|
Caught in web of careless word usage
When in the course of human error it becomes necessary to apologize for a boneheaded move, let it be known that we the people of The Sylva Herald own up to our mistakes.
Notes like the one from longtime (and much appreciated) reader Dean Kool, which provided both definitions (very different), word origin (both from Latin) and pronunciation (identical) for “eminent” and “imminent,” are more than justified in the face of last week’s glaring, front-page error that likely caused every English teacher who saw it to cringe.
While we have not come to praise our careless word usage, neither do we choose to bury it.
Buoyed by adages like “the only people who never make mistakes are the people who never do anything,” and “you never forget the lessons you learn from mistakes,” we have chosen the route of full confession and abject apology.
Our newspaper’s purpose is to inform readers of upcoming events and report information about local government and other topics of general county interest. We like to think we provide a good example for area schoolchildren with regard to proper grammar and spelling as we go about our business of writing local history.
But, when I inadvertently used “eminent,” which means “standing out so as to be readily perceived or noted; conspicuous; prominent,” when I meant its homonym, “imminent,” defined as “ready to take place; hanging threateningly over one’s head,” I let down those who rely on our paper for local news as well an array of former Chamblee (Georgia) High School teachers who once devoted days of their lives to pounding vocabulary into the heads of me and my classmates.
Therefore, let me now say “I’m sorry” not only to Herald readers but also to:
– Patient Carolyn Jackson, who led us through two years of high school English, complete with every-Friday vocabulary tests and tons of book reports.
– Demanding Susan Scott, the 11th-grade English teacher who insisted we learn to write properly. She couldn’t make us be creative, she said, but she could (and did) make sure none of us escaped her clutches without knowing how to craft a proper paragraph and essay and understanding which words to use while we were writing.
– Amiable Clyde Copelin, who forced a bunch of bored-with-school seniors to read, understand and appreciate Shakespeare and his unerring word usage.
– Long-suffering Mrs. Tribble, who tried valiantly to get us hooked on Latin declensions and conjugations in the hope of shedding light on the meanings of many English words – (including “eminent” and “imminent”) that descended from it.
Without in any way trying to absolve myself from blame, I will say that I find this particular error galling because I not only know the difference between the two words now, I knew it last week. I was familiar with eminent and imminent both from years of English instruction and from one of my children.
My daughter Elizabeth and I discussed those very words a couple of years ago after she learned there is yet a third sound-alike to complete the trio of homonyms (words which agree with another in pronunciation but differ in signification, origin, and, usually spelling).
It seems she had a religion class at N.C. State where the professor used vocabulary quizzes to check whether students were completing reading assignments. In order to pass the tests, class members had to look up the meanings of any unfamiliar words they encountered while studying.
Elizabeth, always intrigued by words, was excited to discover “immanent,” also derived from Latin, which means 1) “living, remaining or operating within; inherent; 2) in theology, present throughout the universe; said of God.”
So, in summary, I have absolutely no justification for saying, both in a news story and its headline, “foreclosure is not eminent” when I meant “foreclosure is not imminent.”
Our language is full of tricks like words that sound the same but mean different things – I guess that’s one reason it can provide James Kilpatrick with enough fodder for a weekly column.
Closer to home, we remember former Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Hooper’s treatise on the evolution of disease etymology.
“We used to say something was ‘catching,’ then we said it was ‘contagious,’ and now we call it ‘communicable’ – and I can’t even say that,” Wayne once said.
In that vein, it would appear that in the newsroom, where we deal with upwards of 25,000 words each week, mistakes are immanent, and the next one is imminent. And, once discovered, you can bet it will appear eminent.
All we can do is hope it’s not perpetrated in 48-point type on the top of another Herald front page.
|
