← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Scathing Online Schoolmarm Says:

It pales next to their plagiarism case, but editors at the New York Times can also overlook mixed metaphors:

The drug-testing provision, its sponsors said, is an inducement that bubbled up in the course of a freewheeling focus group of voters testing arguments that could persuade people to support a higher damage ceiling in malpractice lawsuits.

SOS recognizes that “damage ceiling” is a technical term; but when you put that ceiling next to a free wheel that bubbles you get a mess of a sentence.

Nor does it help that a “focus group” (another technical term) is described as freewheeling. One gets what the writer means; yet how many even very competent readers of English would be able to make sense of a focused thing that is also freewheeling?

Margaret Soltan, August 2, 2014 8:15AM
Posted in: Scathing Online Schoolmarm

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=45065

5 Responses to “Scathing Online Schoolmarm Says:”

  1. Greg Says:

    I was going to email, but I think a SOSM post is close enough to permit this glommed comment on language confusion.(Or was it really?) Homophoniaphobia breaks at a school (admittedly not a major one) in Utah:

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/01/1318397/-Homophobic-Paranoia-In-Utah

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Greg: Mind-boggling.

  3. Michael Tinkler Says:

    I read that first as “freewhaling” and wondered if it had something to do with whales making bubble nets. But then I thought, “Nah, it’s the NYT and of course Margaret is right anyway. Wow, whatever happened to editors?

    I wonder if a small magazine called CLEAN could find a market by publishing crisp prose with no spelling errors?

  4. Michael Tinkler Says:

    Yes. I missed closing the quotation. So sue me – I’m NOT the publisher of CLEAN.

  5. Alan Allport Says:

    Michael, the Internet Law of Schadenfreude says that anyone making a comment about someone else’s poor spelling, grammar, or punctuation will, during the course of their complaint, make at least one mistake in their spelling, grammar, or punctuation.

    Also: anyone invoking the Internet Law of Schadenfreude will inevitably spell Schadenfreude incorrectly.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories