Saturday, October 20, 2007

Hats Off to Holy Seeing Eyes


On page A12 of The New York Times of October 18, 2007, I spy this headline:


Pope Names 23 New Cardinals, Including 2 From the U.S.

Is is persnickety of me to opine that "new" is unnecessary in that head (or, if memory [always faulty] serves correctly from my newsroom days: hed)?

Would the pope name old cardinals?

Well, as a matter of fact the new cardinals were on the old side, with five over the age of 80.

They will receive their hats (red, right? I'll ask my friend Greg Tobin, author of Conclave and Council) on November 24.

Hats off to holiness, but not to the venial editorial sin of redundancy.

Talk of Holy See! Editors, mend thy sight!

(Back when I was a newspaper copy editor, in the old days, we couldn't even allow "new record" in a story. Go figure.)

4 comments:

Patti said...

memory serves you fine, PK! It is hed and lede, and folo, and...I give up.
I'm sick of this s---

Patti said...

P.S. well I got that out of my system, Pawlie. Hope you didn't mind me using such lingua vulgaris on your blog space.

Pawlie Kokonuts said...

Patti,
Email offline and tell me more, journalistically speaking. Wot paper?

Anonymous said...

Red and hed are both correct, sir!

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