"far to"...specific spot?

[Mark A Mandel]

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, sagehen wrote:

#Of course I see your problem.  I didn't give enough information to be clear.
#The partial quote: "He was in New York's Washington Heights section, far to
#Manhattan's northern tip, near the George Washington Bridge....".
#
#Either "far to the north" or "far up toward Manhattan's,&c." would be clear
#at once to me, but this one I stumbled over.

Oh, me too! Even "far towards" would be better. I wonder if this is a
result of a slip in editing, either by an editor or by the author during
or after composition. I've found that the ease of editing electronic
text has more than once led me into errors that I can hardly imagine
making in hard-copy draft. -- Has anyone done a study of this
phenomenon?

#This is a very able writer, which is why I wondered if it might be a
#regionalism that I simply was unfamiliar with.

Whence he? I grew up in NYC and it's far from me!

-- Mark A. Mandel