Even magvertorials will have real editors

Sometimes I have to go looking for examples of poor grammar, and sometimes they just land in my lap. The latter happened this week at the hair salon, where I discovered the magazine North End Scene, published by DePasquale Ventures, which owns a number of Italian food outlets.

The North End is not an area I know well. But as it's crammed with restaurants, bakeries and an increasing number of hip boutiques, I feel I should get a better sense of its contents. So I started to read.

Let's leave aside the fact that the best feature—interviews with Boston hotel concierges—is unrelated to the North End, and skip straight to the good stuff, in order of reverse heinousness.

First up, the conclusion to an article about buying cheese for a party:



First of all, if you're writing a food article, could you please check brand-name style? It's Ritz crackers (or, according to the Nabisco site, Ritz®).

Side note: the current online Ritz campaign has the most awesome wording on its opening page ever. If it's no longer up, don't worry: I saved a screenshot.

And what's with the punctuation here? That comma after "extraordinary" should really be a colon. And that's without considering whether the intended (upscale) audience for this mag would view buying a selection of imported cheeses as an "extraordinary" action.

Moving on. The next one's pretty long, and needs more space than this narrow layout allows, so please to read it here.

Oh, where to begin? The observation that "American women" (all of them, one imagines) "literally have their bank accounts hanging in their closets"? The writer's unchecked disagreement with the opinion of "any 'fashionista'"?

The line describing Valentino's 45-year career, followed by another noting that he's worked in the fashion industry for at least 48 years?

Or how about the way this writer re-invents "to profess" as a reflexive verb? Genius!

And for those who literally explode when they see misuse of "literally," there's more:



He literally lives in a lifestyle dictated by a fantasy world! And there are no normal people!

Why does it not surprise me that Alisa Kapinos, the writer of this article, is also the magazine's editor in chief?

But all of this pales into comparison with the simple beauty of one of the most egregious basic errors I have ever seen in print.

In a clumsy approximation of an upscale travel article—the type that says things like "we meet and greet beneath flowing waterfalls"—is this jaw-dropper:



What? WHAT? "The bow-shaped boat, what used to be the traditional means of transportation ..."

Copyeditor General's ruling: It's perfectly acceptable for a company that owns multiple restaurants to create a glossy magazine whose central goal is to promote those businesses. But as I've said many times before, you can't overlook the details.

If you're trying to brand yourself as a model of upscale sophistication, you have to hire people who can write and edit.

Or is North End Scene an accurate reflection of the dining experience at Bricco or Umbria: a veneer of style hiding poorly executed dishes?

Mothers will hang their heads in shame

Mother's Day is a time to remember all the wonderful things moms teach us: respect, generosity, responsibility; how to tie shoelaces and bake cookies; how to play Blackjack (though maybe that was just my mom).

And what better way to say thank you than with a pretty, heartfelt message?



Or perhaps a lovely gift basket?



There are, of course, other ways to send



Such as, for instance, this doubtless very nice plaque:



Sorry, did I say plaque? I guess the broken image shows something different:



If you want something really special, how about this?



But then again, maybe you don't want to put too much thought into it:



(Suggesting not only that you can get any old crap for Mom, but also that no more thought needs to go into the gift than into writing about the gift.)

Don't forget to include a card to let Mom know how you feel.

Copyeditor General's ruling: I blame the parents.

Word nerds will always get what they want

As I was coming out of the subway station the other day, I heard a street musician playing the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

Actually, playing isn't really the right word. Moidalizing (said in Bronx goon voice) is more like it.

I'm not the biggest Stones fan, but still, this guy's ineptitude really bugged me. How can anyone claim to be a musician and not know the words to the chorus, fer pete's sake? It's not that hard; the song turns up on every oldies station at least hourly. You don't even have to pay attention; you can absorb it, osmosis-style.

I wasn't annoyed that he was ruining my favorite song; I was annoyed because he just. Didn't. Care.

And then I realized I was experiencing the same emotion I feel when I see a poorly constructed sentence, or a heinous typo. And that led to the following revelatory analogy, which may offer insight into my reasons for ranting, and which I encourage you to share with those who claim that good grammar is unimportant:

Think about your favorite song by your favorite band.

Got it? Good.

You've listened to it a thousand times. You'll listen to it a thousand more. It hits you in just the right way. It's perfect.

Now imagine that everywhere you go, you hear cover versions of your favorite song. In stores. In cafes. In the subway.

But every version is just ... slightly ... wrong.

Sometimes the verses are in the wrong order. Sometimes the singer makes up the words--or forgets them altogether. Sometimes the chord changes are out of synch, or go in the wrong direction. Sometimes there's a completely pointless drum solo right in the middle of the most important passage.

You hear it in every supermarket. In every elevator. In every taxi.

Wouldn't that make you a little sad, a little angry? Frustrated that this beautiful, meaningful song was held in such low regard that people couldn't even get the chorus right? That they couldn't take the time to track down the lyrics, listen to the CD, buy sheet music, learn the damn song before they plugged in their guitars?

That's how I feel about misuses of grammar: every time someone writes "perspective" when they mean "prospective," or "cliché" instead of "clichéd," or makes up words (such as "empt" when they mean "apt"--true story), or admits, with a giggle, that they "never really got the hang of punctuation"--also a true story--I feel sad.

Because there are countless methods for learning the tune, endless opportunities to hear it played correctly, a wealth of resources for keeping the beat and hitting the right note.

And yet so many people are content to thrash though a song they can't be bothered to rehearse.

Copyeditor General's ruling: This one goes out to the Davis Square T guitarist: If you can't always get what you want, how is it possible that if you try sometimes you just might find you can't get what you need?

Cliché will always be a noun

You know that scene at the end of The Usual Suspects, where Agent Kujan pieces together fragments of Verbal Kint's story and realizes he's Keyser Söze? (No spoiler alert; if you haven't seen it yet, you deserve to have the twist revealed to you.)

Back in the early '90s, I found an incorrect use of the word cliché in Entertainment Weekly. And suddenly I realized I'd been seeing this over and over in print. It was beyond editorial understanding.

Examples? How about the 13,000 that appear in a Google search for "it was cliche"?

Or the 99,000 that show up for "so cliche"--one of which, on the first SERP, appears to have been written by a university librarian?

Compare these to the paltry 42,000 results for "such a cliche" and the 10,000 for "what a cliche" and it becomes clear that the majority of people writing online don't understand the simple fact that cliché is a frickin' noun.

The adjective is clichéd. With a frickin' d at the end.

Maybe part of the problem is that cliché itself has become something of a cliché.

Copyeditor General's ruling: If you can't use platitude, truism, bromide, stereotype, chestnut, or buzzword, and if you don't want to describe something as hackneyed, inane, vapid or trite, please don't say anything at all.