The New York Times

[Joanne M. Despres]

Well, it initially struck me as a bit unidiomatic, or at least highly
unusual.  But, as you note, it's been around for a while (the
Collegiate reports that the adjective was attested as early as
1916).  It sounds to my ear like a simplification of "below-
mentioned," or some such thing.

The grating part for me is the blithe assumption of superiority
implied by editors' goofing around with somebody else's prose.
Kind of reminds me of that Reagan gaffe of years ago in which he
jokingly announced over the radio that he would begin dropping
bombs on the Soviet Union.  One expects a little more intellectual
seriousness of persons in positions of authority, eh?

Joanne



On 6 Jul 2005, at 19:07, Duane Campbell wrote:

> From today's NYT:
>
> "Editors' Note
>
> The Op-Ed page in some copies of Wednesday's newspaper carried an incorrect
> version of the below article about military recruitment. The article also
> briefly appeared on NYTimes.com before it was removed. The writer, an Army
> reserve officer, did not say, "Imagine my surprise the other day when I
> received orders to report to Fort Campbell, Ky., next Sunday," nor did he
> characterize his recent call-up to active duty as the precursor to a
> "surprise tour of Iraq." That language was added by an editor and was to
> have been removed before the article was published. Because of a production
> error, it was not. The Times regrets the error. A corrected version of the
> article appears below.""
>
>
>
> Aside from some curiosity about why a NYT editor would add text to a guest
> editorial with the intent of removing it before publication, what bothers me
> about this is the use of "below" as an adjective when it would be so simple
> to move it one word forward and use it in a non-grating way. I check a
> dictionary and found this usage down on the list, but does anyone else find
> it really ugly?
>
>
>
> D