Myriad reasons not to say 'myriad'

"Myriad," meaning "a countless number" and derived from a Greek word for "ten thousand" (murioi), first appeared in English in 1555 -- coincidentally the year of the first appearance of "solecism."

In modern usage, "myriad" is often but mistakenly used as a fancy synonym for "many," which dilutes the proper meaning of a far more expansive concept.

This came to mind today when I saw a front-page story in the Charlottesville Daily Progress by Chris Suarez headlined "Post-rally public relations faltered," about the attempt by city officials to control the image of Charlottesville in the wake of the alt-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist demonstrations and violence over the weekend of August 11-13.

One paragraph, referring to two public relations firms and Mayor Mike Signer, reads:

Powell Tate officials mostly helped the mayor manage requests for media interviews with national news outlets the week following the rally. On Aug. 18, Weber Shandwick provided the city a report detailing the myriad interviews Signer had done [emphasis added].

It is true that, during the week in question, Mayor Signer submitted to many on-camera and on-mic interviews from local, national, and even international news media.

I find it questionable to claim that those appearances were so numerous as to be uncountable -- essentially to be the equivalent to the stars in the sky or the grains of sand in the Sahara Desert.

"Myriad" is a word with a specific meaning. Its misuse makes it less effective. If that word is employed in myriad ways, it no longer means myriad.


 

CNN's Castro Obituary Blunder

CNN has fixed its copy by now, but in its initial reporting on the death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, it included a subjunctive phrase that will prove embarrassing. Noting that Castro had survived the administrations of eleven American presidents and outlived six of them, it added (in triple brackets) "NOTE: change to seven if George H.W. Bush dies before Castro."

CNN does not disappoint in its coverage of Fidel Castro's death. #standards #proofread pic.twitter.com/R2djaFfiQO

— Andrew Klavan (@andrewklavan) November 26, 2016

It's common that obituaries are prepared well in advance of the deaths of their subjects, but that doesn't mean they need not be reviewed by editors before publication.

Hat tip to Twitter user Andrew Klavan.

Did a Washington Post Metro section reporter 'blow' it?

QUESTIONABLE WORD CHOICE

In a front-page Metro section story in today's Washington Post about the possible candidates lining up to succeed retiring U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), we find this paragraph:

Former governor Martin O’Malley (D) remained mum, but there was speculation he could shift his ambitions from a long-shot presidential bid to a race that would be more easily winnable. Associates of former lieutenant governor Anthony G. Brown (D), who lost last year’s governor’s race, put out the word that he is “seriously considering” a Senate bid.

In the print edition, under the headline "A swarm of suitors for Senate vacancy," Post reporter John Wagner did not say Anthony Brown "lost" the 2014 gubernatorial race, but rather that Brown "blew" it. (See illustration below.)

How did such a judgmental word choice make it past the Metro copy desk? While a pundit might say, with some justification, that the former Maryland lieutenant governor "blew last year's governor's race" against Republican Larry Hogan, a straight-news reporter should avoid that kind of pejorative language.

Good for the Post's online editorial team for correcting this questionable word choice -- but the print edition's copy editors deserve whatever egg lands on their faces.

Neither breakfast nor lunch but ... Bunch?

HUMOROUS TYPO

Granted, Roger Catlin's Sunday Washington Post Arts & Style piece about TV actors performing Shakespeare is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but writers about popular culture should not make a mistake like this one:

Too bad Robert Reed isn’t around to join Florence Henderson for a turn, by the Brady Brunch couple, in “Macbeth.” Even without him, though, Henderson could take charge of the central story as Lady Macbeth, egging her man on to his deed, in the way she did as Lady Brady, conflating “Miiike!” and“Maaac!” in the process.

Along these lines, how about Eve Plumb, from that same beloved sitcom, bringing her Jan Bradyness on the road in a touring company of “The Tempest” where, when attention always seems to turn to Prospero’s daughter, as it once did to her TV sister Marcia, she can exclaim with her pained frustration, “Miranda, Miranda, Miranda!”

