One of your reporters just uttered an a sentence containing the phrase: “which, for all intents and purposes, exists in name only.” Please fire whatever editor permitted this. Thak you.
Dear NPR…
October 22nd, 2007 · 6 Comments
Tags: Journalism & the Media
6 responses so far ↓
1 David // Oct 22, 2007 at 10:52 am
“Thak you.”
Heh. Heal thyself, editor. 😉
2 digamma // Oct 22, 2007 at 12:32 pm
How can you tell the difference between “intents in purposes” and “intents ‘n’ purposes” on the radio?
3 Julian Sanchez // Oct 22, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Whoops! The “Thak you” was a little joke, but the “in purposes” was just a typo… It should’ve been “and purposes.” My objection was that “for all intents and purposes” basically MEANS “in all but name” or “practically speaking, if not officially” … so the combination is just stupid and redundant.
4 Christopher M // Oct 22, 2007 at 1:26 pm
How is it redundant? If anything, wouldn’t it be the opposite, self-contradictory? “In all but name” vs. “in name only”?
(Nothing better than picking a nitpicker’s nits!)
5 Julian Sanchez // Oct 22, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Mm, I think I see where you’re getting that, but I don’t think so. I’d unpack it as: “While nominally it may be a border, practically speaking it’s only nominally a border.”
6 Kevin B. O'Reilly // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Couldn’t this have been live chatter? Even if it wasn’t, it may have been hard to edit the sound to remove the redundancy.