Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style.
My colleague Mark Bulik offered this note on an overworked phrase:
Once upon a time, not so long ago, policymakers resisted or criticized proposals, and the authors of those proposals parried or rebutted the criticism.
In that kinder, more genteel time, “to push back” generally meant that one was either postponing something or reclining in a beach chair. The phrase rarely appeared in stories with Washington or Albany datelines, perhaps because using it as a metaphor for the thrust and parry of public discourse seemed to reduce policy debates to just so much schoolyard shoving.
About five or six year ago, that started to change. Slowly at first, but with increasing frequency, policy makers began “pushing back” in our pages.
One measure of the increasing use is that in 2004 the noun form “pushback” appeared in The Times just eight times. In the first half of this year it was used 26 times, or about once a week. Granted, some of those uses are in quotations, as sources spout the latest buzzwords. But that’s all the more reason to be wary of echoing the trend in our own prose.
If you include other forms — push back, pushed back, pushing back — the term has appeared 209 times this year, well over once a day.
A daily dose seems a bit much. Perhaps it’s time to resist the reflexive use of this mannerism.
Words We Love Too Much, Part 2
Another colleague, Charlie De La Fuente, points out a faddish bit of marketing jargon that has become ubiquitous: “price point.”
This, too, may be unavoidable occasionally in quotes, but there seems little reason for us to succumb in our own prose. As Charlie says, there’s a shorter term that will frequently serve: “price.”
For example:
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Her terrariums and crystal gardens range from $4,000 to $60,000, and living necklaces (bromeliads in delicate crocheted sacks) from $200 to $1,200; she is looking to mass-produce the Dumplings [a type of planter] at a more affordable price point.
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In the early part of the aughts, it was shocking to pay as much as $195 for designer shorts. But that is now the entry price point at Barneys New York and Bergdorf Goodman.
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Asus has long been active, though, and among the more charming of netbook newcomers — with Dell’s barrier-busting $299 Mini 10v, just unwrapped — is the Asus Eee 1008HA a k a the Seashell. Superlight at less than three pounds, the Eee looks to be handsomely tapered, with a 10-inch LED-backlighted LCD screen and a prospective price of $429. That price could drop in view of Dell’s setting a strong $299 price point.
How about something simple like, “That price could drop to compete with the Dell model”?
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Also un-Lexuslike is the IS-F’s price point. While the Lexus LS 460 still undercuts a Mercedes S550 by about $26,000, the $57,585 IS-F is actually about $2,000 more expensive than its primary German nemesis, the BMW M3 sedan.
On the Home Front
Finally, my colleague John Haskins offered this style reminder:
With many sections writing about the housing crisis and the mortgage mess, we should take care with “home-” words. We’ve been inconsistent. When in doubt, check our standard newsroom dictionary (Webster’s New World College).
Homeowner: It’s one word, of course, and we almost always get this right. (The archive shows that we’ve had it as two when it made sense: second-home owners, vacation-home owners.)
Homesite: This should also be one word, according to the dictionary. But we’ve used it as two words many times.
Home builder: It should be two words, but we’ve run it as one word six times in the last year.
Home buyer: Same thing. We’ve slipped a few times and made it “homebuyer.”
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After Deadline examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times. It is adapted from a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the deputy news editor, who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual.
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