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Filed under: In Memoriam Tagged: copy editing, David Remnick, E.B. White, Eleanor Gould, George Orwell, grammar, in memoriam, language, Verlyn Klinkenborg
R.I.P., Miss Gould. Verlyn Klinkenborg:
To some people, I suspect, she came to embody the negative image of the copy editor: punctilious, schoolmarmish and blue-stockinged. But the grasp she had on the written word, on the inner springs and impulses of the language, made grammar and syntax and diction resemble the laws of physics. From one angle, those laws mark the limits of nature. From another angle, they define the very energies that shape the universe and make it intelligible.
In a review of 75th-anniversary New Yorker books I wrote five years ago for Newsday, I made an awful error that was compounded by the newspaper's customary lack of a checking department: I referred to "the late Miss Gould." Now that the fact is true, that intelligible universe is sadly less so.
Later: In the February 28 issue, Remnick writes his own tribute to the Grammarian. "She shaped the language of the magazine, always striving for a kind of Euclidean clarity—transparent, precise, muscular. It was an ideal that seemed to have not only syntactical but moral dimensions."
Gould—like Orwell, Fowler, Bernstein, White, and the modest others now marking proofs in offices—knew well that clear language so often indicates a clear conscience, or will once the copy editor is done with it. "That type is all but extinct," we say of such people, as of a Galapagos turtle. When the real death occurs it is immeasurably sadder.
The Point of Miss Gould's Pencil [NY Times]
Miss Eleanor Gould '38, Grammarian Extraordinaire, Holds The Line at The New Yorker [Oberlin alumni magazine]
An Ode to Miss Gould: The Fallibility Rag [Cynthia Ozick, via PBK]
About us
Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
Possibly an improvement your Weblog could make is to stop emulating Gawker by piling links onto the tail end of your stories. Hyperlinks are inline, not footnotes.En tout cas: Note to copy-editors: Don’t sell yourselves short.
I did that a lot in my early days of blogging. I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.