Word: worded
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Snakes & Fiats. The U.S. press has broken free from some of the outdated taboos and cliches that still keep news-writing stilting along behind the racy spoken word. But many still survive. The late, great Editor William Rockhill Nelson barred the word snake from his Kansas City Star because he thought readers couldn't take it at the breakfast table. Colonel Bertie McCormick has let some of his simplified-spelling decrees lapse (foto-graf has been compromised into photo-graf), but his Chicago Tribune still uses monolog, tho, frate...
Where Hight Was Right. The late John Holliday, founder of the Indianapolis News, once found height spelled hight in one of his editorials. He stormed into the composing room, where the foreman showed him the word spelled that way in his own copy. Barked Holliday: "If that's the way I spelled it, that's correct." It was hight in the News until a new stylebook came out last year...
They also inveighed against nicenellyisms. For example, the Medill stylists urged: "Do not use the words 'criminal assault' as a euphemism for the word 'rape.' " But most newsmen may find it hard to drop this traditional euphemism or its twin "statutory offense." Once the Houston Post tried to. The copy went to the composing room, with a sentence that told how a woman ran down the street screaming "He's trying to rape me! Help!" The Post's prim proofreaders, to whom a rule was a rule, split an infinitive as the lesser...
What is called for is (one hesitates to use the word) a poll. If a survey shows that none of last year's Freshmen like a Red Book, it shall have to be scrapped. If all of them want it, it shall have to be kept. But if an indecisive result leaves the verdict to the Council, then that body shall have to be kept. But if an indecisive result leaves the verdict the Council, then that body shall have to judge for itself...
Professor Samuel H. Beer, featured speaker of the evening, announced his "full" support of the Chief Executive. He termed him a "genuine liberal in the fullest sense of the word" and excoriated the "individualists" in Democratic ranks who had weakened the Truman band...