?????? Should - Should Not . . . . . . Invest in a Computer ?????? All twelve question marks could not turn that phrase into a proper question, such as “Should I, or should I not, invest in a computer?” (Nor could the spacious hy- phen or the sextet of dots contribute anything, neither being bona fide punc- tuation.) C. Two opposing views Does a request or statement in the form of a question call for a question mark? Grammarians differ. H. W. Fowler argued the affirmative. Among his examples: “Will you please stand back?” and “Will it be believed that . . . ?”—presenting an incredible fact of sizable length. Because each is in the grammatical form of a direct question, each should end with a question mark, even though it is equivalent in sense to a request or statement. Theodore M. Bernstein took essen- tially the opposite view, that no question mark should be used when an answer is not expected or when the writer is merely making a request. He gave as re- spective examples: “May we have the pleasure of hearing from you soon” and “Would you please send us a duplicate copy of your invoice.” Fowler would stick question marks at the end of those two. So would I. They look incomplete, and a writer of each would want a response, though not a yes or no answer. The Chicago Manual of Style wants no question mark at the end of any “request courteously disguised as a question.” But why give up the dis- guise—and the courtesy—prematurely? D. With other punctuation When a question mark does not end a sentence, may a comma follow? Most authorities think not. They approve of this form: “Do you choose to run?” they asked. A few others approve of this form: “Do you choose to run?,” they asked. Some sentences may be followed ei- ther by question marks or by exclama- tion points, depending on the meaning to be conveyed. If an answer is sought: “How common is that mistake?” If the sentence is exclamatory or rhetorical: “How common is that mistake!” The writer of a music textbook made a choice between the two marks, in de- scribing Beethoven’s attitude toward Napoleon: A conqueror himself—did he not once declare, “I too am a king!”—he un- derstood the Corsican. The author chose the exclamation point. He attributed it to Beethoven, for it lies within the quotation marks. Thus the author’s question is left without punctu- ation. It would have been preferable to omit the exclamation point and add a question mark: . . . Did he not once declare, “I too am a king”? . . . If the author knew that the exclamation point was part of the quotation and deemed it important, both marks could have appeared: . . . Did he not once declare, “I too am a king!”? . . . Note that the question mark follows the closing quotation mark when the ques- tion is that of the writer. 10. Quotation marks Quotation marks are primarily used to quote what people say or write. “Well, I’m not a crook.” / “Hail to thee, 344 punctuation 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 344 blithe Spirit!” The words enclosed in the marks are expected to reproduce the original words exactly; otherwise the marks should be omitted. Anything left out is replaced by an ellipsis ( . . . ). See 5. Anything inserted goes in brackets [ ], not parentheses ( ). See 7. A magazine is interviewing a painter. Amid a long paragraph devoted entirely to a direct quotation of his, this sentence appears: She read me Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur” and made it understand- able. The entire passage is enclosed, correctly, by double quotation marks (“ ”). There- fore the marks around Le Morte d’Arthur should be single quotation marks (‘ ’). If the magazine were pub- lished in London, instead of New York, the procedure would need to be re- versed: single quotation marks would go on the outside, double quotation marks on the inside. It is wrong to put double marks within double marks, or single marks within single marks. Customarily the names of long liter- ary, dramatic, or artistic works go in ital- ics, also called italic type. This is it. When that type is unavailable or not de- sired for some reason, it is not wrong to put the names in quotation marks in- stead. (See Italic[s].) In quoting someone who is quoting someone else, use double quotation marks for the main quotation and single quotation marks for the interior quota- tion. (In Britain reverse the procedure.) If the interior quotation marks are left out, the meaning may be unclear, as in the following press passage. “He” refers to the vice president. “He said Dave Keene called me a lap dog,” said Mr. Dole, referring to one of his campaign aides. A reader’s first impression is that “me” refers to Mr. Dole. That interpretation would not fit the context, however. Inte- rior quotation marks should have been inserted as follows: “He said ‘Dave Keene called me a lap dog,’ ” said Mr. Dole. . . . When a comma or period is needed at the end of a direct quotation, the con- ventional American practice is to put it inside the quotation marks. (“But,” he said——) This is done for an