Civilization

“I think that grammar is a valued part of our civilization. I don’t like any attempt to diminish it.”

—John Richards (1923-2021), founder, Apostrophe Protection Society, “John Richards, bulwark for the apostrophe against grammatical ‘barbarians,’ dies at 97,” Washington Post, April 25, 2021.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Civilization may be in peril.

 

• See also: “A former copy editor fought to defend the apostrophe. Now he admits ‘ignorance and laziness’ have won,” WaPost, 2019.

 

 

PeezPIX

1st Douglas Iris of the Year

The May issue of Senior News is out. After a Long Year, Silver Linings. Read all about it.

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD 

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

Smart Phones . . .

 

“Who today memorizes a phone number

reads a map, or calculates a tip in their head?

I have lost those skills

because my smart phone has made me a moron

and I now depend on my brain extension device

for just about everything.”

 

—Lynn Levin, poet, from “The Song of My Cell Phone,” The Minor Virtues, 2020. Image: Babycakes Romero, 2015.

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: . . . Dumb humans.

 

 

 

PeezPIX

Road Warrior

 

The May issue of Senior News is out. After a Long Year, Silver Linings. Read all about it.

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD 

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

Doomed

“We need to understand all people that are like us, and that are different than us. We need to have more understanding. That’s one of the reasons that I started CNN, and did my best to try and get them to concentrate as much as I could on serious international news, so that people would be better informed. Because if we don’t have the right information today, we’re doomed.

—Ted Turner, media mogul and philanthropist, “Ted Turner: Telling It Like It Is,” U.N. Dispatch, Sept. 22, 2006.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: You said it, Ted-o.

 

 

 

PeezPIX

 

Rainbow & Super Moon

 

The May issue of Senior News is out. After a Long Year, Silver Linings. Read all about it.

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD 

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

Power of the Press

“We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its state, its national conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.

“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away. . . .

“[P]ublicity may not be the only thing that is needed, but it is the one thing without which all other agencies will fail.”

—Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), publisher, St. Louis Dispatch & New York World.

 

 

• Editorial Comment: And if the public doesn't care?

 

 

PeezPIX

The May issue of Senior News is out. After a Long Year, Silver Linings. Read all about it.

 

 

  

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD 

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

Wild Things

 

“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.” 

 

—John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), economic theorist (Thanks to alert WORDster Ruth Pease)

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: I am word, hear me roar.

 

 

 

PeezPIX

The May issue of Senior News is out. After a Long Year, Silver Linings. Read all about it.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD 

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

Earth Day 1971

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

 

—Walt Kelly (1913-1973), cartoonist.

This classic Pogo Truth appeared on April 22, 1971, the first anniversary of Earth Day. Still works, unfortunately. (Thanks to Jim Slade for the reminder.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: We is dastardly phools.

 

 

 

PeezPIX

 

Oxalis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD 

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

 

 

A Note to My Copy Editor

 

“I want to speak particularly of your theory of clean manuscripts, and spelling as correct as a collegiate stenographer, and every nasty little comma in its place and preening of itself. ‘Manners,’ you say it is, and knowing the ‘trade’ and the ‘Printed Word.’ 

 

“But I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read. I have the instincts of a minstrel rather than those of a scrivener. There you have it. We are not of the same trade at all and so how can your rules fit me? 

 

“When my sounds are all in place, I can send them to a stenographer who knows his trade and he can slip the commas about until they sit comfortably and he can spell the words so that school teachers will not raise their eyebrows when they read them. Why should I bother? There are millions of people who are good stenographers but there aren’t so many thousands who can make as nice sounds as I can.”

 

—John Steinbeck (1902-1968), writer and minstrel, Letter to A. Grove Day, December 1929 (A Life in Letters, 1975). Image: Peter Stackpole, 1937.

 

 

 

 

 • Editorial Comment: I’m sitting on the porch, barking like a seal — as close as I get to my novel.

 

 

 

PeezPIX

 

Spring Blooms

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Need some bad jokes and silly stories? Check out the April Senior News, “A Little April Foolishness.” Available free at all the best news establishments.

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD 

 

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard