Which Paragraph Looks Better?

In my article about Franconian beer, I have these paragraphs:

But even the best Franconian brewers aim for the everyday drinker, not the thrill-seeking beer snob. Waltman contrasts Belgium's prestigious brews with Franconia's farmhouse ales.

Belgian beers kind of hit you over the head," he says. "They have unusual flavors; they're big. In Belgium, if you ask for recommendations for 10 breweries, they would all be cafes: People sitting around sipping these strong beers. In Germany, and especially in Franconia, beer is what you drink all day long. The beers are designed to be drunk." Simple flavors, well-balanced hops and low alcohol create a drink that can go with your weeknight dinner or your afternoon break.

This is the text as I submitted it and as the Chronicle ran it. But when I had a chance to review the piece before publication, I looked at it again and posed a question to my editor. Should it read, "Waltman contrasts Franconia's farmhouse ales with Belgium's prestigious brews"?

One of my writing mantras — one of the ones in my screen saver — is “Keep related concepts together.” Following that rule, the paragraph should read the way I asked. The first “Belgium” segues into a digression about that country’s beers. But then your internal reader sees “Franconia Franconia Belgium Belgium.“ Because those are proper nouns, it feels, for lack of a better word, loud.

What do you think?

Paging An Editor: An Article About Champagne Vinegar?

I think the point of this New York Times article is that Champagne vinegar is good. But that point only shows up in the last two paragraphs: The rest is a stretched analogy about the flip side of Champagne's connotations of luxury. So what is the point of this article, anyway?

Posts Are Not Blogs

I realize that easy-to-use blogging software has given lots of folks access to this technology, and that there will be an inevitable sloppiness about terminology, but I share with Grant Barrett a pet peeve about the use of the word “blog” when the person really means “post.”

I just received a press release about the fact that Traci Des Jardins is now a guest blogger at the Epicurious blog. I noticed that Des Jardins made the post/blog mistake when I saw her post on the site — prior to receiving the press release — but thought little of it: I assume she’s not a techie. But the PR person repeated the mistake in an email sent to, I assume, lots of bloggers.

She wrote: “You can read her first blog which posted yesterday about easing the holiday pain (see link and blog pasted below).”

With a touch of that “big dose of personality” that Amanda once mentioned, I wrote back.

If I may, let me point out that Traci Des Jardins did not write her first blog yesterday: She wrote her first post on a blog. As a non-techie, she can be forgiven the mistake, but if you, the PR person, are sending this note out to bloggers, it sounds odd to make "blog" and "post" synonymous. A blog contains posts; they are not the same.

I also noted that I don’t link to celebrity bloggers until they’ve proven that they’ll keep writing and not peter out. She wrote back to assure me that Des Jardins would be posting in the future.

She closed that second note with, “Hope you will be enjoying her blogs.”

Paging An Editor: Life Begins With Pancreatic Cancer

My friend Dietsch gets credit for spotting this editing oddity in this NY Times obituary of biochemist Leslie Orgel:

Dr. Orgel had also advanced a novel idea about life’s possible arrival from outer space.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said a spokesman for the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, where Dr. Orgel had been on the faculty since 1964.

Maybe our extraterrestrial forebears were dying of pancreatic cancer and left their home world to seek a cure?

Paging An Editor: Picture An 80s Band

Can you spot the mistake in Wednesday's Herb and Jamaal?

Paging An Editor: Needless to say?

I'm trawling Paula Wolfer's Slow Mediterranean Kitchen for recipe ideas, and I just noticed the headnote to her "French Croutes with Onion Jam and Scrambled Eggs."

She writes:

In southwest France, slices of dense baguette, thinly cut on the diagonal, are called croutes. Such slices are the perfect size to hold this incredibly savory topping. Needless to say, eating it requires a knife and a fork.

I've used "needless to say" in my own writing, but it always irks me when I do: If you don't need to say it, then why are you doing so? However, in this headnote it makes less sense than normal. When I cut diagonally across a baguette, I end up with something a bit longer than the diameter of the baguette: A perfect bit to hold in your fingers. So why would I naturally assume, and have it be "needless to say," that I need a knife and a fork for this dish? (As a side note, I've noticed a fair number of exclamation marks in the text, which is never a good sign, quality of recipes notwithstanding.)

