News-Record.com

Ted Vaden, public editor at the N&O, writes about what to call people from a foreign land who are in this country illegally.

Illegal immigrant? Illegal alien? Undocumented worker? Unauthorized immigrant?

Those are some of the different labels and euphemisms that media organizations have come up with to describe the 12 million or so foreign nationals who are living in this country without immigration authorization. All the labels are unsatisfactory in some respect, and they cause fits for news organizations trying to report on one of the biggest issues of our time -- what to do with the people who don't have authority to live here.

I don't know that they cause us fits, but they sure make some readers apoplexic. Wander through the comments on this Debatable and you'll see a sampling.

* THEY ARE ILLEGAL PEOPLE!

* Illegal people? There's no such thing. I wish we could have a conversation about undocumented persons without the mean spirited comments we have on this forum.

* Your euphemism of choice, "undocumented workers," seems an attempt to imply that all illegal immigrants are, in fact, "workers."

Words have meaning, and people should use the right word to mean what they want to say. Names also carry emotional baggage and some people seem to want to load this one up.

Our style book says: Do not use the term illegal aliens when referring to people who have entered the country illegally. Use "illegal immigrants" instead. Do not use the shortened term illegals except when necessary in headlines. That is apparently the News & Observer's policy, too.

Our team in the Reading Connections Scrabble Challenge faced off against a team of WFMY folk. Our group was nervously confident. They were veterans of the challenge; Dawn Kane, Romy McGinnis and Marie Inkenbrandt had been there before.

We won the first game, but lost the second when the FMY team bought a lifeline, a roaming expert who looked at their tiles and made a suggestion using all the letters. Paliest.

Paliest? Means most pale, at least to the 17 people in the world who know the word. Normal people would say palest.

The FMYers got 80-some points on that one, which pushed them over the top. Congratulations to both teams.

Remember, it was a fundraiser.

Andy Bechtel has a good post about the media's perpetuation of a cliche -- Tobacco Road.

Changing times aside, my main problem with "Tobacco Road" is that I have never heard it used in real life. In casual conversation, no one has ever asked me: "Did you see the game last night? That's how it goes on Tobacco Road." And believe me, the topic of "the game last night" comes up a lot.

I remember the first time I heard the reference, outside of the 1932 Erskine Caldwell novel. I was a reporter in Raleigh and an editor inserted it into the lead paragraph of an economy story I had written. Actually he rewrote the lead to refer to both Tobacco Road and King Cotton.

We can certainly grind a term into a cliche in no time.

I didn't save the clip.

It always surprises me when a public figure chooses to say something to the effect of, "I want to tell you about this, but I can't right now. When everything comes out, you'll understand."

It is intended to imply that his position is perfectly sensible, but he won't tell you what it is. The effect is has, at least on me, is that he's hiding something and hopes you'll go away. I can't think of a time when that's the appropriate feeling to evoke in a listener or reader.

Normally we hear it from people in some kind of legal trouble. But this morning we heard it from the executive director of a youth soccer association: "There will be a time when we can discuss this, but that's for down the road," he said.

For my money, this response is almost always wrong.

Naturally, I prefer you come clean. But if you're not going to say what happened, you could talk around the edges, the way politicians do when they wax eloquently for 5 minutes without answering the question. (The politicians interviewed on morning television shows teach a master class in avoidance.) Most of the time reporters don't fall for it, but at least you're saying something.

Even "no comment" is better than, "it will all come out in due time."

I offer this as free advice for the future. Not surprisingly, the folks who are inclined to get a such call from a reporter don't ask my advice.

Did anyone else read prostitution ring and conjure up one image and then read high-priced call girl and bring up another?

Is waterboarding torture? Steve Smith, editor of the Spokane paper, posed that question Monday, as part of trying to decide what was an appropriate reference for headlines. His alternative -- aggressive interrogation -- is long for a headline term.

Interesting discussion. Is it torture?

Whenever I write about language -- and I don't write about it much because, as I say, I'm no language maven -- it's always a popular one with readers. Primarily, judging by the feedback, because they can lord their language superiority over me.

Uncle! (Actually, they're pretty nice about it.)

A sampling:

I applauded everything said there, but most of all the intent. Usage matters. Communication requires precision in thought and accuracy in words. Bravo!

Can you send a message back to the newsroom that friends don't let friends use poor grammar? Thanks.

I'm impressed that he reads my column before the front page stories.

Hi, I read this with a smile, as sometime back I recall writing and asking about the paper's use of grammar and it was then I learned the press has a different "book" than we.

But I couldn't help but smile again, as had just read in section A about someone buying a $3 Million truffle and on page 1 of section B there was a discussion of the delicasies: (oops on spelling) triffles; but spelled truffles. Have to admit I always mix those up myself and I may have misspelled, but just woke up to a furnace turned too high and this thought came to me.

Actually, there were truffles.

One of my college professors addressed this very issue once in a communications class. A student was pointing out the spelling errors and the misuse of words and phrases made by another student. The professor asked the student to explain what she read. The student talked about the story as if she had written it herself. The professor told the student that the author may have made mistakes, but no matter because a message was communicated and understood. He was trying to get us to concentrate on getting our message down while the creative juices were flowing and not worry about those things that can be corrected later.

My newspaper column
Earlier post and later post.

I'm no language maven.

I think I'm like many people; I struggled through the spelling and grammar portions of English class, memorizing rules long enough for the test and then forgetting them to provide brain room for the next test.

I'm fortunate that we have crackerjack copy editors who read behind me and our other writers to clean up our grammatical and spelling mistakes, among other things.

Those editors help keep our style and usage consistent throughout the newspaper. As a result, they suffer the lashes of retired English teachers and self-taught grammarians everywhere when we misstep.

But I'll come right out and say it: We make many fewer mistakes in language usage than people think.

I enjoyed reading this letter to the editor about what he calls the "feminization" of the English language. He bemoans the sad state of journalism as it uses and misuses language.

The idea that there is one and only one correct set of grammar rules is misguided. As a living, breathing language, English evolves, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. What you remember learning in school changes. I don't even know that the examples cited in the letter are taught in school; much of our language practices are picked up along the way.

For instance, I'm not aware of a punctuation rule that requires "president" to be capitalized when referring to the president of the United States. It may be a practice showing respect, but I have consulted a few grammar books and it's not listed.

Check the definition of actor and it makes no reference to gender. Turn to actress and it states: "a woman who is an actor." Same applies to comedian and comedienne. They both make a gender-based distinction where one is unnecessary. It's demeaning.

The AP stylebook, which we use as a guide, isn't a Bible, either. In fact, it instructs us not to capitalize the pronoun "he" when referring to God, a rule that irritates some readers everytime we follow it.

The AP Stylebook simply helps make newspaper usage consistent. Is it Osama or Usama? Is it Burma or Myanmar?

There are other stylebooks, too, including the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and the Chicago Manual of Style.

Language doesn't always follow popular usage. Take email, for example. I spelled it the way just about everyone does. Not AP or the dictionary. (Insert a hyphen.) Everyone I know writes website; we and the dictionary write Web site.

My point is that we occasionally make mistakes on grammar, but less often than many people think.