Merrill Perlman, Columbia Journalism Review

Merrill Perlman

Columbia Journalism Review

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Recent:
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Past:
  • Columbia Journalism Review

Past articles by merrill:

The AP and the latest style

If you have a printed copy of the Associated Press Stylebook, even the 2020 edition, you’re out of date. In fact, if you haven’t looked at the AP stylebook online since April 23, you’re already out of date. At this time of year, the AP usually announces some of its more important style changes at […] → Read More

On your behoof

Business Day recently published a piece about the travel industry. “It naturally behoves the major stakeholders,” it said, “to become more creative in developing services that encourage travel.” In The Economist, a piece about design bias said “it would behove firms to build diversity into their designs from the very outset.” And a letter to […] → Read More

Ablaut time

Which made-up phrase sounds better to you: “sack sick” or “sick sack”? How about “make mock” or “mock make”? If you’re a native English speaker, you are probably more comfortable saying “sick sack” and “make mock,” even though they are nonsense phrases. But why? You’re certainly familiar with “TikTok,” the app that allows you to […] → Read More

When a word starts to smell

Bryan A. Garner, he of Garner’s Modern English Usage, polled his 40,000-plus followers on Twitter in late January: “‘To trump’ is now a verb that should be (A) accepted as a neutral verb denoting the idea of vanquishing an opponent, or (B) viewed as invariably meaning that but suggesting the former incumbent of the White […] → Read More

The preoccupation of ‘wonks’

If you’re looking for evidence on how language can change, look no further than William Safire’s 1980 “On Language” column in The New York Times discussing collegiate slang—or, as Safire puts it, “campusese.” According to that column, easy courses were called “guts,” and people who would do anything for an A were called “throats,” short […] → Read More

The rise of ‘deplatform’

Language Corner aims to inform and entertain, and often discusses words and phrases in the news. AFTER THE RIOTS at the Capitol last month, Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote in The Atlantic that social media had no choice but to suspend Donald Trump’s accounts. “Though they hesitated to moderate or deplatform Trump for much of his presidency, […] → Read More

Our year of pandemic words

Language Corner aims to inform and entertain, and often discusses words and phrases in the news. THOUGH THESE FIRST FEW DAYS have already given us quite a year, let us not forget 2020 and the words that categorized it. As we do every year, here’s a roundup of some of the “Words of the Year” […] → Read More

Out of ‘spite’

Language Corner aims to inform and entertain, and often discusses words and phrases in the news. Donald Trump insists he won the presidential election, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Donald Trump insists he won the presidential election, in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary. Do you read both sentences the same […] → Read More

Sowing cedes

Language Corner aims to inform and entertain, and often discusses words and phrases in the news. WHEN DONALD TRUMP allowed the transition to a Biden administration to go forward, he effectively “ceded” that he did not win the election. But he has not “conceded,” and it’s unclear whether he will “proceed” with legal challenges to […] → Read More

The source of all knowledge

Language Corner aims to inform and entertain, and often discusses words and phrases in the news. VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE, defending President Trump during a conference in Munich in 2019, repeatedly invoked Trump’s name “as some God-given fount of wisdom,” a New York Times columnist wrote. A Pennsylvania newspaper warned that having experience “doesn’t mean […] → Read More

Can we? May as well.

In more than twelve years of writing this column, we have somehow escaped dealing with the difference between “can” and “may.” That aversion ends because of a friend’s request: “Please, please write about how many people are misusing ‘can’ when they mean ‘may.’ It’s making my head hurt. I just saw the headline ‘President Trump […] → Read More

True collars

When US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not agree with a majority decision in her later years on the bench, everyone knew it as soon as she walked into the courtroom. She would wear her “dissent collar”—a fake-jeweled, slightly medieval-looking necklace from Banana Republic given to her in 2012. But being able to […] → Read More

Blowing kisses

The comedian Samantha Bee recently told the Los Angeles Times about her reaction to the arrest of Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former strategist, by postal inspectors aboard a megayacht owned by an exiled Chinese billionaire. “For me, it was a chef’s kiss moment,” she said. “Every once and in a while we deserve good news.” […] → Read More

Where ‘grift’ meets ‘graft’

Shortly after the arrest of Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former White House strategist, on fraud charges, the New York Times ran an editorial with the headline “Steve Bannon’s Art of the Grift.” The word “grift” did not appear in the editorial. The Washington Post did use it: “The grift alleged is disgusting, if not surprising,” […] → Read More

Easy as pie? Not quite.

For the past few weeks, social media has been layered with cake. Cake that looked like a full English breakfast, or raw chicken breasts, or toilet paper, or a heavily tattooed hand and forearm, until a sharp knife, causing momentary confusion, revealed the inner layers. Most of them came from Ben Cullen, a British baker […] → Read More

Yes, ‘irregardless’ is a word. No, it’s not new.

It’s hard to believe that, in the year 2020, we are still arguing over whether “irregardless” is a word. It is. Not a good one, necessarily, but a word. In late June, Christine Rousselle, a DC correspondent for the Catholic News Agency, tweeted about pet peeves and got a response: People who say “Irregardless”. That’s […] → Read More

Snowclones in the time of pandemic

Admit it: at some time in the past few months, you either wrote or thought of writing some version of “(X) in the time of COVID-19.” You’d be in good company. Forbes used it in headlines for “Grieving In The Time Of Covid-19,” “Compassion in the Time of COVID-19,” “Biotechnology In the Time of COVID-19,” […] → Read More

‘Loot,’ ‘plunder,’ ‘pillage,’ and what they invoke

The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer set off a nationwide wave of protests and some violence. From a language point of view, the events sent readers to the dictionary, with “loot” ranking among the top lookups on Merriam-Webster. Switch to the thesaurus for “loot” synonyms, and you’ll find, among others, “pillage” […] → Read More

‘Quarantine’: A history

People have been home for many weeks now, under what some states call “shelter-in-place” orders, others call “stay-at-home” orders, and New York state calls “PAUSE.” No one term is better than another, though, as we’ve written, “shelter in place” has different interpretations depending on the situation. Some people are also in “quarantine,” staying in one […] → Read More

2020 AP Stylebook changes: person-first language, and the great ‘pled’ debate

The release of a new print edition of the Associated Press Stylebook has always been a highlight of many editors’ May, especially when it is accompanied by a session at the national conference of ACES: The Society for Editing, when AP editors announce the major changes. This year was a little different: The in-person ACES […] → Read More