How Editing Mistakes Happen

I'm pretty hard on editing mistakes in the wild, but I'm not immune to them in my own published work. 

Consider this one from my article about American brewers making Belgian-style beer:

What does it mean to emulate a Belgian beer? Perhaps the only trait the country's products share is a devil-may-care attitude about experimentation.

Tomme Arthur, brewer at San Marcos' Lost Abbey Brewery, says, "I think it's the artistic temperament of Belgian brewers that I'm into. There's an expressionary note that I appreciate. It allows for a tremendous amount of brewing freedom. I abhor the Germanic tradition of four ingredients and four ingredients only."

Germany's Reinheitsgebot, the beer purity law that dates back almost 500 years, prevents brewers from using anything but malted barley or wheat, hops, water and cultured yeast. Nonetheless, American Belgian-style brewers explore common ground. 

By the time you've finished digressing about the Reinheitsgebot, the statement about common ground has lost relevance.

That last sentence was supposed to cap off the digression about the devil-may-care attitude among Belgium's brewers. But my editor asked me to explain the German law. I then forgot to re-read the whole thing for clarity. 

The result: The drifting sentence at the end.

Paging An Editor: How many?

From a press release I got today: “What is for dinner? Those five words often make parents want to retire the oven mitts forever and drive the minivan to the famous golden arches.  True statement.”

I know my eyes are going, but I’m pretty sure that “What is for dinner” only  has four words.

Paging An Editor: Ruhlman On Bloggers

Michael Ruhlman linked to his Restaurant Hospitality article about bloggers, and a couple items caught my editorial eye. I mentioned them in the comments on his blog as well.

Writing of anonymity, he says, “This anonymity business has to stop. No anonymous slams. Bloggers and commenters on food forums ought to be immediately recognized as cowards and ignored.” Uh, think maybe he’s missing a word in that third sentence? As written, on its own, it suggests that all bloggers and food forum commenters are cowards. Any intelligent reader can figure out what he means, but a reader shouldn’t have to pause to do so.

Then he writes, “Andrea Strong, 38, who has been writing thestrongbuzz since 2003, has been regularly accused of praising the restaurants that comp her (typically by anonymous commenters). In a telephone interview she noted she does accept comps but said, ‘I would never write something negative because I wasn’t comped. I don’t expect to get comped. My goal is not to tell people where not to eat, it’s to tell people where to eat.’” The first sentence asks one question, but the second sentence answers another. Does she praise restaurants that comp her? Does she ever criticize them? We never learn. And the parenthetical’s placement makes it sound as if anonymous commenters comp her at the restaurants, not accuse her of taking comps.

Georges Duboeuf's Fifth Beaujolais Harvest!

I got a press release today whose subject line was “Georges Duboeuf Sees His Fifth Harvest in Beaujolais.” That threw me for a second: Duboeuf is the guy who single-handedly created Beaujolais Nouveau as a media event, and I’m pretty sure he’s been in the region for a long time.

The body of the email held the corrected text in the subheading: “Georges Duboeuf Sees Fifth August Harvest In Beaujolais.” Normally, the Beaujolais harvest happens later, but this year excessive heat brought the grapes to the winery in August.

I might make fun, but the erroneous subject line did get me to open the email. Maybe it’s a subtle ploy.

Take One Part Pregnancy Comedy . . .

I got a press release the other day about the DVD launch of Knocked Up, the Judd Apatow movie about a one-night stand that becomes a pregnancy.

I’ve heard good things about the movie, but I had to wonder about a PR event that has people going to select bars and ordering hard liquor. I’m not in the “pregnant women must never even look at booze” camp, but this campaign seems ill-conceived. Does it have some connection to the movie that I don’t know about?

From the press release:

Check out a bar party in your city by visiting the official “Knocked Up” website: http://www.knockedupmovie.com. Have fun, get wild! … A few drinks have been created in support of the night.

Update: Duh, right. She gets drunk and sleeps with Seth Rogen. That’s how she gets pregnant. Still, the idea seems odd. “Make your own Knocked Up movie in just nine months!”

Explaining Cliches

The lede in this article about the Fed’s rate drop caught my eye.

They say the best cure for a hangover is a little hair of the dog that bit you, meaning a nip of whatever you were drinking the night before.

