FW: Article on lexicographer Erin McKean and Verbatim (2nd try)

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

Yesterday I tried to forward the below to the members of the American Dialect Society.  Here now is a second try. The item appeared two days ago in the Chicago Tribune, and I have Nathan Bierma's permission to share it
with you.

Gerald Cohen

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> Delectable journal Verbatim is thriving in `no-man's land'
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> By Nathan Bierma
> November 16, 2005
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> When dictionary editor Erin McKean got a phone call inviting her to become editor of Verbatim, a quarterly journal on language written for a general audience, she thought it was too good to be true. In fact, she almost hung up the phone.
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> "I got a phone call out of the blue, and there was this very distinctive voice saying, `I'd like you to edit Verbatim,'" McKean recalls. "I thought it was a practical joke. This is where being a polite Southerner helped me. Otherwise I would have just hung up on him."
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> It was no hoax, and for the past six years, McKean, a North Carolina native, has edited Verbatim, a delectable, unpredictable, consistently interesting language magazine, from her brownstone on Chicago's North Side.
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> This year, Verbatim celebrates its 30th volume, beginning with its belated spring and summer 2005 issues, both released this month.
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> The latest issues provide a juicy taste of what Verbatim serves. Etymologist Dave Wilton writes about the slang of the Hollywood trade magazine Variety ("`King' Nips Ship With 11 Noms," Wilton says, translates as `Return of the King' beats out `Master and Commander' with 11 Academy Award nominations").
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> In a cover article on the sizable linguistic contributions of "The Simpsons," etymologist Mark Peters rounds up words invented on the show, and analyzes Homer Simpson's use of what linguists call "infixes" -- insertions in the middle of a word, such as Homer's "edu-ma-cation."
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> "[Some] infixes work mostly as intensifiers, but the purpose of some infixes is a little less clear," Peters writes. In Homer's case, "they do add a certain flavor or connotation -- a Homerish buffoon flavor." And yes, Peters includes three paragraphs on "Flandersisms," the idiolect of Homer's neighbor, Ned Flanders.
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> Elsewhere in the issue, authors tackle subjects such as corporate English, language loss, the slang of fan fiction, the coinage of bird names, euphemisms for death, "Family Expressions Deserving Wider Recognition" and "How to Tawk Like a New Yawker."
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> One of the briefest and most entertaining features of the magazine is "Sic! Sic! Sic!" an ongoing collection of typos and malapropisms spotted by readers, such as a recent headline at Google News about a "runaway bridge" (instead of "runaway bride").
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> "Verbatim is old enough to know better, yet young enough to take risks," McKean writes in the spring 2005 issue. "Verbatim certainly realizes that there is plenty it doesn't know, but still energetic enough to muster some enthusiasm for finding out. Verbatim is settled in its habits, but not set in its ways, and is very much in the prime of its life."
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> Verbatim (www.verbatimmag.com) began as a newsletter for publishing companies. Founder Laurence Urdang distributed the newsletter with a cover letter promoting the services of his dictionary editing company. He also founded Verbatim Books (www.verbatimbooks.com), publisher of language reference books.
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> "I thought I should prepare a newsletter on all aspects of language," Urdang said in a telephone interview from his home in Old Lyme, Conn. Urdang said he envisioned a publication "that would not be a technical journal like Language or American Speech, but something that would cater to the interests of people who were interested in language certainly above the level of [The New York Times "On Language" columnist] William Safire, but not at the level of the Linguistics Society of America."
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> Urdang edited Verbatim for 23 years, while McKean was becoming an avid reader.
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> "I always loved the magazine. I started reading it while in high school, procrastinating in the Wake Forest library, not writing papers in European history," McKean said in an interview at Verbatim headquarters in her brownstone basement.
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> There, amid shelves, crates and stacks of boxes jammed with reference books, folders and back issues of Verbatim, McKean, 34, carries on her dual lexicographical roles: Verbatim editor and editor-in-chief of U.S. dictionaries for Oxford University Press.
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> "Oxford takes 110 percent of my time, but the other 40 percent is Verbatim time," McKean explains.
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> Verbatim has nearly 1,500 subscribers in the U.S. and about 300 overseas, McKean says. A U.S. subscription for four 30-plus-page issues per year costs $25. The magazine is printed on light beige paper with handsome brown type.
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> McKean says the magazine has succeeded by targeting a general audience but not watering down its subject matter.
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> "It's geared toward laypeople, but I belong to the Council of Editors of Learned Journals," McKean says. "It's not literary, not scholarly -- it's kind of a no-man's-land."
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> And yet, the magazine has found its niche as a serious general interest magazine on language, McKean says: "It's a good place to be. Once people find us, they hold on with both hands."
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> Now that the first two 30th-volume issues have shipped, McKean is looking forward to a new milestone.
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> "I would love to see Verbatim's centennial," she says. "That's a good reason to live to 103."
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> McKean muses about what the centennial issue might contain.
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> "Robot slang. Martian English. How will skull-phone texting change lunar English? Idioms of the methane beings of Titan. I can see us doing that."
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> Contact Nathan Bierma at onlanguage at gmail.com
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> Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune
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> http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0511150280nov16,1,6023568.story
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