aesthetic reason, whether or not the comma or pe- riod is part of the quotation. Some choose, on logical grounds, to put it out- side the quotation marks unless it is part of the quotation. (“But”, he said——) That practice is common in Britain. When a colon or semicolon is needed at the end of a direct quotation, placing it after the closing quotation mark is gen- erally favored by both nations (“. . . my land”; it is——), although a few publica- tions have rules to the contrary. A quotation that goes into more than one paragraph gets an opening quota- tion mark at the beginning of each para- graph; a closing quotation mark goes only at the end of the entire quotation. These are typical mistakes: On an edito- rial page, an isolated quotation is two paragraphs long and the second para- graph lacks an opening quotation mark. Elsewhere, an article begins by quoting three lines of a song in three paragraphs, of which the second and third lack open- ing quotation marks. We do not add quotation marks to the examples that are set off typographically in this book and so are obviously quota- tions (often the longer ones). We do add the marks to quotations that run in the main text, to words and phrases taken from those quotations, and to typical sentences that illustrate usage. In addi- tion, quotation marks go around certain words or phrases to indicate that the en- punctuation 345 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 345 closures, though used, are nonstandard or questionable. Examples are the entry titles “AIN’T” and “LET’S DON’T.” Newspaper copy editors in the United States follow the British tradition in one respect: using single quotation marks for quotations in headlines. (What Americans call quotation marks, the British call inverted commas, a term that is not precise. In a traditional type style, with curved quotation marks, only the opening mark of a pair of single quotation marks looks like an inverted comma [‘]. The closing mark looks like an apostrophe, which can be described as an elevated comma [’]. Typewriters have straight, vertical quotation marks; in this respect, most computers are no improvement.) See also Quotation problems; QUOTE and QUOTATION; Tense, 3; THAT, 4. 11. Semicolon A. Weak period Do not take the name literally. The semicolon (;) is not half of the colon (:), nor does it have anything to do with the colon. At different times, the semicolon acts as a weak period and a strong comma. Just as a period does, the semicolon can end a complete thought. However, it links that complete thought—an inde- pendent clause—with another, closely re- lated in meaning or form. “Three men went to bat; three men went down swinging.” / “Money itself is not a root of evil; the love of money is.” / “He came; he saw; he conquered.” In that way, the semicolon performs the linking function of a conjunction, like and or but. A writer might choose to use no semicolon and instead insert a conjunction (“He came, he saw, and he conquered”) or to use neither and make each independent clause a separate sen- tence. (“He came. He saw. He con- quered.”) B. Strong comma Offering a stronger division than a comma, the semicolon is particularly useful in dividing a sentence into cate- gories when the sentence already has commas. Even when a conjunction connects in- dependent clauses, a writer may choose to put a semicolon between them to show the division clearly. It is particu- larly desirable to do so when a clause contains a comma or is lengthy. This is a correct example from a book on world history: To many authorities it appeared at first incredible that a sub-man with a brain no larger than that of an ape could manufacture tools, crude in- deed but made to a fairly standard and recognizable pattern; but the newest evidence leaves little room for doubt. In that sentence, what follows the comma is parenthetical; what follows the semicolon is a main thought, and the semicolon so indicates. Not only clauses benefit from the semicolon. It is needed to separate items in a series when any item is subdivided by a comma. “The club elected George Watkins, president; John Anthony, vice- president; and Theresa Jennings, secre- tary-treasurer.” The lack of semicolons jumbles the se- ries below, from an autobiography. Readers could have trouble associating the names with the descriptions. John Major greeted me, my executive assistant, Colonel Dick Chilcoat, the British secretary of state for defense, Tom King, and my counterpart, British chief of defense staff, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir David Craig, in a sitting room at 10 Down- ing Street. Replacing the first, third, and fifth com- mas with semicolons (and inserting the 346 punctuation 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 346 after the sixth) would have made the sentence more readily understandable. C. Inconsistency Newspapers are liable to be inconsis- tent in their use of semicolons in a series, and this is an example: Among the Americans at the Moscow forum were Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal and Bel Kaufman, the writers; John Kenneth Galbraith, the economist; Gregory Peck and Kris Kristofferson, the actors; several sci- entists, including Frank von Hippel, a Princeton physicist, and more than a dozen businessmen. After the third semicolon, the system ends, permitting two chances for misun- derstanding. Literally the message con- veyed is that “several scientists” include all those mentioned thereafter. Dismiss- ing businessmen from the scientific ranks, the reader could plausibly place “a Princeton physicist” in a separate cat- egory. If patient, the reader might suc- ceed in deciphering the confused list, maybe even in diagnosing the problem: a missing semicolon after “physicist.” The writer is not to blame; an inexpli- cable rule of his newspaper (shared by various other papers) has instructed him to use a comma where the final semi- colon belongs. But a comma does not perform the function of a semicolon. If the writer, economist, actor, and scientist categories need to be separated from one another by semicolons, does not the sci- entist category need to be separated from the businessman category by a semicolon? 12. Virgule This / is a virgule (pronounced VUR- gyool). It is also known as a slash or solidus (SOL-uh-duss). Sometimes it is called a slant, diagonal, bar, or shilling. The mark has specialized uses, partic- ularly in technical, legal, and business writing. It is less suited to general prose than the marks of punctuation discussed in preceding sections. The virgule is an alternative to a hori- zontal line in separating the two parts of a fraction, such as 13/16. It replaces per in such terms as miles/hour and feet/sec- ond. In science and medicine, mg/km, for instance, is an economical way to ex- press milligrams of dosage per kilogram of body weight. When lines of poetry are written in regular text, the virgule indi- cates each new line: “On a battle- trumpet’s blast / I fled hither, fast, fast, fast, / ’Mid the darkness upward cast.” This book uses virgules to separate quo- tations when they are run successively in regular text. The mark often represents or, notably in the term and/or, meaning either and or or as the case may be. Lawyers make use of it. A typical contract uses the term this way: Company and/or its insurer shall have the right to select counsel and to settle any claim upon the terms and condi- tions it and/or its insurer deems satis- factory. A computer manual contains such headings as “Paper Size/Type” and “Short/Long Document Names,” in which the virgule presumably means ei- ther and or or. A computer program has an option called “Move/Rename File,” in which the virgule substitutes for or. The pro- gram also has a table explaining that if the user presses “Up/Down Arrow” (meaning either the up arrow or the down arrow), the curser will move to “The top/bottom of the screen” (mean- ing the top or bottom of the screen re- spectively). This \ is a back slash, or backslash; it is used for certain computer commands, and so is the regular slash. In business, the mark in a combina- tion like vice president/labor relations punctuation 347 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 347 can replace in charge of. For the general public, the full term is more widely un- derstandable. Virgules have been increasingly used of late instead of traditional punc- tuation and even instead of words. The substitution may be no improvement: Take “secretary/treasurer” instead of secretary-treasurer or “bacon/tomato sandwich” instead of bacon-tomato sandwich. An original use of a virgule in lieu of a verbal description can even be ambiguous: Diners cannot be sure whether the virgule means and or or in a menu’s “steak/lobster plate.” Some general writers seem to find the virgule stylish. One dispenses with commas and conjunctions to describe someone as a “writer/painter/photogra- pher” and later writes, “She has this phobia/quirk/fatal flaw. . . .” PUPIL and STUDENT. An elemen- tary-school child is a pupil. Anyone who takes personal instruction from a teacher also may be called a pupil. “Beethoven was Haydn’s pupil.” One who attends an institution of learning above elementary school is a student. A student is also anyone who studies or investigates a particular sub- ject, perhaps “a student of prehistory” or “a student of the drug problem.” A news story said: The alleged victims [of abuse] were two boys, ages 3 and 4, both students at the S—— . . . Pre- & Elementary School. . . . Three- and four-year-old “students”? It was not explained just what they would or could be studying. Elsewhere a photo depicted a cluster of diminutive moppets for whom the designation of “Students at the primary school in Portalesa, Brazil” hardly seemed fitting. And an ar- ticle about an Indiana elementary school used the unsuitable noun a dozen times: Students [range] from kindergartners to fifth graders. . . . The school . . . [encourages] students to think across subject lines. . . . Students play with board games and puzzles [and so on]. “Students” should have been pupils in each instance. A child attending school used to be called a scholar. Now a scholar usually is an advanced academic specialist or a person who is learned in the humanities. Sometimes a school child is described as “a good scholar” or “a bad scholar.” Schoolboy and schoolgirl are sometimes used, less often than they used to be. PURPORT, PURPORTED. 