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photos by Lara Shipley

Dear NPR…

October 22nd, 2007 · 6 Comments

One of your reporters just uttered an a sentence containing the phrase: “which, for all intents and purposes, exists in name only.” Please fire whatever editor permitted this. Thak you.

Tags: Journalism & the Media


       

 

6 responses so far ↓

  • 1 David // Oct 22, 2007 at 10:52 am

    “Thak you.”

    Heh. Heal thyself, editor. 😉

  • 2 digamma // Oct 22, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    How can you tell the difference between “intents in purposes” and “intents ‘n’ purposes” on the radio?

  • 3 Julian Sanchez // Oct 22, 2007 at 12:53 pm

    Whoops! The “Thak you” was a little joke, but the “in purposes” was just a typo… It should’ve been “and purposes.” My objection was that “for all intents and purposes” basically MEANS “in all but name” or “practically speaking, if not officially” … so the combination is just stupid and redundant.

  • 4 Christopher M // Oct 22, 2007 at 1:26 pm

    How is it redundant? If anything, wouldn’t it be the opposite, self-contradictory? “In all but name” vs. “in name only”?

    (Nothing better than picking a nitpicker’s nits!)

  • 5 Julian Sanchez // Oct 22, 2007 at 2:02 pm

    Mm, I think I see where you’re getting that, but I don’t think so. I’d unpack it as: “While nominally it may be a border, practically speaking it’s only nominally a border.”

  • 6 Kevin B. O'Reilly // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:57 pm

    Couldn’t this have been live chatter? Even if it wasn’t, it may have been hard to edit the sound to remove the redundancy.