"Wins" and "victories"

Untrue.

Major League Baseball counts "wins and losses," not "victories and losses." I suspect that's more of a likely cause.

 

Nah ... I think hondo's reason is more plausible.

 

Not quite on the same subject, but in the vein of butchering the language, nothing makes me want to drive off the road quite like "Chipper Jones flied out to right in the second inning." Yo, dipshit, it is FLEW OUT.

rb

 

Chipper Jones can fly? Who knew?

 

"Flied out" is baseball vernacular. No problem with it at all.

Besides, to me it's more probable Chipper Jones flew out to the West Coast than to right field.

 

I went through the anal phase like many copy editors, but I started liberalizing when I learned there are more important things to focus on during the finite time we have on a given night. Guardian of the language? In a perfect world, that would be OK, I guess, but I would rather have the story be flawless factually, and that takes a great deal of time and effort. I would rather have copy editors focus on checking facts, tightening loose writing, improving the clarity and finding buried leads than spending their time changing things that only "a member of the club" is going to recognize. When I was slotting every night, the banes of my existence were A.) copy editors who relied on their own "expertise" instead of looking things up, and B.) copy editors who corrected every style error and missed everything else. Readers are not going to notice that we've called it "victories," they are going to notice that the college basketball roundup has three scores wrong and six team records wrong or missing. If you are slotting 40-70 files a night you are going to let the wins and hosts go through and try to fix the more serious glitches.

 

Hire this man.

 

Did Chipper Jones striked out, too? So because baseball vernacular butchers the language, it is ok because it is vernacular?

rb

 

I have never heard anyone say a batter striked out, nor have I read it anywhere but in your example. Got a better one?

Sorry, but you're just going to have to risk being further annoyed or quit paying attention to baseball.

 

Striked out is a variation of flied out, from a grammar perspective. I'm saying this: When I write it in a story, I write "flew out to left". When geezers on the radio say it, they utter "flied out to left". I'll take my correct example any day.

All that said, I freely admit that the above rant is something I spend precious little time considering. "Win over" = slightly more.

rb

 

Literalists could be just as annoyed as you if they read in your story that someone "flew out to left." Look up definitions and idioms of "fly" and "flied" in online dictionaries. Nothing wrong with "flied out."

"Striked out" doesn't work as an argument -- even if it's a grammatical equivalent -- because it's not used in baseball language. "Flied out" is. Much of this is like the English language. Spend time around someone who learned it as a second language and let them point out all of the inconsistencies. It could drive one mad.

 

I wholeheartedly agree on your last point. Engrish sux.

rb