Being a copy editor can be even worse than a teacher when it comes to correcting other people's grammar and spelling. Having been one on and off for fifty years, the compulsion might be stronger in me than in most, but over the years I've learned even the best of friends don't appreciate your efforts to improve their use of the language. After a while I've even been able to read facebook posts without editing, except once in a while being outraged at what someone says it's easy to flash on some flagrant misuse of the language just to add to the ridicule such people so richly deserve.
Along with spelling and grammar and just as important is the over use of words and phrases including clichés. Often such usage will insinuate its way into a whole country of writers especially since the advent of the Internet. One day at a newspaper where I worked a reporter used the word "roughly" when referring to an inexact measure, as in "the car weighed roughly 1,200 pounds." Within weeks every reporter at the paper was using "roughly." A couple that are particularly bothersome are "meet up" and "back in," both of which add an unnecessary word, as in " they had planned to meet up back in 1998. First of all the verb is "meet,” not "meet up." Secondly "back in" is superfluous and redundant: "in 1998" means the same thing without sounding like a hillbilly; But all that is background,
A week or so ago I went to a memorial for a friend of mine who also was a copy editor for most of his adult life. He had quite an effect on my life because he was the fellow who would hire me back at the newspaper when I came in off the water or out of the woods so broke I had no idea where I would live or how I would eat. He did that four times.
I hadn't intended to speak at the memorial; I had never done it before and I am quite uncomfortable talking with two people at once, let alone a roomful. But an idea had been floating around in my head and when the microphone was passed close to me I took a deep breath and grabbed it. I opened with something like this: "As I look around this room, I see several people Jim hired over the years. Well, I hold the record; he hired me four times." There is a fine line between lightening the atmosphere in a mostly serious situation and bad taste but when people laughed comfortably, it felt like I was on solid ground. I went through a brief recollection of my interactions with him, emphasizing all that he had done for me over the years. Then I asked how many people in the room were writers; and how many were editors. A few hands raised to each. I pointed out that each of us had probably lost someone over the years and that memories of those people tended to pop into mind at odd times.
Then I said something like this. I am going to give you something to remember Jim by. From now on, every time you go to write or encounter in something you are editing, the word "iconic," stop and reflect for a moment and ask yourself "what would Jim do?" Then leave it out.
Again it got a comfortable laugh and his wife even smiled at me, so I assumed I hadn't stepped over that line and sat down.
Since then two people who were there brought up "iconic" when we were talking, and I am guessing most of them will feel a twinge when they see the word and maybe in memorializing my friend I have managed in a small way to begin the process to take an overused and misused word out of the national syntax.
And, what's the irony? That isn't a typo in the headline. Perhaps in making my friend a reminder to people every time they see the word "iconic," I may have established an iconic relationship between Jim and the word.