Out of Control
I know English has a lot of homophones, but a writer is expected to know enough not to put down "I saw him last knight" or "My mother used to reed to me". And yet some homophonous errors crop up with metronomic regularity.
Once again, The New Republic Online thinks that "reign in" is a phrasal verb (I snarked about this back in March, too).
What do you suppose is going on? I have some theories:
1) TNR Online has a very bad copy editor.
2) TNR Online has no copy editor plus some sloppy writers.
2.5) Someone has manually removed the word "rein" from the office computers' spellcheckers.
3) "Reign in" is actually correct and I am wrong and/or a moron.
I'm banking on theory 2, myself.
Once again, The New Republic Online thinks that "reign in" is a phrasal verb (I snarked about this back in March, too).
What do you suppose is going on? I have some theories:
1) TNR Online has a very bad copy editor.
2) TNR Online has no copy editor plus some sloppy writers.
2.5) Someone has manually removed the word "rein" from the office computers' spellcheckers.
3) "Reign in" is actually correct and I am wrong and/or a moron.
I'm banking on theory 2, myself.
posted by pyramus | 7:26 AM
1 Comments:
Oh, I know. But sometimes you stare at a word so long that you start to doubt it's a word, and sometimes a usage becomes so prevalent that you think, well, jeez, what if I'm wrong? What if the stupid, mistaken way of expressing it has completely edged out the correct way and I'm the only person who remembers what used to be correct?
"Reign in" really pisses me off because anyone who had ever seen the expression in print could never make this mistake, which means (to me) that people who use it simply don't read. You can't be a good writer if you're not a good reader.
Post a Comment
<< Home