Penultimate

Sacre bleu! Ergo, don't do it.

 

And what the hell is a penult? The new Kia model?

 

A famous journalist (I don't remember who it was) told a story about his father reading one of his stories when he was a 15-year-old sportswriter for his local rag. He said his father had an eighth grade education.

Anyway, the kid used "alacrity" in a story and his father looked the word up. Then, the father said, "I see by the dictionary that alacrity means quick. Next time, say what you mean." According to the journalist, it took his professor an hour and a half to make the same point.

Don't try to wow people with an erudite vocabularity. If you're passionate about your subject, that will come through in your writing.

 

I'll defend penultimate. Yeah, I've never used it in a story, but to treat it like a cancer-stricken word is just silly. Look the damn thing up. People, especially newspapers, use the language like humans generally use their brains - that is to say, only a fraction.
I'll repeat that I've never used it, but if I was trying to add gravity to a series of events, I might throw it in. Penultimate comes across a bit more suspenseful than next-to-last. Or, 'after this, there's only one more.'
With all that said, it does fall into the sect of English that gets used when you haven't written a lot and you haven't done enough reporting - basically trying to put lace curtains over a broken window.

 

That is what I thought it was at first. Like Papermate....too funny.

 

Nah, that'd be the ultimate pen. And the details of a story should provide the gravity, not some shopworn word.

 

Ok, fine. But then no newspaper can ever call a celebration (Bi)centennial, a plane amphibious, a player adept, or anything else that has a pretty direct connection - or sounds close - to Latin.
Yeah, paint the picture with details, but I just don't get the decision to effectively strike it from the dictionary. It's not like the word has to be put in italics.
And lest I start an argument, I agree that when casually thrown around, penultimate is a stupid word to use. Sticks out like a sore thumb. But I wouldn't totally rule out using it.

 

So I'm guessing nobody here likes "fortnight," either?

 

Man, there goes my lede for the soccer game last night.

 

I can't think of any use I'd need it for, but for certain things, I think penultimate could work. Fuck, let the reader do some work. One word in 1800 stories isn't going to make them give up on newspapering.

 

I love fortnight and penultimate.

I think we do the reader a disservice if we think they are all drooling imbeciles.