1. An odd verb. 2. Other uses. 1. An odd verb Purport is a strange verb, for two rea- sons: • Although it has the form of an active verb, it has the meaning of a passive verb. It means is—or are or was or were—supposed (to be) or represented (to be). The sense of is etc. is built into purported, and therefore is etc. should not be used with it. It is wrong to say, “The signature on the letter is purported to be genuine.” Change “is purported” to purports. • Its subject normally is not a person. A sentence like “He purported to tell investigators the whole story” is wrong. Changing “purported” to professed, or another appropriate verb, corrects the sentence. (One may say, “Miranda purports to protect a constitutional right.” Although a subject may not be a person considered as such, the subject here really is a thing, a legal rule named after a person.) 348 pupil and student 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 348 The three excerpts below fall short on both scores. Each uses “is” or “was” with “purport” and makes a person the subject. The first two are from books. . . . Jackson is purported to have said, “John Marshall has made his deci- sion; now let him enforce it.” Wellington is purported to have writ- ten to the British Foreign Office in London: “We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles.” A replacement for each “purported” could be supposed or believed. In the sentence below, from a news story, “pur- ported” could be changed to professing or pretending. Mr. Brucan said also that he had learned for the first time this after- noon that Mr. Munteanu was pur- porting to speak for the council on Monday mornings. . . . 2. Other uses Purport is also a noun. It denotes the supposed significance or meaning of something: “the purport of his speech was that. . . .” Purported may be used as an adjective, meaning supposed. Purport and purported—verb, noun, and adjective—do not confirm or deny the authenticity of anything (for exam- ple, a document or antique) but mildly question it. Without this element of modest doubt, purport (ed) is not the word to use. Some people use “purport” (noun) instead of purpose or purview. They do so either mistakenly, thinking that the similarity of sound carries over to the meaning; or intentionally, seeking a fancy synonym. That some dictionaries support the confusion should be no sur- prise. PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. Mil- lions listening on radio and television heard a prosecutor in a murder case tell the jury that he had read the Constitu- tion the previous night and it said the two victims had the right to liberty and life and more: “It said they had a right to the pursuit of happiness.” Not so. Earlier, an anchor man wrongly stated on a television network: “The Constitu- tion guarantees us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Had he substi- tuted property for “the pursuit of happi- ness,” he would have been right. The true word would have been irrelevant for the prosecutor. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution says that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty, or property” without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment echoes that principle, prohibiting any state from de- priving any person of “life, liberty, or property” without due process of law. The Constitution says nothing about happiness or its pursuit. The document that does mention it is the Declaration of Independence, whose second sentence reads: We hold these Truths to be self- evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Lib- erty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. While of historical, philosophical, and literary interest, the Declaration of Inde- pendence has no legal significance. PUSH. See ADVOCATE. PUT. See INTO, 1. PUTSCH. See REVOLT and REVO- LUTION. putsch 349 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 349 Q-TIPS. See VASELINE. Quantities, measures. See AMOUNT and NUMBER; Collective nouns, 3; FEWER and LESS; MANY and MUCH; Numbers; Verbs, 3. QUESTION. See Punctuation, 9B. Question mark. See Punctuation, 9. QUIP, QUIPPED. An impromptu, witty remark may be called a quip (noun). To make it is to quip (verb, in- transitive). It is probably rare that real wit or hu- mor needs to be labeled as such, but the press seems to disagree. In typical fash- ion, a reporter added “he quipped” to a judge’s remark, about how people mis- pronounced his name; and a columnist quoting a talk by a mayor explained that one remark was made “jokingly” and another was “quipped.” None of the quotations displayed recognizable wit or humor, and the