Jesse S. et al. v. Antonin S. et al. on fleeting expletives

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Mon May 4 14:37:42 UTC 2009


At 5/4/2009 06:48 AM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Mon, May 04, 2009 at 03:26:15AM -0400, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> > On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:00 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > At 5/3/2009 10:41 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> > > >http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/opinion/03freedman.html
>
>This wasn't a fresh interview; the comment was taken from an
>interview I did with the WSJ a few months ago, where I called
>the FCC's position not only "rubbish" but "absolute rubbish":

Apparently the Times reporters didn't get special permission to use
the word "absolute"!  Perhaps if they'd written "alleged" ...  :-)

Joel


>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122575539538895001.html
>
> > > I am amused that Adam Freedman writes "That the justices managed to
> > > do this without actually uttering either of the words at issue ..."
> > > -- but manages himself to evade even an initialism by writing "Jesse
> > > Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary and the
> > > author of a book on swearing ..."!
> >
> > The Associated Press ran a poll a few years ago about profanity, and
> > the accompanying article included this line: "For the record, we
> > needed special dispensation from our bosses just to say 'F-word.'"
>
>In general that's the policy of the NYT as well, despite the
>fact that (until recently) the NYT was the location of the
>first known appearance of the expression "the F-word". Every
>time this issue has come up with me, they've either not used
>the phrase or needed to get special permission to do so.
>
>Jesse Sheidlower
>OED
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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