The name's Mistakenly. Troops Mistakenly

Your assignment: Write the hed.

Somalia's security forces have shot dead a 31-year-old government minister after mistaking him for a militant Islamist, officials have said.

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the authoritative Ten Minutes Past Deadline on the nature and function of the claim quote: "Not an actual quote, but an allegation in reported speech placed within quotation marks to signal its contested nature." In my optimistic moments, having learned how to order OK at the neighborhood pubs, I'd like to think that I could turn out a few claim-quote heds that would pass for the real thing. And then I run across something "'Troops mistakenly' kill .." and realize how far I am from fluency.

I could see "mistakenly kill" as the contested allegation, but I can't see how "troops" is suspect in a way that "minister" wouldn't be. British friends, help: Is this one in bounds?

Softest barriers EVAR

Every time I think I have the claim quote figured out, a new one comes along. Here, I think it's the phrasing that gets me. The quote in the linked video is: "He was breaking down barriers that nobody suspected." There's room for "Chuck Berry 'was breaking down barriers'"; if that seems too much more opaque than the current version, there's also room to take the quotes off and add the attribution: "Chuck Berry broke down barriers, Simmons says." The down barriers, though, are going to remain a problem for me.

I expect I have trouble with "over US election hack" because I'm not a native speaker of claim quotes (fair enough; the flying verb seems pretty opaque in British headlinese too). Is "hack" what needs the attribution, or is the "over" part of the contested assertion?

Sorry these are a bit old; trying to clear out the inbox before things get any stranger in the framing of international politics.

Eggcorn seeds

Interesting comment* from the judge in the guinea pig trial. Want to know what it looks like at the crosstown competition?

The judge noted Wednesday the teens didn’t have prior criminal records and were good students from good families, but said he put off the sentencing by for a while to make sure there were no “deep-seated issues” that needed to be addressed with the young defendants.

The guiding wisdom of the AP Stylebook, "Never alter quotations even to correct minor grammatical errors or word usage," doesn't apply here. In this sort of case, that's exactly what the writer heard (and step forward anyone who writes for a living and can claim to a perfect record on this front.) The assembly line of news, though, evolved a set of processes that vastly increased the chances of such blunders being caught -- even if by a typesetter who was better at spelling than half the newsroom.

Blunders got through in the good old days of full employment and double time and a half for holiday shifts, and blunders will get through when the last editor is reassigned as a content creator. If you want a product in which they're rare enough to call attention to themselves, you need to let your content providers know. Preferably with subscriptions or large stacks of unmarked bills.

* Now, alas, corrected online.

Modern castle magic

What exactly are they doing over at the Nation's Newspaper of Record when they hit the "play" button?

An article on Oct. 9 about Art Deco Los Angeles quoted incorrectly from comments by the author Marlyn Musicant about the design of Union Station. She said that by utilizing bronze chandeliers, the architects wanted “a more modern influence,” not “a more Spanish influence.”

Here's the offending paragraph, in its corrected form:

“The architects wanted to go with a more modern influence,” Ms. Musicant added, “so instead of utilizing wrought-iron chandeliers, the designers went with bronze chandeliers.”

Some corrections set the mind at ease (next time we'll look up any assertion about Mount Everest; we'll never annoy "Star Wars" fans again; it's Edgar Allan Poe, three A's). Others leave you wondering whether anything else in the quotation actually happened as reported. Guess which kind this is?

Today in sourcing

The sources, in order, to whom direct quotes are attributed in today's Fair 'n' Balanced look (so far) at the future of the House leadership:

one senior House GOP source

one member

one senior House GOP leadership aide

another aide

a senior House Republican source who asked not to be identified

one senior aide to Boehner

one former House Republican

Indirect quotes are also attributed to:

Republicans* sources

one Republican aide

GOP sources

For a total of ... um, no named sources at all in your lead story.

I'm in the camp that thinks the journalistic obsession with naming sources sometimes comes at the expense of appropriate attention to the quality of information that sources provide (quick, see how long it takes you to find a named source affirming the imminent peril of Iraq's WMD stockpile). But there ought to be at least a favor or two you can call in after all that service as the Eyes and Ears of the Party.

* Yeah, (sic)

Alarmed and dangerous

There's more to this correction than the local fishwrap lets on. Here's what appears to be the relevant sentence from the online version of Monday's story:

The security was needed because Michiganders at a state auction of drilling lands last year became violent — “one guy pulled a gun” — and officers made seven arrests, MDEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel said.

I can see getting a department spokesman and a department official mixed up somewhere amid the notes and emails or whatever. And "firearm" for "fire alarm" -- maybe it's a stretch for a telephone error, but it's hardly implausible. Except that's not what the quote says. The quote says "pulled a gun," and the quotation marks are supposed to mean that's exactly -- not kinda-sorta -- what the speaker said. Given that distinction, maybe we should know a little more about how this error came about.

Failure is an option

Somewhere between the source, the reporter and the cliche-osphere, this one got turned around:

"Finishing school is not an option," Tonya said. "He has to do it."

She doesn't mean she's going to keep her son (the Pistons' top pick in the recent draft) from going to finishing school. She means that finishing vs. not finishing isn't a free choice -- or in "failure is not an option" terms, that not finishing school is not an option.

