Nuptial Vowels

I just finished the lovely novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. One of the book’s two alternating narrators is Paloma, a precocious 12-year-old French girl who has opinions on all sorts of things, including grammar:

Personally, I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty. When you speak, or read, or write, you can tell if you’ve said or read or written a fine sentence. You can recognize a well-turned phrase or an elegant style. But when you are applying the rules of grammar skillfully, you ascend to another level of the beauty of language. When you use grammar you peel back the layers, to see how it is all put together, see it quite naked, in a way. And that’s where it becomes wonderful, because you say to yourself, “Look how well-made this is, how well-constructed it is! How solid and ingenious, rich and subtle!”

I finished the novel late Saturday night. When I got up Sunday morning, Dennis told me I should read the Washington Post column by the paper’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander. ”It’s about their copy-editing problem,” Dennis said, handing it to me while I sipped my coffee. We’ve both been annoyed by the increase in errors in the Post. 

The column’s lead grated on my nerves: “When it comes to typos and syntax, retired English teachers and armchair grammarians delight in playing ’Gotcha!’ with the Post…” The tone was dismissive, as though only grumpy old retired folks wearing Depends and wielding washed up red pens cared about mistakes. To diminish the importance of accuracy and quality in a publication’s prose is short-sighted. The Washington Post is a newspaper with a national, even international reputation, and its currency is the written word. It’s like a chef being cavalier about the ingredients that go into a recipe. Who cares if we use basmati instead of arborio rice in that saffron proscuitto risotto. Really?

Alexander explains that the errors are caused by a shrinking staff due to buyouts, and to the changing and increasing duties due to technological advances of those copy editors who do remain.  I understand that times are tough for newspapers but I also believe that copy editing should be a priority when triaging resources. I don’t want to be an armchair grammarian and when I’m a retired English teacher I hope I have better things to do than police the Washington Post for comma splices and dangling modifiers. What I do want is to read sturdy, clean prose and well-reported journalism. I’ve always turned to the Post for that, and I hope I can continue to in the future.

–Barbara