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Your eyes and ears for the 2006 festival

John McPhee Wins George Polk Career Award; Semicolons Are Vindicated

Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: awards, John McPhee, Louis Menand, Lynne Truss, newyorker.com, punctuation, TOTT, usage

From the UPI story:

New York's Long Island University announced this year's George Polk Awards for excellence in journalism in 14 categories, led by a writer for the New Yorker.

The announcement from the school's Brooklyn campus said John McPhee, a New Yorker non-fiction writer, has won the George Polk Career Award for "his extraordinary contributions as a prolific author, essayist and educator, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of creative non-fiction."

Congratulations! Here's McPhee's New Yorker bio (I don't much like using the abbreviation "bio" as a legitimate word, but "biography" makes me think of books and A&E specials, so there isn't a perfect synonym), with links to several of his most well-known pieces.

Speaking of words and things, here's a Louis Menand-approved semicolon, on a New York City Transit sign, no less. (It's Lynne Truss-approved, too, which may rile Menand, who doesn't have much truck with Truss, as you recall.) Dig the funny correction, too. Too bad Times reporters probably can't freelance for The New Yorker; this would've been a perfect Talk of the Town.

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Emdashes, founded December 2004, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.

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