A Capital Idea: Shock of the day

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Writing coach identifies language gaffes in TV newscasts.

At 2:24 PM, August 24, 2005, Peter Fisk said...: Here’s the item that needed to be pulled from that column because it was incorrect:

"He's not trying to play any political game here in hopes that that kind of attitude attaches to whomever he selects as his nominee…." (NPR, July 8, 2005.)
Whomever should be whoever. The correspondent chose whomever apparently in the belief that it was the direct object of the preposition to. But the object of the preposition is the entire clause: "whoever he selects as his nominee.
At 3:17 PM, August 24, 2005, Peter Fisk said...: (Not to pick on the guy. I was just curious about the correction and thought others might be also.)
At 3:33 PM, August 24, 2005, Nicole said...: I was interested. Glad you tracked it down.

I wasn't trying to pick on the guy, either, by the way. He points out some good stuff. I'm just not at all surprised by the errors, though (by reading his lede) he seemed to be.
At 4:59 PM, August 24, 2005, Bill said...: I don't get the "during" point.
At 6:02 PM, August 24, 2005, Nicole said...: I can see a smidgen of a difference between "during" and "in" in the example. But it's not something I would have thought of on my own. Nor would I advocate changing copy to reflect the "rule."

But at least he said "during would be better than in," rather than "during wrong wrong wrong!"