142 lines
8.9 KiB
Plaintext
142 lines
8.9 KiB
Plaintext
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_____________________________
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| But It Would Be Wrong |
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| By: |
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| William Safire |
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| From: |
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| The San Francisco Chronicle |
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|Sunday, April 20th, MCMLXXXVI|
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| Typed in by: |
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| The Unknown User |
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|_____________________________|
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{"Why", you may ask, "in the world would someone type something
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straight in from the newspaper?". The answer is: Because I find this an
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interesting and funny article, and thought that some people that don't get
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the Chronicle might want to read it. By the way, this was typed in on the 21st
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of April, but is yesterday's paper.}
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{Note: Anything in ALL UPPERCASE was in italics in the article}.
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RIGHT is not always the right word.
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You are in a taxicab. You are familiar with your destination, but the
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driver is not. He asks, "Make a left at the next corner?" You want him to do
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that, but the word that leaps to your lips is "right"- you know that it is
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the wrong word, because it may cause him to switch lanes to turn right,
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causing a great screeching of tires behind you, followed by terrible anguish at
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Lloyd's of London. So what do you say?
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The bookish reader, who has never faced this terrible moment, will
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suggest serenely that the proper answer in that situation is "yes." That reader
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does not live in the real world of directions ad turns and sudden stops and
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outraged cursing. If you, the direction-giver, are ready to say "yes," your
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alternative anser is "no"; and if you want the driver to turn right when he
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asks if you want him to turn left, "no" is a stupid, inadequate response.
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Those of us who like our directions to be crisp and unambiguous are
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ready with three responses to the query "Make a left?" If left is not the
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direction desired, answer "Make a right" or "Straight ahead." If left is your
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way to go, the correct and unconfusing answer is "correct." Whatever your
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direction, stay away from the word RIGHT - it causes accidents.
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In a similar way, WRONG is not always the right word.
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A recent Op-Ed page in the Washington Post on the subject of aid to
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the Contras in Nicaragua had these headlines: "Kirkpatrick and Krauthammer
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Are Wrong," "Podhoretz Is Wrong" and - in the only headline that nobody would
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find objectionable - "The Post Is Wrong."
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WRONG is a word that editorialists like, because we are by nature
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opinionated, and WRONG rings with the voice of judgement. "Virginia," wrote
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Francis P. Church in the most famous editorial ever, "your little friends are
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wrong."
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So are your little headline writers, Meg. WRONG is one of those
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sweeping words that contain a multitude of charges. When you blast someoe for
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being WRONG, do you mean what he says is INCORRECT, FALSE, INACCURATE,
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IMPRECISE? Or do you intend the word to convey a charge of venality, that your
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target is himself EVIL, IMPROPER, UNETHICAL, UNRIGHTEOUS, BAD, perhaps
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WILLFULLY MISLEADING? Does your WRONG carry a deliciously crackbrained
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connotation so often found in UNWITTING DUPE, which so many of us take to mean
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a combination of NITWIT and DOPE? Or do you mean merely that your opponent
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in debate is MISTAKEN?
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As RIGHT is akin to the Latin for "straight," WRONG is rooted in the
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Old Norse for "twisted." That pair of meanings is simple enough, but RIGHT AND
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WRONG have become bifurcated (big word in academic circles, bifurcated; try it
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at the next faculty party as you try to spear a shrimp with a two-pronged
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fork). CORRECT AND INCORRECT now vie with GOOD AND BAD in telling RIGHT AND
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WRONG from RIGHT AND WRONG.
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Example: B. Gallagher of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, sends me a brochure
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received from the Book-of-the-Month Club selling "A Treasury for Word Lovers,"
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by Morton S. Freeman, which blurbs: "An invaluable resource for everyone who
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wants to express themselves correctly..." BAck to the recasting couch, copy-
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writer: Change the EVERYONE WHO WANTS to ALL WHO WANT or, if you're not
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afraid of feminists, change the THEMSELVES to HIMSELF. That Mistake-of-the-
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Month is not WRONG; it's only INCORRECT. To be MISTAKEN is not to be WRONG;
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a slip of the tongue is not a fall from grammatical grace, nor is a solecism
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a sin.
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Precision in disputation adds to civility in discourse. (Sentences like
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that make me want to bifurcate.) If your target is evil incarnate, excoriate
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him for being IN THE WRONG and label him a real WRONGO. Recognize the inform-
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ality and imprecision of "You're wrong."
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Try another formulation that lets you be different in your differing.
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I was trying to find the origin of NW DEAL for my political dictionary;
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the phrase was used by Mark Twain, David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson, but
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to get the coiner in the Roosevelt era, I wrote to Judge Samuel I. Rosenman,
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author of many of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's speeches and the editor of
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FDR's papers. He allowed us as how he had worked on the peroration in the
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acceptance speech at the 1932 Democratic National Convention, when the cand-
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idate said, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American
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people."
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Then I asked another man who worked on FDR speeches, the columnist
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Raymond Moley, who wrote back: "The expression NEW DEAL was in the draft which
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I left at Albany with Roosevelt."
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Was Sammy the Rose wrong and Raymond the Mole right?
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Here is how Moley handled that" "When Rosenman says that he wrote it,
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he is in error."
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IN ERROR. Not WRONG, not even MISTAKEN; merely in a state of incorrect-
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ness, perhaps not his fault. That's a riposte that shows class.
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_ _ _
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TOILET used to be the word we most often used for a lavatory. Then
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along came American euphemisms such as RESTROOM and COMFORT STATION, along
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with the British euphemisms WATER CLOSET and LOO. According to Dictionary of
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American Regional English survey, some responses to teh question "What do you
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call an indoor toilet?" were BATHROOM, COMMODE, JOHN and MRS. JONES. It seemed
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as if TOILET were falling into disuse.
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Along came the charge hat the Defense Department had paid $640 for a
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toilet sea, which critics of defense spending made symbolic of waste and inef-
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ficiency in Pentagon procurement. At a televised press conference, a reporter
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asked the president, "Why did you so strongly denouce the misrepresentation of
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Secretary Weinberger as being wasteful and the cartooning of him with a toilet
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seat around his neck.?"
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President Reagan replied: "We didn't buy any $600 toilet seat. We
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bought a $600 molded plastic cover for the entire toilet system."
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By focusing on TOILET SEAT, for which there was no euphemism, the Pent-
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agon critics (and cartoonist Herblock) stopped the erosion of the word TOILET;
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by elevating the toilet to part of a modern ENTIRE TOILET SYSTEM - a proud
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component of a technological advance in a formerly mechanical process - the
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president rescued te word for generations to come.
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The Pentagon spokesman trained to handle toilet queries is named,
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though no fault of his own, Glenn Flood. He says: "The original price we were
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charged was $640, not just for a toilet seat, but for the large molded plastic
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assembly covering the entire seat, tank and full toilet assembly. The seat
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itself cost $9 and some cents." He adds, "The supplier charged too much, and we
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had the amount corrected."
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It's a relief for taxpayers to know that there is no "$640 toilet
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seat," but more important, lexigraphers on both sides of the Atlantic are
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flushed with excitement at teh detabooization of a plain word that started out
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as a euphemism itself.
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