Fox
News doesn’t give authorship credit to this article – I can see why.
The
first sentence, when applied to the second – Candice Bergen’s quote – proves our world of literacy is under attack.
“Candice
Bergen is svelte
and she’s happy with it.
‘Let
me just come right out and say it: I am fat,’ the ‘Murphy Brown’ star announces in her new
memoir, ‘A Fine Romance,’ reports Rob Shuter of naughtygossip.” [*Sic. And
there’s more …] (Fox News, March 22, 2015.)
If
the preeminent news sources don’t know that “svelte” is not a synonym of “fat” –
literacy is doomed.
While
Ms. Bergen was for
many years svelte – meaning slender, slim, graceful, lithe – and she is still an
elegant lady, in her own words, she is the opposite of svelte. C’mon Fox, you’re
setting a bad example.
Side
note: Ms. Bergen is right about the issues of women’s weight and beauty attitudes
as we age. After
forty-plus years of maintaining (or vainly attempting) a
standard that is inherently irrational, many are simply opting to live the rest
of their lives actually
enjoying it.
Consider the profound “end of life” question: quality or quantity? Depends on
the quality of the chocolate!
*Back
to Fox’s literary ineptitude … let’s take a look at their treatment of titles.
Although a minor grievance compared to definition idiocy, the last I checked The Chicago Manual (which BTW, was
yesterday) – the venerable bible of writing – still states that television show
titles and book titles should be italicized, not enclosed in quotation marks.
Mistakes
happen. Editors cringe when errors and typos escape their scrutiny and land
indelicately in print. But opening line mistakes and breaking rules learned in
elementary school – is simply lazy writing and editing.
Today's apathetic attitude toward our English language is a disappointing
example of our dumb and dumber attitude, which is mangling guidelines and principles
throughout society. Remember the fall of the Roman Empire?
Writing
right … righting write.
