Let’s be wary, and more judicious.
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My colleague Ken Paul notes that “calculus” shows up constantly — and generally not in the sense of “a system of calculation using special symbolic notations.” Rather, we use it as a fancier-sounding synonym for “calculation,” “analysis,” “reckoning,” “choice,” or other ordinary and accurate words. We regularly use “Political Calculus” and “Budget Calculus” as headings. Here are just a few other uses from the past couple of weeks (among more than 200 in the past year):
Metro
The developer and the administration may have hoped that the area’s powerful state assemblyman, Sheldon Silver, would support the project and overcome any local resistance. But since Mr. Silver stepped aside as Assembly speaker amid federal corruption charges, the political calculus has changed.
National
Part of the economic calculus is that Anchorage is also the state’s marketplace for goods bought by other Alaskans, who by and large pass through on their way to smaller cities or rural villages. And the rest of the state lacks the diversified economy of Anchorage, making those places more vulnerable to the impact of cuts in state spending or revenue sharing.
International
But the group’s use of Ms. Mueller’s name for the first time prompted her family and its advisers to confirm her prolonged captivity in a statement and changed the calculus about what could be reported about her life.
Business Day
That changed the political calculus for Mr. Wheeler, even though the F.C.C. is an independent agency. On most key votes, the five-member commission votes 3-2, with Mr. Wheeler joined by the other two Democrats.
Sports
[Headline] The Tricky Calculus of Picking Jameis Winston
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Another awkwardly placed prepositional phrase; he’s not resigning from any newspapers. Make it “demands from various newspapers for his resignation.”
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[Web summary] An influx of immigrants from Uzbekistan, which has a long history of success in fight sports, have transformed New York’s high school wrestling competition.
Make it “influx … has transformed.”
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[Picture caption] Charles Constance, 53, and his 9-year old son, Pablo. Until recently they had been living at a homeless shelter in New Orleans.
We needed one more hyphen here.
After Deadline examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times. It is adapted from a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual.
We seem eager to sprinkle math-related terms as liberally as possible in our prose, but casual usage is more likely to suggest fuzziness or even laziness than rigor and precision.Read more…
Even seemingly minor errors chip away at reader trust, and our most common mistake by far is getting a name wrong.Read more…
Once again, readers have spotted a succession of mysterious strangers wandering through the tops of our stories.Read more…
Last week, we looked at near-miss word choices. This week, a round-up of homophone problems, many of them familiar by now. Put them on your list — and look them up every time if you need to.Read more…
Sometimes on deadline we seem to grab the first word we think of, not necessarily the best. With language as with facts, precision should be our hallmark.Read more…
