New World College Dictionary: “forego: to go before in place, time or degree; precede.” I should point out that Webster’s also allows it as a synonym of “forgo.” But, come on.

This reminds me of the term people use when someone does a magic trick or pulls off a clever con: “slight of hand.” That’s wrong (even my Microsoft Word spell-checker knows that). Those writers actually wanted the word “sleight,” which means “cunning or craft used in deceiving; skill or dexterity.

Along these same lines, you wreak havoc, you don’t reek it. You reign supreme even as you rein in spending. And you get a sneak peek, not peak (and if I gauged you wrong on that last one, I don’t want to know about it).

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.