I'll forgive Catlin for apparently forgetting that Robert Reed was a Shakespearean-trained actor who was constantly complaining to Sherwood Schwartz and the show runners about the mediocre quality of the scripts he was given, but to forget that the title of the iconic Friday-night staple of the early 1970s was "The Brady Bunch," not "The Brady Brunch," begs for less leniency.

Of course, maybe the reference to "brunch" is a Freudian slip about Robert Reed's being gay.

The train is coming, the train is coming

REDUNDANCY 

 Obituaries make a big, fat target for criticism of poor editing, in part because they are often pulled together at the last moment, since death usually arrives inconveniently.

Newspaper obituary departments maintain files on very prominent people -- presidents, prime ministers, and movie stars -- that are ready to go at a moment's notice, just adding the subject's date, place, and cause of death.

 Lesser known individuals? Let's just say the lack of preparation may show through the final product.

Take, for instance, today's printed Washington Post obit (attributed to the Baltimore Sun) of economist and historian George W. Hilton, who was an expert on transportation. These two paragraphs will do:

Dr. Hilton’s first article in Trains magazine on the Tennessee Central Railroad was published in 1946, and in the intervening years, he wrote more than 25 articles for the magazine.

Dr. Hilton, who contributed more than 25 articles to Trains magazine over the decades, also wrote widely on topics that included British soccer, Gilbert & Sullivan, Sherlock Holmes and theater organs. He also had edited a newsletter for collectors of breweriana.

Either Dr. Hilton wrote 50 articles for two different magazines named "Trains" or some editor fell asleep at the composing desk.

For the record, the Baltimore Sun obituary, written by Frederick N. Rasmussen and slightly longer than what appears in the Post, does not contain the repetitive reference to Hilton's contributions to Trains magazine.

That makes the Post's error even more puzzling and unacceptable.

Voting in an election that never happened

FACTUAL ERROR

A factual error crept its way into an odd letter in the Charlottesville Daily Progress today, in which the writer remembers voting in an election that never happened.

 The letter, submitted by Albemarle County resident Hubert Hawkins, makes an argument about retaining Virginia's tradition of open primary elections, in which any voter, regardless of party affiliation, can participate in either the Democratic or Republican party's primaries for nominating candidates for the general election. (Virginia voters do not register by political party, so "party affiliation" is determined by the voter's own individual preference and observations of primary voting patterns and recorded financial contributions to candidates and party committees.)

Mr. Hawkins tries to undergird his point by reminiscing about the only time he crossed party lines to vote in a Republican primary:

Years ago when Oliver North opposed John Warner in the Republican primary, I was a Democrat who never sought to meddle in Republican elections. But I knew that my senator was going to be a Republican, no matter who won the party’s primary, because my party had no competitive candidate. So I voted in the Republican primary, fearful of what outcome might ensue from the victory of such a controversial character as North.

I have never regretted my vote, and I have always been grateful that Virginia law allows all voters to participate realistically in the future of the state and nation without restrictions on what party they may have belonged to.

The problem with that example? Oliver North never challenged John Warner for the Republican Party of Virginia's nomination for the U.S. Senate, in a primary or through any other method.

John Warner, Larry Sabato, Mark Warner

John Warner ran unopposed for the GOP nomination in 1990, and he had no Democratic opponent in the November election. Nancy Spannaus, a devotee of political cult leader Lyndon LaRouche, was the only other candidate on the ballot that year. Warner beat Spannaus by sweeping every county and city and earning 80.9 percent of the vote.  The absence of a Democratic general election candidate that year may be what Mr. Hawkins is trying to recall in his letter to the editor.