labels failed to rescue them. Crack(ed), gag(ged), jest(ed), and joke(d) are among the terms that have been so used. QUITE. This adverb can be ambigu- ous: “He was quite truthful.” Was he scrupulously truthful or just generally so? “The place is quite big.” Is it im- mense or just sizable? Does “quite good” describe a superb show or a fairly enjoyable one? Used strictly, quite means completely, extremely, or really. Used informally or casually, it means somewhat, rather, or considerably. In the casual vein, quite followed by a or an can suggest an indef- inite number or amount (“quite a few”) or something notable (“quite an array”). If quite is interpreted in the strict way, “quite complete” is redundant and “quite similar” is contradictory. Few critics insist on strictness under informal circumstances. In a more formal con- text, a vague quite can be deadwood. A book uses it strictly at first: The viola is not an outsize violin. Its proportions are quite different and its tone is quite distinctive. Then casually. See whether “quite” makes any useful contribution here: There are quite a number of falla- cies regarding musical design which need to be exploded. Quotation marks. See Punctuation, 10; Quotation problems. Quotation problems. 1. Accuracy and inaccuracy. 2. Inconsistency in per- son and tense. 3. Unnecessary quotation marks. 4. When is the quotation over? 350 q-tips Q 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 350 1. Accuracy and inaccuracy Quotations, particularly direct quota- tions—those in quotation marks—are supposed to present what people have said or written. But not all writers and editors are scrupulous about quotations. A linguistics professor in Arizona compared twenty-four newspaper arti- cles with tape recordings of interviews, meetings, and speeches. Only 8 percent of 132 quoted sentences came out com- pletely right. Most were compatible with the original, but some were dead wrong: “People from Spain” turned into “Mexi- cans” and “He has so impressed all five of us” became “He has so impressed us as interim county manager.” Stories written by reporters who used tape recorders were not more accurate than those by reporters who just took notes. Few American journalists know short- hand. Inaccurate quotations may represent unintentional error, inadequate skill or memory, lack of respect for quotation marks, doctoring of statements suppos- edly to improve them, or outright fabri- cation. The Columbia Journalism Review quoted three New York re- porters who admitted making up quota- tions. Instead of interviewing parents whose children had died, “I made the quotes up,” one said. Another put words in the mouth of a baseball manager. A third pretended to quote a bystander at a parade. Six others knew of imaginary quotations in newspapers and maga- zines. A writer or editor is not obligated to quote anyone directly. A quotation that is important enough to use but improper, too long, poorly worded, or otherwise unsuitable as it is may be reworded, in whole or part, without quotation marks. Editors have been known to put such in- direct quotations in quotation marks. It is a hazardous practice. Deliberately altering a quotation can not only be unethical: the Supreme Court has said that it can be libelous— that is, false and defamatory—if it “re- sults in a material change in the meaning conveyed by the statement” (1991). For the misquoting of sayings, see Clichés; THAT and WHICH, 4. See also LIBEL and SLANDER. 2. Inconsistency in person and tense Quotation marks are presumed to en- close the exact words that someone has used. The exact words quoted in this passage from a historical book are un- likely to have been uttered: A Senator . . . was so overwhelmed by the implications of the crisis that he “feels that the Executive has not gone so far as to justify” the attack on Pen- sacola. Delivering a speech in the Senate, he probably did not say “I feels.” He is more likely to have said “I feel.” Even so, the sentence shifts awkwardly from past tense to present tense. The non- quoted and quoted parts need to fit to- gether: [Example:] A Senator was so over- whelmed by the implications of the crisis that he said, “I feel that the Ex- ecutive has not. . . .” If the exact words of the speaker are un- certain (perhaps the author is quoting a contemporary account of the speech in the third person), it is best to omit the quotation marks: [Example:] A Senator was so over- whelmed by the implications of the crisis that he said he felt that the Exec- utive had not. . . . See also Pronouns, 7 (end); Subjunc- tive, 3 (teen-age lingo); Tense, 3; THAT, 4. quotation problems 351 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 351 3. Unnecessary quotation marks Quotation marks are often used un- necessarily. When nobody is being quoted, the marks can cast doubt upon a word or phrase. Four examples follow. [Magazine:] First we’ll separate the volunteers into two groups: a treat- ment group and a “control” group. [Newsletter:] Our goal at any given time is to strive continually to be “the best”. [Notice at a bank:] . . . we will close our “teller counter service” at 5 p.m. [Picture captions in an ad for a cos- metic surgeon:] “NOSE” BEFORE . . . “NOSE” AFTER Control is a legitimate word, and the best is a legitimate phrase; neither needed quotation marks. The marks did not express confidence in the bank ser- vice. And there was no doubt that a woman pictured in the surgeon’s ad had a nose. (The second example follows a closing quotation mark with a period, in British style, although the publication is American. See Punctuation, 10. See also CONTINUAL[LY] and CONTINU- OUS[LY].) 