Isn’t the whole point of a cliche that you don’t need to define it? (Incidentally, the writer did keep up the hangover thread beyond the intro; bravo for that.)

Yo, PR Folks: Get It Right

I get lots of press releases, and I think I tolerate their grammatical oddities well. Typos and gobbledy-gook set me off — read the bloody thing once more before you press Send — but if you’ve got dangling modifiers, run-on sentences, or whom instead of who, I’ll survive. I read blogs, after all.

But if you’re going to tout your client’s writing staff as an “all-star roster of contributors” and “journalists with impeccable credentials,&rdquo push that press release through a tamis before you send it to me. Writing mistakes in a press release about great writers hurt your client, even if s/he didn’t write it.

I just got a note about the new writers who have joined Wine Review Online. I’ve written for that publication, I know several of the other writers, and I bear the site no ill will. But let’s look at some choice sentences in the press release sent out in their name.

“She is the author of 2005 World Gourmand Cookbook Award and James Beard IACP-nominated The Emperor of Wine, on the life of wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr.” — When did the James Beard Foundation and the IACP merge?

“She is the wine & spirits columnist for Bloomberg News, where she writes a monthly column for Markets magazine, several columns a month for the Bloomberg newswire, and appears on Bloomberg TV.” — You can’t make two items in the list objects (“a monthly column” and “several columns”) and the third item a predicate (“appears on Bloomberg TV”).

“She is also the columnist for Shattered, a new global publication for executive women, and is a former contributing wine editor for Food & Wine.” — Do you really need the second “is”?

“[Michael Apstein] was a regular contributor to The Boston Globe, is a frequent contributor to The San Francisco Chronicle, is a wine educator for more than 20 years, freelance contributor to many national magazines, James Beard Award winner for wine writing, and regular judge for national and international wine competitions.” — This list is a mishmash of predicates and verb-less predicate nominatives: Break the list apart and you find that “Michael Apstein is a frequent contributor to The San Francisco Chronicle” but also that “Michael Apstein freelance contributor to many national magazines.” At least it’s consistent once it changes over. I would opt for “has been” in “is a wine educator for more than 20 years,” and I question the decision to start the list with a past status instead of the present-day statuses that follow.

“ He is the former editor of Wine Spectator and staff wine writer for The San Francisco Chronicle,” — Technically, this isn’t wrong, but doesn’t it sound like he’s still the staff wine writer for the Chronicle? And who knew they only had one?

“He is a regular columnist with Wine Review Online, and is also a regular contributor to the Food Section of the Los Angeles Times, has contributed to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Wine section, and appears regularly in Food & Wine, Bon Appetit and the Robb Report.” — How about: “He is a regular columnist with Wine Review Online and a regular contributor to the Food Section of the Los Angeles Times. He has contributed to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Wine Section and appears regularly in …”

“ Editor and columnist Michael Franz is editor of Wine Review Online, and is the former wine columnist for The Washington Post (1994-2005), columnist for FRANCE magazine, freelance contributor to several international wine magazines, instructor for Washington Wine Academy and L'Academie de Cuisine, and consultant to 11 restaurants.” — Take out the reminder that “Editor Michael Franz” is, in fact, the editor of Wine Review Online, and you fix the whole sentence.

“Columnist Ed McCarthy is author of Champagne for Dummies and co-author of Wine For Dummies, White Wine For Dummies, Red Wine For Dummies, Wine Buying Companion For Dummies, French Wine For Dummies and Italian Wine For Dummies, as well as regular contributor to QRW magazine, and columnist for Nation’s Restaurant News and Beverage Media.” — Articles are okay, folks. The author. A regular contributor. A columnist.

“She also contributes to Food & Wine magazine, epicurious.com and the San Francisco Chronicle, where she was the wine editor from 2003 to 2006 she won two James Beard Awards for best food/wine section.” — Something is missing between “2006” and “she.” Or maybe it should just say “2006, garnering two … ”

“Columnist Marguerite Thomas is travel editor for The Wine News, and author of monthly column, ‘The Intrepid Gastronome,’ for The Los Angeles Times International Syndicate. She is the author of a cookbook and of two books about wines in the Eastern U.S., and is a frequent contributor to national wine magazines.” — They don’t need a comma after “The Wine News,” but they do need an article before “monthly column.”

