Let's Kill All the Editors
When she is old enough, Philadelphia Eagles receiver Marquise Goodwin will teach his daughter, Marae, to put family first. (from Bear Hugs and Bubbles: Why Some NFL Players Opted Out by Ben Shpigel--New York Times August 8, 2020)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/08/sports/football/nfl-players-opt-out.html
Sorry, Ben Shpigel, the rest of your Times Sports Section cover story following that less than stellar lead sentence is terrific, informative, heart-wrenching, and well-written. Not your fault that editors are scarce and very busy, trying to keep up in a news cycle that’s moving much too fast with too many players, many of whom are skilled only in gaining social media hits.
Where have you gone William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, our nation turns its undotted i’s and uncrossed t’s to you? The Cornell professor Strunk and his former student White didn’t collaborate per se on Elements of Style, the eponymous guide for putting pen to paper concisely and effectively. First issued by Strunk in 1918, revived by White in 1959 and believed to be dead in 2020, the brief guide was not without its critics. University of Edinburgh Professor of Linguistics Geoffrey Pullum apparently once said that “several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write however or than me or was or which, but can't tell you why.”
I love you, Times. Love you too, Washington Post. You are all that stand between me and a future of Kanye West, Donald Trump, Jr. and Mark Zuckerberg. You still do have reporters covering every inch of the globe and editors too, even if they are overwhelmed, underpaid and endangered. You tell me daily, hourly if I venture online, all the ways we are going down for the count. In a world of WhatsApp, TikTok and Quibi, where phraseology is LOL and OMG, who needs elements of style, grammar and punctuation anyway? It’s or its, their or there, no more worries, and someday soon no more editors.
Come to the point. We will skim, we will peruse, we will get it I’m sure, that thing we used to refer to as the meaning, the gist, the crux. Even if we are left wondering from time to time what ever happened to that too young lady receiver for the Eagles.
NON-EDITOR’S NOTE: At some point between my reading of the hard copy of the Times this morning and my perusal of the online version tonight, the editor I was pining for woke up and that first sentence now reads: When his daughter, Marae, is old enough, Philadelphia Eagles receiver Marquise Goodwin will teach her to put family first. I may be onto something here. The hard copy of the Times as first draft, the online version as always ready for that editor to show up.
