Watch Your Words: The Rowman & Littlefield Language-Skills Handbook for Journalists/Common Errors in English Usage/Strategic Copy Editing
2004; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 59; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2161-4326
Autores Tópico(s)Discourse Analysis in Language Studies
Resumo* Dunsky, Marda (2003). Watch Your Words: The Rowman & Littlefield Language-Skills Handbook Journalists. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 66. * Brians, Paul (2003). Common Errors in English Usage. Wilsonville, OR: William, James & Co. pp. 246. * Russial, John (2004). Strategic Copy Editing. New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 280. There's an old bit of newsroom wisdom: If things get slow on a Saturday night, throw a semicolon and a bottle of whiskey into a roomful of journalists and watch the fun begin. A bit cynical, perhaps, it's a telling comment on how we sometimes struggle with what legendary journalism professor John Bremner in Words on Words called our beautiful bastard language. The joke, of course, on the journalism instructor trying to explain to a class of eager students only the ins and outs of formal American English, of journalism's sometimes mysterious twists and turns throughout it. All three of these books provide useful guideposts along parts of the trail, they also show why it's rarely enough to rely on just one volume to find your way. Watch Your Words, instance, will remind you that people don't die suddenly, unexpectedly. Wondering whether alternate or alternative the correct word? Common Errors in English Usage the place to go. (Either OK.) Problems with numbers and their accuracy or the nuances of headline phrasings will lead you to RussiaPs more comprehensive volume. In Watch Your Words, Marda Dunsky, a former reporter and editor who now teaches at Northwestern University, promises a quick and accessible guide, and in sixty-six pages, she covers the major grammar and punctuation points along with solid sections on spelling, usage, and Associated Press style, areas in which some longer volumes do no better. Dunsky, who writes that the choices she made were for the sake of journalistic simplicity, logic and consistency, in some cases tends to favor dropping commas where other authorities would use them, and some AP style references already are aging-the wire service no longer uses innocent not guilty, example-but the quibbles with her work are notably few. The quick-guide approach can be useful students with a basic grounding in grammar and usage who need a review of journalism's shortcuts and quirks. It also has a place in beginning writing classes where students easily can bo overwhelmed by the mass of the AP Stylebook and some other language references. But the prescriptive approach does leave much room to discuss important nuances, and so Dunsky's work best paired with supplemental readings or a more comprehensive work, such as Paul Brians' Common Errors in English Usage. Brians has produced an exhaustive guide similar to Bryan Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage, one with a lighter touch as he tries to acknowledge traditionalist views while expounding on his idea that a usage guide is like that really close friend who dares to tell you that there's some spinach stuck between your teeth doesn't demand you drink white wine with red meat. Brians' explanations are engaging and lucid, and the reader gets knowledge to make sound judgments, the results can be uneven. had to rack my brains a long time to understand the distinction some people make between 'which' and 'that,' he writes, but I finally decided that I didn't give a fig about what they thought and generally ignore the distinction in my own writing. Guidelines usage don't have to be regarded as iron chains dragging you down. You can still choose your own style. Contrast that with his declaration: One should call a building, site, district, or event 'historical.' That's at odds with the AP's guidance on events and does allow the nuance of importance that historic carries. (So, instance, the site of a minor Civil War skirmish could be historical, Gettysburg historic. …
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