Given that the quote seems to be pointing two ways, this seems like a nice time for the writer to step in with a paraphrase and a partial quote.

Partial quote of the morning

J-textbooks tend to discourage partial or fragmentary quotes,* but that hardly means writers don't use them. Part of a quote could be ungrammatical, so the writer can preserve some of the magic flavor quotes are supposed to provide without appearing to poke fun at the speaker. There might be a striking or distinctive turn of phrase that you want to preserve while making sure nouns and pronouns still agree. Or you might want to keep some of the distinctive/colorful words but leave out the ones you can't say on TV.

To get the most out of your partial quote, you should follow a few rules. One, the quote ought to be worth the attention you draw to it. Two, it ought to be the sort of syntactic module that fits neatly into the rest of the sentence. When in doubt, try the press conference** test:

Q: Sergeant, where were the tusks coming out?
A: Of the side of its mouth.
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Negation of the (old) year

Since it was evidently written before the stroke of midnight, this one goes in the books with the How Can I Keep From Not Singing Award for 2010.

Never, ever do this

OK, kids, let's start the semester with a Rule of Journalism: Write what you know, not what you guess or speculate.

Writing Thursday for Friday's paper, then, you might know that X number of people "were" in jail at some point on Thursday. You do not know whether any or all of them "are" in jail. Plainly and simply, you are making stuff up, and that is not allowed. You have no idea what might have happened between when you made your last phone call and when the fishwrap hits the sidewalks.

You can take Your Editor's word for it in the abstract, or you could simply read your own deathless prose:

Agro and three other employees -- a manager and two people dispensing pot -- were arrested and released without charges later.

It doesn't matter whether they were released without charges, or whether they made bail, or whether Butch and Sundance busted 'em out while Andy and Barney were looking the other way. Your story is what you know -- not what you want to say because you want to spin your story forward. Same goes for "is in critical condition today"; if you can see into the medical future that well, you're in the wrong business. Make it "was in critical condition Thursday night."

The Quote of the Day, drawn from the story, suggests an equally serious offense somewhere:

"This is Michigan. This is not a Cheech and Chong movie," Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said.

Hee hee! Sheriff Mike ought to spend a little more time on the mean streets of Language Czarina's little hometown here. But somebody else needs to spend a little more time hunched over the tape recorder. Here's the other paper's take:

"This is Michigan, not some Cheech and Chong movie," Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Thursday at a news conference.

The two stylebooks can mud-wrestle over Mike vs. Michael all they want, but quotes aren't optional. Quotes -- we like to claim -- represent the exact words of the speaker, and only one of these can qualify.

This isn't a big difference or a change in meaning; it isn't even really a change in tone. But it's a difference, and it means at least one of the papers at the press conference doesn't mind making stuff up. That's not good.

Get your hand off that key!

Scanning the Freep from afar, an alert reader wonders about the punctuation in the second and third grafs here, from the latest installment in the Kwame Kilpatrick saga:

The indictment did not include public corruption charges, a point Kilpatrick spokesman Mike Paul seized upon.

He called speculation that the former mayor was involved in bribery schemes "lies from the pit of hell!"

"The FBI found nothing remotely close to that in their investigation because it never happened!"

Specifically, why does the ex-mayor's spokesman get to award himself a couple of bangers, whereas the feds (one can only hope that the Freep's relentless drive toward tabloidism will turn them into G-men before long) are stuck with some measly periods and commas?

Granted, some quotes are just not amenable to the magic of the exclamation point, so you can see why the Freep resisted the temptation. We'll just Photoshop one in to an actual quote for you here, by way of illustration:

"Investigation into corruption in municipal government continues!" U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said late Wednesday.

And yes, in case you were wondering, that's how the quotes and attribution appear in print as well. Is there a good reason for this sort of punctuational deck-stacking?

Best guess (as always, better or more informed ones are welcome), the response is pasted from an e-mail. That's not illegitimate, though it's fairly common to distinguish written responses ("said in an e-mail") from spoken ones -- particularly when there's a graphic feature that the writer is trying to reproduce. In an unorthodox case like this one, that practice looks particularly important.

I think there's a case for losing the damn thing altogether, particularly in the second example; paraphrase and trim the quote down to "because it never happened," stick in some attribution (which wouldn't hurt anyway), and pick up with the following sentence. The first is trickier. When it comes to correcting the comma splices and greengrocer's apostrophes that writers stick into other people's quotes, I'm in the "people don't speak punctuation; just fix it" camp. The question mark is the obvious exception. I wouldn't make the same case for every stray exclamation point, but "lies from the pit of hell!" is the sort of case that tests the rule.*

We don't know, of course, how much tweaking might have already been done. Evidently, the original has already been truncated. What if it said "LIES from the pit of hell!!!!!" -- are we justified in taking it down to one exclamation point, or should we go further?

Thursday-morning-quarterback-wise, I'd push for adding "in an e-mail" to the attribution. Then I'd see if anybody wanted to talk a bit about whether the pervasive reliance on electronic text for attribution calls for some new style guidelines.

* Probably because it sounds like one of those Evan Meacham panels from the golden days of "Doonesbury."