April 3, 2012, 8:00 AM
By PHILIP B. CORBETT
Article from The New York Times
Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style.
It’s surprising how often we stumble over constructions involving comparisons with “as” or “than.” This is a case where reading aloud (even reading “aloud” to yourself) may save you from a misstep. These lapses are easy to miss by eye but are more obvious to the ear.
Some recent examples:
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Blacks, in general, are three-and-a-half times as likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers, and more than 70 percent of the students who were involved in arrests or referred to law enforcement agencies were black or Hispanic.
Make it “as their white peers.” In general, if the comparison starts with “as,” you need another “as.” (Also, no hyphens are needed in “three and a half times.”)
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American Indian women are 10 times as likely to be murdered than other Americans.
Same problem; make it “as other Americans.”
In some cases like this, the original may have read “10 times more likely to be murdered than other Americans.” The Times’s stylebook cautions against those constructions as potentially confusing. But when we change “more likely” to “as likely,” we also need to change “than” to “as.”
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Almost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together. While in some countries such relationships endure at rates that resemble marriages, in the United States they are more than twice as likely to dissolve than marriages.
Here we may have been thrown off track by the “more than” phrase. But the construction should still be “as likely … as marriages.”
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But consumers still came out in droves to buy the iPhone 4S, helping the company sell more than double the number of iPhones for the quarter ending Dec. 31 than it did a year ago, a figure that was also lifted by sales of cheap, older models of Apple’s cellphone.
With this construction, we would have to say “more than double the number … that it did a year ago.” But it’s simpler to say “more than twice as many … as.”
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Low- and mid-priced chain restaurants are one of the few segments of the economy that decided, during the recession and in its aftermath, to spend as much or more on advertising than they did in the years before.
This is a different version of the “as/than” problem. The full expression is “as much as,” and the second “as” can’t be dropped. Here, the neatest solution is to say “spend as much on advertising as they did in the years before, or more.”
In a Word
This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.
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The awards — considered the most prestigious in all of television — are put on each year by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
If something is truly prestigious, the reader usually needs no persuasion. This sounds promotional.
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Rick Santorum tried on Monday to turn a tense and profane exchange with a New York Times reporter to his benefit, using the encounter as a rallying cry and a fund-raising plea.
In precise usage, the word in question, literally describing cattle droppings, is a vulgarity, not a profanity. “Profanity” refers specifically to religious oaths. (Also, it may be overstatement to describe the whole exchange this way, since there was only one vulgar word.)
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Uninsured Americans each year use $43 billion of health care they cannot pay for, effectively transferring those costs to other American families to the tune of about $1,000 per year, Mr. Verrilli said.
If you can’t hum it, it’s probably not a tune. In a serious context, the colloquial (and hackneyed) phrase was jarring.
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The woman, Shaima Alawadi, died three days after her daughter discovered her body in a pool of blood inside their home along with a note that said, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.”
This crime-scene description, through overuse, no longer shocks anyone. And since she was then still alive, it seems odd to say “her body.”
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Like Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s personal friend and adviser in the White House, Mr. White’s relationship with Mr. Romney goes beyond the professional.
“Like Valerie Jarrett… Mr. White’s relationship” is a dangler.
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The party, one that Payton oversaw as one of the league’s most powerful coaches, screeched to a halt last week as the Saints separated themselves from the league in a most unsavory way.
Unless the party was in a stretch limo, R.V. or tour bus, we should have blocked that metaphor.
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Quibbles about the thin plot and questionable acting go out the window with each and every tune — and there are plenty of them.
Alliteration is often a clue that a phrase might be shopworn.
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The fear factor squared off against my culinary ambitions. Others may want fame and fortune; give me the perfect dinner party.
There’s that alliteration again. And there are the clichés.
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For all its success against European rivals, victories by Wales against Southern Hemisphere teams are few and far between.
If only this cliché were rare in our pages.
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The bill, approved by a vote of 223 to 181, provoked a full-throated debate on the merits of the law, the Affordable Care Act, on the second anniversary of its signing by Mr. Obama.
My colleague Tim Race points out that “full-throated” is also well on its way to clichédom, especially in political coverage.
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A Japanese phenomenon, these tops have erupted into American living rooms, with more than 30 million sold in the United States in the last 18 months, an old-school onslaught that has left some parents finding Beys (as they are known) in every nook and cranny of the house.
This phrase has become weary with overuse; let’s root it out of every corner and crevice.
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In evaluating Tebow, he has obvious assets like size and athleticism, and a superabundance of intangibles: work ethic, leadership and some elusive or illusory traits that make him “a winner.” …
When trying to throw quickly, his passes wobbled or sailed away from receivers.
Two danglers in these two sentences.
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For good measure, Regular Joe Biden, the muscle-car-loving vice president, has been sent to working-class locations in the Rust Belt while the first lady, Michelle Obama, went on “Late Show with David Letterman” on Monday and reminded everyone she went shopping at Target last year (Mr. Letterman helpfully flashed a photo of the outing.)
The period should be outside the parentheses — or one should be added after “year” so the parenthetical line stands alone.
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“I am considering Tweeting,” Leyner announced recently, to a table of friends, over dinner in the West Village, as though Tweeting is an activity he has been encouraged to pursue and is eager to master, even if he’s not quite sure yet what it entails.
Lowercase; “Twitter” is a trademark, but not “tweet.”
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But if the endorsement held the potential to further choke off the oxygen to Mr. Santorum’s insurgent candidacy, the Romney campaign inadvertently gave Mr. Santorum a new supply when a senior adviser went on CNN and seemed to suggest that Mr. Romney’s conservative positions in the primary season could change like an Etch a Sketch drawing.
Etch A Sketch (uppercase A, no hypens) is a trademark, and we should render it that way.
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Cooper played his senior year at Seton Academy in Illinois, where Thomas, a former Hales Franciscan assistant, said he could not believe the amount of poachers.
Make it either “number of poachers” or “amount of poaching.”
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The area is both a National Historic Landmark as well as a Chicago Landmark District.
This pair doesn’t work together; make it “both … and.”
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After Deadline examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times. It is adapted from a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual.
Article from The New York Times