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By JAMES J. KILPATRICK
Unhrenal Preu
Vermont Royster of The Wall Street Journal, one of America’s all-time great editors, used to tell the story of a young reporter who covered a police lineup. The tale provides an opportunity for a few observations that will get me in trouble.
It * seems a prostitute had robbed a man at gunpoint. Police rounded up the usual suspects, marshaled them behind a oneway glass, and asked the victim if he could identify his assailant. The fellow took one look at the third woman from the left. “That’s her!” he cried. The reporter quoted him just that way.
Then a fastidious copy editor made a change. As the story appeared the next morning, the victim spoke the King’s English. “That is she!” he cried.
The victim wasn’t the only one who was robbed. Readers also were robbed. They lost an accurate report, and they lost the whole flavor of the lineup. There are times, I submit, when fealty to supposed rules of grammar can be carried too far.
It takes a sure but gentle hand to bend rules well.
The trouble with some of Miss Thistlebottom’s Rules is that they often result in prose that is awkward, prissy and forced. Last January, Indiana’s new superintendent of public instruction addressed the state Senate. She amended the draft of a speech that a speechwriter had prepared for delivery.
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