Sacred and Profane

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word," Mark Twain once observed, "is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Since Twain's day, in the view of many newspaper editors, a plague of fireflies has filled the sky: neologisms proliferate and the rules of grammar have raveled badly. To deal with the situation, the Associated Press and United Press International are preparing a new joint stylebook, and the New York Times has just issued a revised 231-page Manual of Style and Usage (Quadrangle; $10), though the last version appeared only 14 years ago. In the words of News Editor Lewis Jordan, who edited both revisions, the Times's stylebook gives "preference to that which safeguards the language from debasement." Whether it can safeguard Times language from dullness is another question.

Feminism has set a small swarm of lightning bugs flickering, and the Times snuffs out most of them. Ms., for example, is to be used only in quoted material or in discussing the term itself. The stylebook decrees that some words whose original form includes man should remain unchanged: it proscribes chairwoman and spokeswoman on the grounds that chairman and spokesman suffice for both sexes, but it accepts assemblywoman and councilwoman. To "avoid words or phrases that seem to imply that the Times speaks with a purely masculine voice, viewing men as the norm," writers and editors are warned not to use "designations that are obviously disparaging." Examples: doll, weaker sex, the little woman and, in certain contexts, words like housewife, divorcee and sculptress. Gay, says the Times without explanation, is not to be used as a synonym for homosexual.

Though the stylebook aims at keeping language sacred, it does yield some ground in the area of the profane. Under "Obscenity, Vulgarity and Profanity," the manual explains that the Times will continue to present the news, as Times Patriarch Adolph S. Ochs decreed in 1896, "in language that is parliamentary in good society." But a mild profanity like Hell or damn, the manual says, "is really not offensive to a great degree" as long as it is not used as a matter of course.

Orally, Verbally. Editors at other papers also find that feminism and profanity create stylistic headaches, but few have adopted ironclad rules to relieve them. The Chicago Tribune-- uses Ms. if a woman requests it, as does the Louisville Courier-Journal. The Minneapolis Tribune quotes profanity if it is essential for either "meaning and impact" or an accurate description of a speaker's outlook. Los Angeles Times Editorial Page Director Anthony Day crusades against the repeated misuse of certain words (verbally for orally or vice versa, hopefully for one hopes) but goes along with some neologisms. "Part of what keeps a language alive is its constant acceptance of new words and phrases," says Day, citing rip-off as an example.

Indeed, the New York Times's new stylebook is more than twice as long as the old one, and the added bulk is largely words and terms that were practically unknown in 1962. Some may eventually prove to be short-lived inventions, but herewith a brief sample: marijuana, quark, ESP, NOW, IUD, OPEC, MIRV, sit-in, mugging, detente.

* Only last September the paper finally abandoned the last remnants of its idiosyncratic "Tribune spelling," decreed 42 years ago by Publisher Robert ("Bertie") McCormick. Now thoro, burocracy, thru and dozens of other words are spelled the right way.

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