More On This Dime Piece

Here's another thing that annoys me about the dime piece. The transporter had it in his pocket until he got on the plane, where he put it in his briefcase. What did he do at the security gate? Toss a $2million dime into one of those gray plastic tubs?

Dime Transport Story

Jason Kottke pointed to this article about transporting a valuable dime across the country. It's a news item draped in narrative style, but it falters.

I'm rereading William Blundell's The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, a book that I appreciate much more now that I've authored a reasonable number of features. This dime piece isn't really a feature, a sprawling spelunking on a topic, but the lessons from Blundell's book apply to it as well.

Blundell talks about different story structures, and one is a time line, where the action in the story follows a specific chronology. He uses a cattle drive as the framework for a story on true cowboys; Rubenstein uses a red-eye flight to drive the dime piece. But Blundell keeps digressing, using the physical events to lead the reader into more conceptual writing about cowboy life and culture. He does so quickly, but the effect is noticeable. The action doesn't get boring as it does in the dime piece, which just serves it all up to the reader. That would be a good choice for a fast-paced chase sequence, but Rubenstein's piece describes an airplane ride. Blundell's cattle drive is boring, too, but he draws in the reader by doling out the movement. Rubenstein should have mixed the larger issues into the body, skittering away from the flight to look at the valuable dime and its buyer and seller. Or as Blundell says in one of his maxims: Digress often, but never for long

(By the way, Rubenstein may not have had the luxury of column inches to do the story that way.)

Blundell also mentions "tout grafs" such as this one:

But the dime's cross-country trip was the stuff of intrigue, of that there is no mistake. The logistics of moving a $1.9 million dime across the country turn out to be at least as staggering as the notion of paying $1.9 million for a dime.

His view of these in-piece ads? If you have to tell people how intriguing your story is, maybe it's not as obvious as you think. This, of course, is simply "Show; don't tell" in a different guise.

More Air New Zealand Humor

Looking at the description of the in-flight system on Air New Zealand, I couldn't help but laugh at this "feature": "Future-proofed - so enhancements like internet, email, and SMS text messaging can be accommodated in the future"

Why is it a selling point for me that email might appear someday? It's not there now; it just might be in the future.

Never mind that "future-proofed" implies an ability to adapt to new technologies, even though the ones they name are ubiquitous in the present day.

Will My Books Meet Safety Requirements?

From the "Paging an editor" files, this blurb on Air New Zealand's site caught my eye:

Many passengers also like to bring along books, magazines, portable computer games, or walkman-style MP3, CD or cassette players. These are fine so long as they meet safety and size requirements, and do not interfere with the comfort of other passengers.

Yes, do make sure your books and magazines meet safety and size requirements and don't interfere with other passengers.

Farrago?

I know most of this blog's readers—and most of my other blog's readers, for that matter—don't get Games magazine or solve cryptic crosswords. Allow me a chance to rant anyway.

The point of a cryptic crossword is to decipher the clues. The answers themselves should be common words. Compare this to a "normal" crossword, in which oleo,ewer, and other unusual words find their way into the grid.

So I'm pissed about the second cryptic in the May 2007 Games. *SPOILER ALERT* One of the answers is farrago. That's a synonym for jumble or hodgepodge, but I couldn't have told you that until last night. I had to rummage through a crossword puzzle dictionary to find a word that matched the wordplay part of the clue. Other examples from this poorly constructed puzzle: unbandanged, rehearing, chancel, and pawn as a synonym for mortgage. There were others, but those were the worst.

I feel like Bob Stigger, the author, broke the cryptic contract with these clues.I say, boo on that.

Really Hard Math Problem Solved

The best thing about this Wired article about a tough math problem that was recently solved is that they don't know how to explain it, either. Instead, they just quote stats about what the proof would look like if you wrote it all out.

Is it worth reporting that a tough problem just got cracked if you can't give your readers any sense of what it means?

You're Know You Are

Josh of Comics Curmudgeon spotted a great example of grammatical nonsense in the wild. The Pluggers panel at the bottom of the page starts with "You're know you are really a plugger..." It's easy to see how this came about: Originally, it was "You're a plugger if" and then the writer thought about "You know you are" and no one caught the problem.

The panel's been fixed on the website, favoring the stilted "You know you are" construction instead of the shorter, but more informal, "You're a plugger if".