My colleague Bill Freehling always gets it right.

When he writes about a Buffett—usually Warren, sometimes Fredericksburg’s own Doris, rarely Jimmy—he spells the last name thus:

B-U-F-F-E-T-T.

Because that is how the name is spelled.

If you spell it “Buffet” with one T, as many, many people seem compelled to do, you are not talking about any of these:

Warren Buffett

Doris Buffett

Jimmy Buffett

No, if you spell it “buffet,” you are talking about one of these:

A buffet

(Images of Warren Buffett and Jimmy Buffett used in this post are in the public domain. Image of Doris Buffett is by Suzanne Carr Rossi of The Free Lance-Star and is copyrighted.)

Definitely a mansion. But a "manse"?

I was gearing up for a nice smackdown of the misuse of the word “manse.”

A manse, I remembered, is the home where a minister—especially a Presbyterian minister—lives.

But I’ve seen it used as a short, breezy synonym for “mansion.” That, I was going to say, is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Guess what.

While my Webster’s New World Third College Edition does give the Presbyterian minister’s dwelling definition first, it says the word has an “archaic” meaning as any large or grand home.

I would not have been surprised if Webster’s had allowed “manse” for a mansion based on modern misuse. But I was surprised that it is “archaic,” implying that the broader definition came first.

Sure enough, the New Oxford American Dictionary that came with my computer says the use of “manse” to mean the principal house of an estate—with no religious connotation—dates to the late 15th century. It says the word comes to English from medieval Latin “mansus,” a house or dwelling.

Once again I find that I am merely a know-it-some.

A tome is a book. But not every book is a tome.

Several weeks ago I gently corrected a reporter who wrote the phrase “a slim tome.”

The other day a different reporter tried it, using “tome” as a synonym for a children’s picture book.

No and no.

A tome is a large, heavy, scholarly book.

The word, my dictionary tells me, comes from French, via Latin, from a Greek word meaning “to cut,” as to cut a roll of papyrus into sections.

In today’s English, the dictionary says, the word is “chiefly humorous.” That’s being generous. It’s not funny; it’s breezy.

Even as attempted humor, “tome” can’t be applied to just any printed matter with a spine and a couple of covers.

Here’s quoting Bryan Garner in “Garner’s Modern American Usage”: “tome refers not to any book, but only to one that is imposingly or forbiddingly large.”

Garner’s reference book, which I got for Christmas, has 942 pages and weighs 4.4 pounds. I find it tremendously helpful and not “imposingly or forbiddingly large.”

Still, it’s big. It’s a deep, scholarly blue. If you dropped it on your foot, it would hurt. I wouldn’t call it a tome, but if somebody else did and I were copy editing, I’d let it go.

Regular Red Pen correspondent Rupert Farley wrote:

“I’m surprised this one slipped in: ‘revert back’ on Wednesday’s page A-6, column 4, paragraph 6.  I always thought of this as the quintessential example of redundancy, and that all in the writing profession would be aware.”

Watch your 'back.'

Never assume that “all in the writing profession would be aware” of any particular peeve, prohibition or preference. Different reporters and editors know different things.

I do change “revert back” (just “revert” usually does the trick) but not everyone in the newsroom shares my distaste for this redundancy. I don’t remember where, when or how I learned this one—I just checked, and I didn’t find it in the AP Stylebook, Bremner’s “Words on Words” or Bernstein’s “The Careful Writer.” 

But we have a winner! “Garner’s Modern American Usage” addresses it. Bryan Garner writes: “Revert back is a redundancy common in American English—e.g.: ‘Medieval town centers, once built for people on foot and a few carts and carriages, have partly reverted back [read reverted] to strollers.’ ”

Still, I’m not sure I can or should elevate this to “You must not, ever!” status among my colleagues. Some will catch it; some won’t. Maybe those who won’t will use that mental energy to catch an ugly, oozing typo that I would miss. You never know.

At any rate, please know that I share your preference for “revert” without the “back.”

He responded:

“Interesting observations; thanks.  Times do change.  Unfortunately, it might be a while before I de-program myself from lumping those ‘revert back’ lovers with those backwoods types who use ‘snuck’ and ‘irregardless.’ ”

And that is the crux of it. It’s not exactly wrong to use a redundancy, but some readers will judge you harshly.

Conscientious writers think about such constructions before they hit “send.”

Two things I’ve observed:

• Good spellers like spelling tests.

• Bad spellers dislike spelling tests.

A few weeks ago, the University of North Carolina sparked an Internet brouhaha by announcing that it’s doing away with a spelling test long required of its journalism graduates. The decision was made because journalists write on computers, and computers have spell check.

Two more things I’ve observed:

• Good spellers use spell check.

• Bad spellers don’t use spell check.

I don’t have a strong opinion about spelling tests for J-school students. I lean toward requiring them if only because it’s one more opportunity to remind journalists that spelling really does matter, and if they don’t take the trouble to get the words right, they’re dumping that responsibility on someone else. And that, when you think about it, is just bad manners.

I do, however, have a strong opinion about spell check: Use it, dammit.

The computers in The Free Lance-Star newsroom have a spell checker that, like many such programs, is both valuable and intensely annoying.

It flags many proper nouns as misspellings, even if they’re correctly spelled. It cannot recognize the word “extraordinaire” as a correct spelling, even though it is, in such a phrase as “a chef extraordinaire.” On the other hand, it lets “accidently” go without so much as a “Hey! Over here!”

It refuses to recognize email addresses, instead suggesting amusing, if mildly offensive, alternatives. For example, my email address, lmoyer@freelancestar.com, becomes “imperfectness” when left to spell check’s tender mercies. Thanks a whole lot for that.

It’s well-known that spell check won’t help you if you don’t know your homonyms, or if you misuse a correctly spelled word. It won’t prevent you from saying someone was a volunteer on the rescue squat, or that a student won the Stafford Country Spelling Bee.

But spell check can save your butt. It has certainly saved my imperfect one. It’s most helpful in flagging words my brain can spell but my fingers can’t type.

Now, I am not trying to bash or trash my colleagues, who work incredibly hard producing timely and accurate copy for our online and print products, on deadline, every day. But even though all the computers at The Free Lance-Star have spell check, my fellow copy editors and I see oceans of spelling errors in the copy we work on—almost all of which has been through at least one level of editing.

Spell check helps us see those errors. And we correct (most of) them.

“OK,” you say, “you’re a copy editor. That’s your job.”

I can’t argue with that. It is my job. It’s my job, too, to read for completeness of thought; to review against libel; to simplify convoluted sentences; to raise questions about accuracy and fairness; to guard against unintentionally hilarious mistakes; to impose standard written grammar and punctuation; to know and apply Associated Press style for consistency and clarity; and more. I see copy editors as goalies, fighting to keep a barrage of well-aimed mistakes out of the net.

But goalies can’t make every save. We need our teammates to play defense, too.

We really appreciate our colleagues who have troubled themselves to learn most of the words on college-level spelling tests—and who consistently use spell check.

A headline in the Metro section of this morning’s Washington Post caught my eye.

“Law and ogre” is the display type.

The subhead says, “Legal firm opens its doors to kids, featuring a Shrek trial, life lessons and science.”

As headlines go, that’s pretty close to perfect. “Law and ogre” is just funny, and it draws you in. The subhead makes it clear that it’s also an accurate summation of the story, about a D.C. law firm’s Shrek-themed open house for children.

I have written a lot of headlines. It’s harder than it looks. It’s rare to hit on something just right, and I imagine that the editor or copy editor who wrote this one felt justly satisfied.

The picture is great, too, capturing a moment of pure giddiness the way only 7-year-olds can experience it.

The picture is so compelling, in fact, that I read the caption.

Oh, my.

One thing The Post can do that The Free Lance-Star can’t is correct its early-edition screwups in later editions.

Post subscribers in the distant land of Fredericksburg get probably the first version of the paper, printed in the early evening.

I called my dad, who lives in Annandale and thus gets a much later edition. I had him read the caption out loud and was pleased to learn that The Post did, indeed, add the missing second line for its later press runs.

I’m posting this because it illustrates one of the classic frustrations of the daily newspaper business. Here you have two really well-executed pieces of work: A great headline, and a great photo.

Some gremlin pops up–a computer glitch, a brain gap, a slip of a finger on a keyboard–and all that good work goes to poo.

At least, that’s how it feels to the headline-writer or photographer who picks up the paper the next day and groans. Ugh.

Think what you like about journalists, but we’re not stupid, and we’re not lazy, and we really do care, and we really try to get it right. In the rush of deadline, things happen. They’d happen to you, too, if you were doing this job.

I just really needed to say that.

Steve Dunham. Photo by Dick Peacock.

He spots gaffes that slip by Free Lance-Star editors. Here are some of our mistakes that Dunham has pointed out:

A headline about tsunamis was atop a story about typhoons. A Dr. Donahue headline referred to “profused bleeding.” We mentioned a golfer from “Austrailia.” We referred to people “of African decent.” We misused the word “dilemma” (it’s a choice between unpleasant options, not just a bland quandary). We placed a story about the Oklahoma statehouse under a “Region” header. (Well, Oklahoma is in a region. Just not ours.)

In February we ran a Titanic-related headline: “A century later, tragedy at sea is popular.” Dunham wrote, “I knew people would like it if they just tried it.”

Thank goodness not all his emails are about our mistakes.

In a recent email, he mentioned an ad in a VRE “Commuter Update” with the all-caps headline, “COMMUTERS DON’T HAVE TIME FOR INCOMPETANCE!” The ad, for a heating company, went on to refer to a heating and cooling “diagnosis dictionary.”

“I wish they would use the regular kind too,” Dunham wrote.

Then there was the time the Arlington Catholic Herald, usually well-edited, published an item mentioning New York City’s five “burrows.”

“That’s wrong,” Dunham wrote. “New York has way more than five tunnels.”

(It does, of course, have only five boroughs.)

In his professional life, Dunham has spotted some doozies.

