After Deadline

Here are the latest lapses involving similar-seeming words — some new problems and some familiar ones. And some, frankly, that are pretty embarrassing.

We all move faster than we used to, because deadlines loom at all hours of the day. But one thing that should still set us apart is our careful consideration of language and our aversion to the easy clichés, hype and jargon of “journalese.” We should reach for precise and well-chosen words, and not depend on the overused newswriting terms that spring so readily to mind.

There are many ways to misuse “like,” and we do so, repeatedly.

Like a bad penny, I keep finding danglers in our prose. Here’s a year-end sampling of one of our most common grammatical errors. Remember that when a participle construction, appositive or other modifying phrase starts a sentence, the person or thing being described should generally come directly after the modifying phrase. (And yes, that first sentence is a dangler.)