 In 1994, Oliver North sought the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate and winning it in a convention against former Reagan administration official James C. Miller III. There was no primary election that year, and John Warner was not on the ballot. North went on to lose the general election to incumbent Democrat Chuck Robb in a three-way race that also included independent J. Marshall Coleman. That election was the subject of a popular documentary film, A Perfect Candidate.

 In 1996, Jim Miller challenged John Warner for the nomination in a primary election but Warner won and went on to face Democrat Mark Warner in the general election.

After serving one term as Virginia''s governor, Mark Warner eventually won John Warner's U.S. Senate seat in 2008, after John Warner decided to retire.  The two of them remain on friendly terms (as seen in this video from earlier this year) and, in fact, John Warner has endorsed Mark Warner's re-election bid this year.

Regardless of what one thinks about the merits of Mr. Hawkins' argument about open primaries, it's important that the person making that argument have his facts straight. For that matter, it is the responsibility of the newspaper's copy editors to ensure that such factual errors do not make their way into print.

It's easy enough to, as they say, "look it up."

(Adapted from a post to Rick Sincere News and Thoughts.)

Historical howlers in Sunday's Washington Post Metro section

An article in the print edition of the Washington Post on Sunday, July 27 (p. C5), includes three glaring errors that would have resulted in a failing grade on an elementary school history test, yet only one of them has been subsequently corrected on the newspaper's web site.

The article, written by Ileana Najarro with a print-edition headline "Wolf is making his last push for holiday," explains how retiring U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA10) is advancing legislation that would make Washington's Birthday a federal holiday celebrated on the actual date of his birth, February 22, rather than floating each year on the third Monday in February.

One of Najarro's errors relates to how the holiday came to be celebrated on a date other than February 22:

President Rutherford B. Hayes established Washington’s birthday in 1879 as a holiday for the District’s federal workers, Wolf said. The holiday was extended to all federal workers six years later, but it wasn’t until 1971 that it was moved to the third Monday of February as part of President Gerald Ford’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

Gerald Ford did not become President until August 1974. The law was passed when Lyndon Johnson was President. Johnson signed it on June 28, 1968, and it took effect January 1, 1971, when Richard Nixon was President. Ford did sign a bill in 1975 that amended the Uniform Monday Holiday Act to restore Veterans' Day commemorations to November 11, regardless of its day of the week.

A second error, also not corrected, misplaces the origins of George Washington:

Sitting in his office, [Wolf] spoke of his geographical connection to the first president: Both were originally from Philadelphia, and both have held office in Winchester.

It used to be said that "every schoolboy knows" some fact about U.S. history. One such fact is that George Washington came from Virginia. He was born in the Northern Neck, in Westmoreland County near Fredericksburg. In later years, Washington made his home at Mount Vernon, just down the Potomac River from the city that bears his name. As a military officer, Washington did maintain an office in Winchester during the 1750s in a building that still stands near Cork and Braddock Streets.

Washington also served his country in Philadelphia, presiding over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and moving there from New York as President before the capital was established in its present location.

The sole error that was corrected reads, in the print edition, like this:

Although the holiday is still recognized as Washington's Birthday, it's come to be known as Presidents' Day, with several states honoring all presidents at once. Wolf said he abhors this "hijacking" because Washington's birthday is honored equally with that of President Richard M. Nixon, who was impeached.

Andrew Johnson was impeached. Bill Clinton was impeached. Richard Nixon resigned before articles of impeachment could be brought before the House of Representatives for a vote.  If any newspaper's editors should know this, it would be those of The Washington Post.

The Post's correction of this error appears at the top of the page on its web site:

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that President Nixon was impeached. He resigned before he could be impeached. This version has been corrected.

The "corrected" paragraph says that Nixon "resigned in disgrace."

So... Where were the copy editors?  How did sloppiness like this make it through the Metro section's editorial process?  Will the other errors also merit corrections in print or on the Post's web site?

Note:  The web headline for Najarro's article is: "Rep. Frank Wolf’s final acts include restoring Washington’s Birthday."