Friday, September 03, 2004

Nay!

And while I’m at it, a furious sidenote about the continued slow death of copy-editing. There’s no surer way for a writer to make hirself look stupid than to employ a highfalutin phrase incorrectly—as with Jennifer Bleyer's “Peter Lamborn Wilson, née Hakim Bey.”

A note to Ms. Bleyer: née does not mean the same thing as “a.k.a.”—it literally means “born”: the proper form is Assumed Name, née Birth Name. Also, it is a gendered adjective, so the final e should be dropped when speaking of a male subject. e.g.: Marilyn Monroe, née Norma Jean Baker; Sting, Gordon Matthew Sumner. I mean, Jesus, do newspapers no longer use style manuals?

(Many thanks to Tannhauser Dan, for his vigilance and his kind assistance)

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