Newsrooms are ideal places to find good spellers and, odd though it may seem to some of our farmer readers, folks around here can actually get into debates about spelling as we put together the farm news package each week.
Several have stories about grade school spelling bees and we’re not alone among journalists.
Witness a story in the January 2008 edition of Reader’s Digest, in which author and former Chatelaine editor Rona Maynard recounts the devastating misspelling of “possessed” in a Grade 6 spelling bee.
It made me smile because a Grade 6 spelling bee also figures in my history, and it surfaced recently while proofing a page in the Producer. I came across a word and was suddenly transported to Grade 6, a dusty chalkboard and a room that smelled of orange rinds and youth.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
I clutched a nub of chalk while Mrs. Roth asked me to spell “bologna.” I wrote “baloney,” and had to skulk back to my seat in shame.
But as I learned last week, it appears I was ahead of the curve. According to Canadian Press, whose stylebook is the virtual bible for newsroom spellers, “baloney” has entered the vernacular as the slang term for nonsense. “Bologna” has been relegated to use only in reference to the sausage.
Such a feeling of vindication! But I forgive Mrs. Roth, for that and for asking me to spell a word from Mary Poppins: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. (If you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious!) I misspelled that one as well. Goly, it’s a wunder I kan rite at all.
Back to the topic of newsroom debates, the word “decimate” recently generated talk around the desk. Though now used to indicate widespread destruction, the word actually means reduction by 10 percent. The purists among us embrace the latter, while those who accept the dynamic nature of the English language just go with the flow.
“Decimate” was on the Lake Superior State University Banished Words list, which was released earlier this month. The university has been publishing the list for 33 years and it is interesting reading for those whose lives are wrapped in words and phrases.
On the list of overused phrases in 2007 are: “perfect storm” (overused … to mean just about any coincidence, say nominators); “it is what it is” (this pointless phrase … accomplishes the dual feat of adding nothing to the conversation while also being phonetically and thematically redundant); and “X is the new Y,” as in brown is the new black, or 50 is the new 30. Nominators said this phrase is now out of control.
What’s next? Fallacy is the new truth? Sounds like a bunch of baloney.
