Getting Immigration Backwards

The weekly "Free for All" letters column in The Washington Post accommodates readers who want to vent about something they had read in the Post during the previous several days, often taking issue with grammar, spelling, or punctuation usage.

In yesterday's Post, letter-writer Gib Durfee objects to the way the Post had used "immigrate" in a sentence from an AP story on November 19, in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was said to be considering "immigrating to Switzerland."

Durfee goes on to say:

Even if readers didn't take Latin in school, they should know that a person emigrates to a new country and immigrates from the old.

It's just a matter of to and fro.

Durfee has it exactly backwards.

This would be clear especially to someone who had taken Latin in school, because they would know that "e-" at the beginning of a word suggests "outside of" or "from," as in "exit" or "exoskeleton." By contrast, the prefix "im-" suggests "in," "to," or "inside" -- compare "implode" and "explode," for instance.

In a Raleigh News & Observer column on language usage from August 2008, journalist Pam Nelson addresses precisely this issue and cites the AP Stylebook, which says:

emigrate, immigrate: One who leaves a country emigrates from it. One who comes into a country immigrates. The same principle holds for emigrant and immigrant.

Nelson goes on to explain that

[Usage expert Bryan] Garner points out that "immigrate" means to migrate into or enter (a country) and "emigrate" means to migrate away from or exit (a country). That distinction is at the heart of a mnemonic I have heard: emigrate means exit; immigrate means enter. [Theodore] Bernstein wrote that "emigrate" needs "from."  [Diana] Hacker makes the same distinction.

I really can't fault the letter writer for missing this distinction; perhaps he learned it backwards from a Latin teacher in high school.

I can, however, fault the Post's editors -- especially the "Free for All" page's copy editors -- for failing to note that the Post's (or the AP's) usage was correct from the outset, and for choosing to run a letter that took them to task for actually being correct.

What's puzzling to me, as well, is that as of 7:32 p.m. on Sunday -- more than a full day after the letter appeared in print -- not a single Post reader has commented on the newspaper's web site about the confusion exhibited (from the Latin, "to hold out") by this letter.  Are there neither emigrants nor immigrants in the Washington Post's circulation area?

Numeracy

Where did Charlottesville Daily Progress reporter Brian McNeill learn how to count?

In his August 21 piece on the move-in of first-year students at the University of Virginia this year, McNeill has this lede:

The University of Virginia was abuzz with activity Saturday as roughly 3,246 students and their families descended upon Grounds for move-in weekend.

Roughly 3,246?

That is a precise number. It is not a "rough estimate" or approximation.

He could have said "roughly 3,200" or even "roughly 3,250." But there is nothing "rough" or indeterminate about "3,246."

Where was McNeill's copy editor?

Turning Japanese

In an otherwise unobjectionable article about the decline of a business providing English-to-Japanese translations in last Saturday's Washington Post, we find this paragraph:

One morning last week, Karol Zipple, the company's only American employee, made a small pile of clips: news stories on increased Japanese demand for American wine, food-borne illnesses and the women's golf tour. Compared with coverage in previous years, it was a depressingly slim product. "We used to be buried in newsprint" before U.S. newspapers began cutting back coverage as a result of the recession and the decline of print journalism, Zipple said.

I did a double-take when I read that first sentence. Why, I wondered, was there "increased Japanese demand for ... food-borne illnesses and the women's golf tour"?

Then I realized that this was a series of separate items defined by "news stories on" rather than "increased Japanese demand for."

The ambiguity could have been avoided by rearranging the objects, like this: "news stories on food-borne illnesses, the women's golf tour, and increased Japanese demand for American wine."

Simple, isn't it?

This might also be a good time to urge the Washington Post to reinstate the serial comma in its style book. It never should have been removed in the first place.

Homophones

The New York Daily News today has an article on its web site about Vice President Joe Biden using "colorful" language in introducing President Obama at a public ceremony.  (I do not know if this article appears, or will appear, in the paper's print edition.)

Reporter Michael Sheridan writes:

Health care reform isn't just a big deal, it's a "big f---ing deal."

At least, that's what Vice President Joe Biden thinks.

The 67-year-old former senator introduced President Obama prior to his signing of the historic health care reform bill into law on Tuesday, and let the colorful word slip while shaking the commander-in-chief's hand.

"You did it," Biden told his boss. "It's a big f---ing deal."

What caught my eye -- and what makes this article fodder for this blog -- is the penultimate paragraph, which says:

Fowl language may be a favorite for vice presidents. Ex-Veep Dick Cheney famously used the infamous phrase on several occasions during his two terms.

Something tells me that Sheridan did not want to suggest that Biden and Cheney talk like our avian friends. He meant to say "foul language," not "fowl language."

A good copy editor would have caught that.

Of course, it might be that the Daily News is trying to suggest that Biden (and, by extension, Cheney) are "chicken s--t."

Muslim Redundancy

Redundancy

Even the Old Gray Lady, the New York Times itself, is not immune to the lack of sharp-eyed copy editors.

In its opinion section today, we find an article by Efraim Karsh headlined "Muslims Won't Play Together," about the Arab boycott of the Islamic Solidarity Games scheduled to take place in April in Iran.

About a third of the way through the article, we find these two sentences:

It took a mere 24 years after the Prophet’s death for the head of the universal Islamic community, the caliph Uthman, to be murdered by political rivals. This opened the floodgates to incessant infighting within the House of Islam, which has never ceased.

Doesn't it go without saying that "incessant infighting" will be something that has "never ceased"?

How Not to Help Our Childrens Learn

Educators who purport to know how best to teach children the fundamentals should first learn to write in complete sentences.

From an article in yesterday's New York Times by Susan Engel, identified as "a senior lecturer in psychology and director of the teaching program at Williams College" (emphasis added):

In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does.

The OpEd piece is entitled "Playing to Learn."  There's no indication whether Dr. Engel passed sixth-grade grammar -- or whether her copy editor missed the class completely.