Glossed Over

Memo to Lucky: Stop Existifying Words

To: Lucky staffers

From: Glossed Over

Re: Your, um, creative use of the English language

Lately, a number of you have been failing to use resources writers should be familiar with—we’re thinking of dictionaries, thesauruses, and co-workers—when seeking words to describe the multitude of products you come across every day.  We understand that coming up with a fresh description for each of the dozens of pairs of shoes you encounter must be challenging.

Still, that’s no excuse for flat-out making up words. 

Although you must surely already know this (you did all graduate from high school, yes?), we’d like to take this opportunity to remind staff members that adding –y or –ish to a noun does not make it an adjective.  Also, the origins of the –ify construction are highly specious, and should not be used to make up new words when perfectly acceptable terms that mean the exact same thing already exist. 

In the December issue alone, we found the following violations:

cargo-ish

just-statementy-enough

corset-y

vintagey

glowifier

youthifying

cottagey

loungey

flea market-y 

We must request that you stop this practice immediately, lest your readers develop stress-related aneurysms from trying to parse these too-imaginative constructions.  Worse, these ungodly verbal creations may catch on with the general populace, resulting in “youthifying” skin creams and “loungier” pajamas overtaking the market. (Not to mention the horrible prospect of “flea market-y” being bandied about freely in conversation—we don’t even know what that means.) If finding appropriate descriptors is too difficult for the staff, we suggest Lucky use the J. Crew catalog as a model and consider a shift to a text-free, all-pictures version.

Your cooperation is appreciated.   

All New and Completely Unnecessary

In our relentless quest to devour every magazine on the newsstand, we rarely pause to consider the authors who write the words we so love (or, more often, not love).  Are they truly fulfilled by finding the perfect adjective for that pair of strappy Christian Louboutins?  Do they hate writing relationship articles when they haven’t had even a single date in eighteen months? And is André Leon Talley really as insufferable in person as he comes across in print? 

Aside from the ALT question—come on, he wrote in Vogue about how no Oreos had passed his lips for a year—we really don’t know.

Ever pioneering, Jane has taken steps to remedy this disconnect between the magazine’s staff and its readers via the Internet by launching a blog.  (Never mind that Jane, along with pretty much every other publication, is only now realizing the usefulness of this technology.)  We were hoping the blog would provide an insider’s look at the magazine: who secretly despises Brandon, who’s been stealing Annemarie’s lunch, which two staffers have been making out in the copy room.

Instead we learned these scintillating factoids: Nathan’s apartment building has rats, Tammy the intern thinks New Jersey is inherently amusing, and Catherine watches some truly terrible television.  Also, the staff bowling team sucks, and New York is apparently overrun with three-legged dogs (though we’ve seen no evidence of this ourselves). 

There’s long been a debate over the comparative merits of print and online journalism.  With this blog, Jane definitively tips the battle in favor of the former.  We’d declare an outright victory for the paper version, but we’re still peeved by the use of “maintenance” as a verb on page 76 of April’s issue. 

We’re picky and pedantic, we realize, but at least we know our parts of speech.  Also, our apartment is rodent-free.

Spreading More Than the Fashion Gospel

From Vogue’s “Mood Indigo,” February:

But she’s clearly deeply in love.  [Isla Fisher] recently converted to convert to Judaism…

We never knew it was necessary to convert once before converting to Judaism.  But then, we aren’t exactly Talmudic scholars.  Fortunately, everyone at Vogue is well-versed in the most arcane details of Jewish theology, so they can toss out obscure facts even in fluffy articles about celebrities shopping for the perfect pair of jeans. 

And since buying denim when neither money nor body shape is an issue is unthinkably dull, we suppose we should just be content to have found something—anything—of interest in this feature.

"Chicks" Wouldn't Have Been Our First Choice Either

In Jane’s January issue, Annemarie Conte interviews a series of female “neoactivists”—all of whom fall neatly into Jane’s target demographic—subverting some corporate hierarchy.  One runs an independent clothing consortium; another seeks alternatives to big-business grocery stores; a small group produces and markets biodiesel. 

