Eric Harris's journal

[Grant Barrett]

On Thursday, September 23, 1999, D. Ezra Johnson <ezra_50 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>You know what I hate? People who mispronounce words, like 'acrost,' and
>>'pacific' for 'specific,' and 'expresso' instead of
>'espresso.'
>
>You know what's weird? A day or two after the shootings, I read this in the
>Boston Globe -- except the quote did NOT mention pacific/specific, and in
>its place it DID condemn the pronunciation "ofTen".
>
>Has someone been editing Eric Harris's orthoepic proclamations? Perhaps to
>transfer the odium from a rather common usage [Oft at n] onto an
>already-more-stigmatized one [p at sIfIk]?


According to the article and others, the text that was published before was heresay, rather than from the original document. I would imagine there was bad reporting involved right after the shooting: the power of a scoop often outweighs accuracy. Also, this was only one passage from the journal. The quotes published right after the shootings may have been an amalgamation from disparate parts of the journal.

Just guesses, though.


--
Grant Barrett

World New York
http://www.worldnewyork.com/