This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Therese Bottomly, editor of The Oregonian newspaper, struck a chord with me the other day when she wrote about typos in newspapers.

I hate them, too, based on my background in journalism.

One risk in writing about this is that, as I do so, I might make an error – a typo, a wrong word, or a misspelled word.  Irony of ironies.

Oh well.  Such is life.

Here is a summary of Bottomly’s comments in an e-mail memo she sends to Oregonian subscribers:

“Back in the day, many layers of editors would stand between a reporter’s typed copy and the printed page.  Now when we publish rapidly onto OregonLive, the process is greatly streamlined – and readers notice.

“To take an example from the past, a suburban reporter might turn in his article to the bureau chief, and she would edit it and send it to the suburban editor, who would pass it along to the city desk. A news editor then would read it to decide placement within the newspaper. On the copy desk, a rim editor would make copy edits and write a headline. Then, the slot editor would take a careful read.

“The article would be placed on the page in the composing room, where the makeup editor would check it.  Then, page proofs would be generated for more checks.

“In the current fast-paced world of digital first news, a routine article might go straight from reporter to OregonLive’s home page with just a quick glance from a single editor.”

Of course, Bottomley adds, “The Oregonian/OregonLive has thousands of copy editors.  They are also known as readers.

“And they have something to say.”

A few recent Oregonian examples of what the newspaper got right or wrong: 

Right: Defuse/diffuse.  “They tried to defuse the situation on their own …” “Defuse” means to render harmless or make less tense.  “Diffuse” means to spread out or disperse (not to be confused with “disburse”).

Wrong: Loathe/loath.  A national opinion writer recently said: “One is loathe to pick a fight with a lawyer taking a well-deserved victory lap after a hard-fought trial.”  “Loathe” is a verb meaning “dislike greatly”; “loath” is an adjective meaning “not willing.”

Right: Fazed/phased.  A reporter wrote that “employees seemed relatively unfazed” by the stray bullet.  To faze is to bother; to phase is to do something in stages.

Wrong: Between/among.  We recently reported on “Oregon’s gubernatorial matchup between” three women.  A reader responded:  I hate to complain about one of the grammatical slides that seem to be happening in printed articles all over (even the New York Times), but this one comes up quite often now and particularly irks me:  Writers saying “between” when referring to three or more singular entities.  It just makes sense that you can’t be between more than two things.  You can be “among” them, however.

For me, a person who likes words, the examples are good ones.

I would add one important one as I cite an oft-used mistake:  Using a plural pronoun when the right one is singular. 

Here is an example:  “The committee did their work.”  It should be, “The committee did ITS work.”

Critical stuff, right?  For me, a “words person,” yes.