"Graf"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Oh, God, you don't suppose "takes" started out as an eggcorn for "text(s)" ?

  JL

Evan Morris <words1 at WORD-DETECTIVE.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Evan Morris
Subject: Re: "Graf"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes -- I've heard it from every newspaper editor I've worked with. One
that's always mystified me, also heard from editors, is "take" as a noun
meaning a certain amount of text, as in "Give me three takes on that by
tomorrow." It supposedly means "one page" of double-spaced typewritten
text, but that always struck me as very vague. In today's world of
computerized word counts, it may have fallen into disuse.

Evan Morris



Fred Shapiro wrote:

> The term "graf," I guess, is journalistese for "paragraph." I don't see
> it in the OED or Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate. Is this a fairly
> common word that has eluded the dictionaries?
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Fred R. Shapiro Editor
> Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
> Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press,
> Yale Law School forthcoming
> e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu
> http://quotationdictionary.com
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>

--

Evan Morris
words1 at word-detective.com
www.word-detective.com




---------------------------------
Yahoo! Shopping
 Find Great Deals on Gifts at Yahoo! Shopping