We were initially excited to see an article focusing on unique, offbeat ways women are working to create positive social change.  We even thought the article might be a high-minded piece of inspirational journalism.  (We’re dreamers.) 

Then we took a second glance at the article’s title.  The story is called

You Ladies Are Gonna Change the World!

Exclamation point theirs.

“Ladies”?  As in ladies of the night, Lady Speed Stick, and a “woman receiving the homage or devotion of a knight or lover”?

When is the last time the word “ladies” was used to refer to a group of progressive, independent women like those featured in the article?  It’s such a skeeve-inducing term,  its use ought to be relegated to feminine-hygiene products and strip clubs.  We’d prefer “women”—a far more neutral term—changing the world, thank you very much. 

And we won’t even comment on the use of “gonna.” 

When Words Fail, Make Up New Ones

We imagine Glamour must be a utopian workplace for cancer survivors. They get first crack at the morning tray of bagels, they don’t have to make coffee when they finish the pot, and they don’t even need to use real words in their articles.

At least that’s what we concluded after reading the current “Cancer Diary,” wherein Erin Zammett, mostly avoiding stereotypical bridal hysteria, waxes about her wedding and then befouls the English language with made-up words.

For instance, there’s this description of the bridesmaids’ gowns:

I’d picked out very sexy, boob-y Vera Wang bridesmaid dresses.

“Boob-y”? Using the ample context clues provided, we’re pretty sure this is not a reference to the tropical seabird. We’d try “low-cut,” perhaps “revealing.”

Then, Erin recounts guests’ reactions to the wedding:

They also told us they were surprised at how un-cancery and purely fun the wedding was.

We initially thought this meant that cancer was not mentioned at the event, but she invited her oncologist and toasted him and his wife (who designed Erin’s gown) at the rehearsal dinner. So we’re left wondering: what does this mean? Did the ring bearer not have a tumor? Did the reception fail to metastatize? Maybe the best man’s speech didn’t involve her latest white blood cell counts.

Finally, on the honeymoon (which we hope was also “un-cancery”), a Glamour reader recognizes Erin:

It was pretty cool to be spotted. (I felt like a cancer-lebrity!)

Cancer-lebrity! Being known for having cancer can’t possibly be a good thing. We’d rather be anonymous and cancer-free, thank you.

Also, we’d rather Glamour wasn’t in the habit of making up words when appropriate ones already exist, but that’s probably just wish-y thinking. We don’t want to be un-realistic-y.

Copyeditor Takes Nap (Again)

glossed

Glamour's "100% Guilt-Free Page" gives us some overly idealistic life advice, including this gem:

Hey, it’s OK...if you could care less about thread count.

We know they must mean "if you couldn’t care less." But hey, it’s okay to make mistakes on the job.  Right?

We Love Our Dictionary

We blame Cosmopolitan.  Their pages have always been sex-drenched, packed with references to  pectoral muscles and thong underwear.  So it wasn’t too jarring when, a few years ago, we spied the word (if you want to call it that) “sexify” in their pages.

What, you’ve never heard that?

Sexify (v.): to make sexy. Painting your nails fire-engine red will sexify even the most buttoned-up ensemble.

This odd equation of noun + -ify = verb caught on, and then there was a veritable onslaught of newfangled words in all our favorite magazines:  Glossify.  Bodify. Shineify.  We admit we’re sticklers about language, but we could live with this.  Obnoxious as it is, at least these made-up words were expressing concepts that usually required a full phrase. Painting your nails fire-engine red will add sex appeal to even the most buttoned-up ensemble.

But Glamour’s August 2005 issue crossed a line we hadn’t even drawn yet.  In a feature on denim, they stated that a pair of jeans had a “slimmifying” effect.

Let us repeat that for you.  SLIMMIFYING.

They took an adjective, slim, and made it into a verb, slimmify.  Then they turned that verb back into an adjective.  That’s quite complicated, especially when they could have just said “slimming.”  Um, Glamour staffers?  There’s no need to make up words when a perfectly good one ALREADY EXISTS.   

Maybe we should just be grateful they didn’t say “skinnifying.”