The Philadelphia Inquirer has been through some changes over the past few years. It has had multiple owners, layed off employees and moved to a smaller building. It must have also stopped doing proofreading. Two recent articles show the sad state of affairs in the quality of the language used in this great newspaper.
On Saturday, December 8th, there was an article about a family in the Kensignton section of Philadelphia that was growing over 500 marijuana plants. Their home was raided by the authorities. The article stated that 500 lbs. of pot were"recovered." That is so obviously wrong. The word "recover" implies that whatever was found belonged to someone else and the police will return it to the rightful owner. I don't think so! Perhaps if these people were thieves and the stolen loot was found. The proper word in this case is "confiscated." The 500 lbs. were taken by the authorities to become evidence in future proceedings. Later the pot will be destroyed. No one is getting back their misplaced marijuana. It was confiscated.
Then, on Monday, December 10th, the secondary headline for the top editorial was "The governor's trying to keep his schedule secret is an affront to the state's open-records law." This is such bad English grammar that the statement is an affront to all English teachers. It makes one wonder who taught the editor how to write. I know the writer was trying to squeeze maximum meaning into minimum space, but that is no excuse for such poor English. In addition, the word "affront" requires someone to be insulted. Laws cannot be insulted, but they can be broken or violated. One better way to say the same thing without too much extra space would be "An attempt by the governor to keep his schedule secret is a violation of the PA open-records law."
It's a sad day when those who we expect to properly write our language don't. This tarnishes the image of a great newspaper. On the other hand, the quality of language in our society today is such that most will not even notice.
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