4. When is the quotation over? A congressman made a speech in which he read a quotation. As heard on the radio, the quotation seemed to go on and on. Finally it became plain that he had finished his quoting but failed to say “end of quotation” or “so said ———” or “the words of ———” or even the dubious “unquote.” (See QUOTE and QUOTATION.) Whichever term is chosen, a speaker who quotes someone or something should indicate when the quotation has ended, unless it is well known and short. Otherwise listeners may not know when the speaker’s own words have resumed, especially if they cannot see him. Even to a viewing audience, the transition may not be obvious if the speech is read from a paper or a prompting screen. QUOTE and QUOTATION. Quote is properly a verb (transitive and intran- sitive). To quote is to repeat someone’s words, usually acknowledging that they are another’s words. You might quote a sentence, quote (a passage from) a book, quote (words of) Shakespeare or the pope, or quote from a magazine or a speech, saying “I quote.” Although it may pass in informal speech, using the verb as a noun is not appropriate in more formal media: “A frontispiece quote set the tone: ‘All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.’ ” / “Drexel liked the quote so much that one of its investment bankers framed it.” / “Reporters simply go out and lazily round up quotes to fit the poll results. . . .” The newspaper, news service, and news magazine quoted above should have used the noun quotation or quota- tions. Use of “quote” to mean quota- tion, or “quotes” to mean quotations or quotation marks, is part of the jargon of editors, reporters, and writers. The jargon includes “unquote,” often used by speakers in lieu of end of quota- tion. It was created as an economical form in telegrams from news correspon- dents, not as a bona fide word. A book publisher protested on na- tional television that a magazine had published a derogatory “misquote” and that to do so was sloppy. A neater word is misquotation. Occasionally a quotation is accompa- nied by an incomplete phrase, in this manner: “ ‘It’s not true,’ the Governor was quoted.” It should be “was quoted as saying.” See also Punctuation, 10; Quotation problems. 352 quote and quotation 03-M–Q_4 10/22/02 10:32 AM Page 352 RACE and NATIONALITY. 1. The difference. 2. Races of the U.S.A. 3. Who is colored? 1. The difference Race (noun) has often been mixed up with other terms, including nationality. Race is a category of mankind distin- guished by physical characteristics that are genetically transmitted, such as skin color, shape of head, type of hair, and fa- cial features. Nationality concerns the nation one belongs to and is based on politics, geography, or culture. Racial and national (adjectives) mean pertain- ing to, or based on differences in, race or nationality. A newspaper confused the terms: All along the border the population is a strange mix of people and tongues: Polish, German, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian—typical of the racial mix that Russia has throughout its far-flung country. “Polish, German, Czech,” etc. do refer to “people and tongues,” that is, nation- alities and languages. None of them are racial groups, so they are not “typical of the racial mix” in Russia, which extends to the Orient and does contain different races. 2. Races of the U.S.A. Citizens of the United States share a common nationality while comprising many national origins and several races. Three leading racial divisions of the world are represented in this country: the Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mon- goloid. Members of the first two groups are commonly known as white or black, respectively (nouns or adjectives), al- though nobody has skin that is really white or black. They are informal terms and need not be capitalized. A somewhat more scientific alterna- tive to white is Caucasian, though tech- nically there are brown-skinned Cauca- sians. The corresponding term for black is Negro, which fell out of popularity in the late sixties but survives in the United Negro College Fund. (The word should always be capitalized and pronounced like KNEE-grow, even though Webster’s Third Dictionary enters “negro” and condones the rather derogatory NIG- ruh. Eighteen of its entries use “nigger.” Insulting terms of that sort appear with the qualification “usu. taken to be offen- sive.”) Black, which had been consid- ered derogatory, became the accepted word. In the eighties African-American caught on as a formal term. It has less utility, covering only Americans; it would not include, say, a black Con- golese. Nor would it include a natural- ized American who was one of the race and nationality 353 R 04-R–Z_4 10/22/02 10:33 AM Page 353 [...]