Excuse Me, Your Participle Is Dangling : What with all the major issues to discuss, with Somalia and school vouchers and such, it’s curious how people delight in spotting the mundane mistakes of others.
Kay E. Kuter of North Hollywood writes: ... Oh, poor Ms. van Wingerden. If, as she claims, “Editors have been persecuted and abused for generations,” it is not without good reason if they are as slipshod as she ...
It’s unfortunate that she “takes offense to” some implication in one of your previous columns. I wonder if she also, then, would take exception at that same implication? Tsk, tsk, tsk. Syntax, dear, syntax. And another tsk for her split infinitive in the next sentence of her letter: “not going to just stand by” . . . .
Poor Ms. van Wingerden indeed.
Judy van Wingerden, some readers may recall, had responded to my invitation to Dutch-Americans to express their opinion about the phrase Dutch treat. Is it a useful, if innocuous, term? Or, as a goon squad of politically correct journalists have declared, a slur that implies that the Dutch are cheap? As it was, Ms. van Wingerden was the only Dutch-American who expressed dismay about Dutch treat --and only then when it’s mentioned by one’s date.
Little did Ms. van Wingerden realize that, somewhere out there in readerdom, was the exacting Mr. Kuter. Now here’s a writer who doesn’t suffer editors gladly. The man is an editee with a grudge.
Mr. Kuter’s intent is to strike a blow in the epic struggle of writers and editors. But his point would apply to all human endeavors. People who dish it out better be prepared to take it.
Still, what with all the major issues to discuss, what with Somalia and school vouchers and such, it’s curious how people delight in spotting the mundane mistakes of others. My sympathies are with Ms. van Wingerden. After 18 years in this racket, I don’t know what infinitives are, but I can split them with the best.
There are readers, however, who take great offense at such mistakes. They delight in clipping out articles, circling grammatical errors in red and offering corrections. Some are so picayunish as to lose perspective.
This newspaper, for example, recently published an egregious factual error, since corrected, that justifiably raised hackles among many readers. Amazingly, one reader wrote to complain about the misuse of who and whom.
Occasionally, such critics offer a friendly note. Sometimes the tone is anything but.
A letter to the editor passed along to me in August confirms a suspicion I’ve had all along--that some of these critics are retired English teachers who can’t get out of the habit of grading papers.
Norma Van Riper of Oxnard writes:
I am sure that my retirement from the teaching profession and the recent egregious blunders in some of your copy are totally unrelated. It is depressing to think, however, that while Jack Smith can suffer countless accidents, he still can write in English, while Scott Harris, who is presumably younger and healthy, can come up with: “It is her, more than anyone, who ... “
Perhaps he can lose his byline until he writes, correctly, on his blackboard the rules governing the uses of she and her. Horrors.
Horrors indeed. Even I know that rule. (Usually.)
Still, it’s flattering to be compared with the eminent Jack Smith, even to my detriment. Unlike some critics, Norma Van Riper is courteous enough to sign her name.
Some of the Monday-morning copy editors prefer to stay as anonymous as that nut case who clips articles and adds racist commentary.
Not long ago, I received an unsigned missive that found me guilty of misspelling the names of Richard Dreyfuss, Jodie Foster and Kelsey Grammer and committing one factual error. It ended with something like: “Jesus, at least look something up!”
It was intriguing that this critic used Los Angeles Times stationery but was too bashful or forgetful or whatever to sign his or her name. If there’s a mistake in my column, my name is all over it. Why is it that some people won’t take credit for their corrections?
Some readers, meanwhile, have continued to express dismay about my defense of the term Scotch-Irish to describe my heritage. Scotch , some rather nationalistic Scots insist, is a drink, not a proper synonym for Scottish or Scots. My dictionary and I beg to differ.
But Scotch, I’m happy to report, is getting reinforcements.
Jack M. Smith Jr. of Woodland Hills writes:
Most of my ancestors came to this country from Scotland in the 17th and 18th centuries, and they were “Scotch,” not “Scottish.” In the 19th century the two terms seemed to have been co m pletely interchangeable. For exampl e , the historian James Anthony Froude, in “The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character,” refers to “the Scottish nobles” and, in the same paragraph, to “the Scotch Lords.”
My 1937 edition of Webster’s Universal Unabridged Dictionary defines the adjective “Scotch” as “Pertaining to Scotland, its inhabitants, or its language; Scottish” and the noun “Scotch” as “1. The dialect or vernacular of the Scotch people. 2. Collectively, the inhabitants of Scotland. 3. Scotch whisky (Colloq.)”
On the subject of “Dutch treat,” when I went to Cuba as a student, long before Castro , I was amused--but not offended--to learn that what we call “going Dutch” the Cubans call “a la americana.”
Keep up the fight against the language police.
Hear, hear. And from a guy named Jack Smith, no less.
Not all readers, of course, are quite so learned.
One letter came from a real wise guy who addressed it to “Scotcht Harris.”
Alden Chase of Northridge writes:
Dear Scotcht:
I am behind you one hundred percent on the Scotch-Irish issue.
Hard to believe a guy called Alden would make fun of anybody’s name.
Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write Harris at The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Calif. 91311.