Several years ago he was assigned to make an accurate transcript from a closed-captioned video of some hearings dealing with space. Among the phrases he discovered on the closed captions: “silly carbon” (Dunham imagined that to be a substance like Silly Putty, only black); “the photo register I watched them post” (the Federal Register and The Washington Post); and “using a rowboat for near-Earth missions.” Turns out that was a robot.

More recently, he writes, “I was editing a book with a lot of medical content, and I came across ‘in cases where all upper right to me is required.’ I figured it was a phonetic misrepresentation of some medical term but I couldn’t guess what.”

He puzzled over it and finally asked the author, a doctor, what was meant.

“The answer: ‘in cases where a laparotomy is required.’ ” Dunham figured the doc must have dictated, and something got lost in transcription.

Because I didn’t want to embarrass Dunham, I checked with him to make sure it was OK to use his name and his examples in this blog.

He responded that it was all upper right with him.

***

Check out Dunham’s website, Steve Dunham’s Trains of Thought. It has examples of his photography and humor writing, links to his published articles, and descriptions of his presentations about editing. Also, he really likes trains.

I admire the economic enterprise here. But shouldn’t someone check the text before it’s painted on a company van?

Thanks for sending in the photo, Ani Cannon.

Poor baby does look queasy.

I dutifully applied the Associated Press Stylebook rule—repeated in many respectable reference books on grammar and usage—that “hopefully” should be used only to mean “in a hopeful manner.”

So if someone wrote, “Hopefully, the dog won’t throw up on the rug,” I’d sigh and explain that no, the dog is not hopeful that it won’t throw up on the rug. The owner is hopeful. And as the owner is not actually in the sentence, the sentence must be changed.

I’d suggest something like “I hope the dog won’t throw up on the rug.”

(I don’t think I was ever such a tweezer as to insist on “It is hoped that the dog won’t throw up on the rug.”)

The big news in the copy editing world this week is that AP has finally come around on “hopefully.” The stylebook editors have decided to allow it as a sentence adverb—that is, an adverb that applies to the whole sentence, rather than to a specific verb, adjective or other adverb.

We use sentence adverbs all the time. “Apparently, the dog threw up on the rug.” “Frankly, it’s disgusting.” “Unfortunately, I am out of carpet cleaner.”

Even before AP pronounced it OK, I gave up policing “hopefully” at the beginning of sentences.

The most recent example that comes to mind is a headline in the Life section a couple of weeks ago: “Hopefully, child cannot tell a lie again.” I was the copy editor that day. I thought about changing it. I decided not to, because I could not imagine a reader being confused by the construction.

There are real mistakes out there to correct. That is not a real mistake. I like to think that the mental energy I save on “hopefully” will come in handy sometime when I come across a big, hairy typo in a headline or a grammatical error that would truly cause confusion.

If I’m going to make an ass of myself, I want it to be about something that matters.

***

Here’s the new entry, which AP sent out today:

hopefully
The traditional meaning is in a hopeful manner. Also acceptable is the modern usage: it’s hoped, we hope.
Correct: “You’re leaving soon?” she asked hopefully.
Correct: Hopefully, we’ll be home before dark.

I was on the duty last night. A front-page stand-alone baseball photo came through—Opening Day for the Nats, and they won.

The caption quoted shortstop Ian Desmond saying, “We’ve been chomping at the bit to get out there.”

Red Pen readers may remember this eloquent post, in which I argued that when a speaker misuses a word or expression, it’s OK to paraphrase or, if there’s a high likelihood that the speaker actually spoke correctly but the reporter screwed it up, to just use the correct word.

So last night, the caption comes through. Ian Desmond is quoted saying “chomping at the bit.”

Here is the mental back and forth between the good copy editor, Laura, and the bad copy editor, also Laura. I should note that the process I describe here took about a minute, maybe less.

Laura: “I bet a lot of Free Lance-Star readers know that the idiom is really ‘champing at the bit,’ and it’ll bother them that our quote says ‘chomping.’ And someone will write to tell us we are idiots and should have known better. Shouldn’t we just change it?”

Laura: “No. Not if it’s what the guy really said.”

(At this point, the Lauras consult Google. Source after source quotes Desmond saying “chomping.”)

Laura: “OK, it’s what the guy really said.”

Laura: “Any way we could make that clear without completely gumming up this 50-word cutline?”

Laura: “No. Get a grip.”

Now, I suppose I could have gone back to our sports guys or our editor in charge—all of whom were wrapped up in trying to do the next thing and the next as the clock ticked toward deadline—and I could have said something like: “I know Desmond said ‘chomping’ but the expression is really ‘champing.’ I think we need to either explain that or find another quote to use that isn’t incorrect.”

But, as it turns out, I am not that much of a tweezer.

“Chomping at the bit” is on our front page today, with no explanation and no apology.

We quoted the guy saying it, because it’s what he said.

The world still spins.

***

About the idiom

It really is “champing,” says Webster’s:
champ at the bit
1. to bite upon its bit repeatedly and restlessly: said of a horse
2. to show impatience at restraint; be restless

But it also is “chomping,” according to many sources including this one, which I think gives a pretty clear explanation of how the phrase has changed in common use.