... “Native American as a synonym Users of that term exclude most native-born Americans and several indigenous peoples under the American flag: Aleuts, Eskimos, Hawaiians (see Hawaii), Samoans, and aboriginal inhabitants of other U.S island possessions American Indians used to be commonly considered the red race, although of brown skin, not red In summary, styles in racial designation come and go, and few of. .. Last, ignorance of the views of a personage, Buckley or Dole, is displayed Some comparable sources of trouble and the titles of entries that deal with them are listed below • Expressions open to opposite interpretations Ellipsis; FORWARD and BACK (time); GO OFF and GO ON; GREAT; SCAN • Pairs with opposite meanings See Confusing pairs (energize and enervate, hyper- and hypo-, and sanction and sanctions);... People of Color.” An article in another paper about a tribute to Jackie Robinson referred to the “obvious presence of such people of color ” Users of that term should explain why they do not regard any tint of pinkish tan as a color Here is a paradox, brought up by a physics professor and later by the host of a radio talk show: From the standpoint of physics, black is colorless, being the absence of. .. $4,000; about 30,000 and 7 million speakers; 147 and 160 pounds; first and sixth grades; Maine and Florida; adagio and vivace—or more subjective ones: Chicken dishes range from satisfying—morsels sautéed with garlic and wine—to dreadful, such as the special chicken with sausage and peppers in a gelatinous sauce The limits in that sentence are “satisfying” and “dreadful.” There is a top and a bottom It... strength”) RAN and RUN See Tense, 5A, B R AND R A U.S Army general “said he was trying to arrange ‘R and R,’ rest 355 and relaxation tours, inside and outside the kingdom.” Reporting from Arabia, a newspaper got the expression R and R right but its meaning wrong It is not “rest and relaxation.” Neither is it “rest and recreation,” a popular interpretation By U.S Army regulations, it stands for rest and recuperation... to of ce stands for election Yet a story in American newspapers said about Democrats in the Senate: Several of their members who will stand for re-election next year were elected with the support of traditional black liberals It would suit a British paper The American verb is run, not “stand.” Unless the writer was new to the United States and unfamiliar with its idiom, her motivation for a usage. .. one category of nouns to another And already series errors appears twice The thought of a third may be too much for an and- fearing writer The report was based on information from archives in the United States, Yugoslavia and “submissions and documents provided by Mr Waldheim.” The main series consists of “information from archives and ‘submissions and documents ’ ” Neither and has anything... neither was precise To speak of a law is customarily to speak of a statute, rather than a regulation There are both federal and state laws; a municipal law is called an ordinance Law or the law may be used in a general sense to mean the of cial rules that govern people The law of the United States consists of the Constitution, acts of Congress, treaties, and court rulings The law of each state is its constitution,... as most of us English speakers consider it just a name and few of us know Arabic, “Sahara Desert” should not offend many ears or eyes No one seems to object to “Gobi Desert,” though gobi is a Mongolian term for a desert But those who wish to be scrupulous in referring to the Sahara—or the Gobi—may omit “Desert.” Similarly, “River” and “Mountains” may be omitted from mentions of the Rio Grande and the... to his interpretation of the appointing power, from his unilateral determination of social priorities to his unilateral abolition of statutory programs, from his attack on legislative privilege to his enlargement of executive privilege, from his theory of impoundment to his theory of the pocket veto, from his calculated disparagement of the cabinet and his calculated discrediting of the press to his . inhabitants of other U.S. island possessions. American Indians used to be commonly considered the red race, although of brown skin, not red. In summary, styles in racial designa- tion come and go, and. limits may be, for example, prices of $1,000 and $4,000; about 30,000 and 7 million speakers; 147 and 160 pounds; first and sixth grades; Maine and Florida; adagio and vivace—or more subjective ones: Chicken. foster “Native American as a synonym. Users of that term exclude most native-born Americans and several indigenous peo- ples under the American flag: Aleuts, Es- kimos, Hawaiians (see Hawaii), Samoans, and