"First Rough Draft of History"

[Garson O'Toole]

Jack Shafer contacted top experts and wrote a fine article in my
opinion. He appears to desire an instance of the phrase that contains
all three adjectives: first, rough, and draft. But he does point to
Barry Popik's webpage and notes that Barry found an early occurrence
of "first draft of history". Yes, it is a great cite dated 1914.

Here is an instance in 1905 with the phrase "rough draft of history"
that includes a one sentence exegesis so that the reader understands
how the "rough draft" will be used in the future.

1905 December 5, The State, The Educational Value of "News." Page 4,
Column 4, Columbia, South Carolina. (GenealogyBank)

The newspapers are making morning after morning the rough draft of
history. Later, the historian will come, take down the old files, and
transform the crude but sincere and accurate annals of editors and
reporters into history, into literature. The modern school must study
the daily newspaper.

Garson


On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 9:41 PM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      "First Rough Draft of History"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Jack Shafer writes extensively today in Slate about how Barry Popik and I have demonstrated that Philip Graham did not coin the description of journalism as the "rough first draft of history":
>
> http://www.slate.com/id/2265540/
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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