07.02.08

Etymology as roman a clef?

Posted in assorted weird crap, spelling at 6:01 am by Bill Brohaugh

In a recent book review, my Everything You Know About English Is Wrong has been praised as “a searing, gripping novel.”

Well, no it hasn’t. I made that up. But maybe someone from U.K.’s Guardian newspaper wants to call it that—which they may be inclined to do. And, well, yes, my book isn’t a novel, but . . . as long as they spell my name right. The Guardian spelled James Harding’s name right when referring to his Alpha Dogs as “a searing, gripping novel.” Even though it’s really “a work of nonfiction about a firm of US political strategists,” which the Guardian had to ‘fess up to in a list of corrections of previously published stories.

The source of this retraction is the “Regret the Error” blog from Craig Silverman, and the sad tale (fictional and nonfictional) of Mr. Hardy’s praise was one of the items from Monday, June 20. This blog covers journalistic errata, apologies and embarrassments of various sorts—mistakes in reporting, mainly, but also the occasional word gaffe. For instance, it seems that the word searing is a major source of grief for the Guardian, as this post notes:

A “seering” new documentary referred to in the heading for Up front, page 2, Film & Music, August 11, was in fact “searing”.

And my guess is that the documentary probably wasn’t a novel, either.

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