By MERVIN BLOCK
August 2004

The crew of CBS’s “60 Minutes” investigates wrongdoing, but let’s try to right—or rewrite—some of their wrongs. Fortunately, we can benefit from their missteps because each one provides a lesson. So let’s look at some flawed scripts from the Sunday edition:

“They say that the only reason they let you go was because of an act of clemency by King Fahd.” (May 9, 2004) Clemency is an act of leniency, so delete an act of. The New York Times stylebook says: “…because and why are built into the meaning of reason. So avoid the reason is because and the reason why.” And delete that that. And that’s that.

Verbal abuse: “South American shoplifting teams feed a black market for stolen goods that flourish in most big cities.” (July 11, 2004) Subject-verb disagreement. Stolen goods don’t flourish; the black market flourishes. The verb should agree with its subject, not with a word that comes between them.

Overkill: “Saddam tried to have him assassinated eight times.” (March 30, 2003) Better: “Saddam tried eight times to assassinate him.”

Update (Aug. 28, 2004): A reader has rejected my rewrite. He says Saddam didn’t personally try to kill the intended victim but sent underlings. So the reader prefers “Saddam tried eight times to have him assassinated.” My defense: People say, “Hitler murdered millions,” “Stalin murdered millions” and “Mao murdered millions.”

Update (Oct. 1, 2004): Don Kirk, a journalist, also objected to my rewrite. So now it’s 2-1 against it, and I’m the lonely only 1. Don, writing from Baghdad, says Saddam himself well might have murdered eight people–or eighty. But in the script I dealt with, Saddam had farmed out the job. Inasmuch as he’s reputed to have sometimes taken such matters into his own hands, my rewrite should have been taken that into account. So I’m reversing myself and redoing my rewrite: “Saddam tried eight times to have him assassinated.”

Double trouble: “Ricker said in a sworn affidavit that he witnessed that inaction….” (May 11, 2003) Sworn affidavit is redundant. If it’s not sworn to, it’s not an affidavit. Witnessed? Why not saw? And how on earth (or in orbit) can someone witness inaction? Also: the script has one that too many.

A grammatical lapse: “This whole question of those mobile labs roaming around the country making biological weapons was a big factor in us going to war.” (March 7, 2004) Us should be our. Why? Because a pronoun preceding a gerund should be in the possessive form. But even if a correspondent gets it right (“our going to war”), the wording raises questions: Is “60 Minutes” at war? Does “60” have its own militia?

Oops: “But the plot is ripped from the pages of the Bible, so it all winds up here in Israel, where according to the Book of Revelations….” (June 8, 2003) According to the New Testament, it’s the Book of Revelation. (A mistake like that could lead to Lamentations.)

Unstylish: “He pled guilty to six out of 13 counts….” (June 27, 2004) The stylebooks of the AP, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal agree with the Washington Post: “The past tense of plead is pleaded, not pled.”

Dangler below: “Born in 1943, his mother was a Boston blue blood and his father was an Army Air Corps pilot who later became a Foreign Service officer, which meant that [John] Kerry, the second of four children, moved from place to place in the United States and Europe.” (Jan. 25, 2004)

The subject of that sentence is John Kerry, and he was born in 1943. But the sentence says Kerry’s mother was born in 1943. Besides, the sentence is too busy and too long (46 words).

And the correspondent said of Kerry’s wife, “Born in Mozambique, Africa, her father was a Portuguese doctor.” Same problem. Mrs. Kerry was born in Mozambique, but the sentence says her father was born there. (He was not.)

Strunk and White’s Elements of Style says: “A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.” Sentences violating that rule, the book says, are often ludicrous. And it offers this priceless (or priced less) example: “Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap.”

Another correspondent spoke of deadly chemicals:

“The American Chemistry Council did oppose Corzine’s bill, which required chemical companies to stockpile less chemicals on site….” (June 13, 2004) Less? No, fewer. If the correspondent had been talking about a bulk quantity of one chemical, less of the chemical would have put him on safe ground. Maybe he meant fewer chemicals and less of them.

The verbivore Richard Lederer says: “Less means ‘not so much’ and refers to amount or quantity. Fewer means ‘not so many’ and refers to number, things that are countable—’less food’ but ‘fewer cookies’; ‘less nutrition’ but…’fewer calories.’ ”

The grammarian Patricia T. O’Conner advises in her book Woe is I, “Use fewer to mean a smaller number of individual things; use less to mean a smaller quantity of something.” Something is singular. And less takes a singular noun. So for that “60 Minutes” script’s “deadly chemicals,” less is dead wrong.

Another lapse: “This fifth installment in the Harry Potter series will doubtless set all sorts of new publishing records.” (June 15, 2003) New record is an old redundancy. When someone sets a record, it supersedes the previous record, so it is new. And when someone tells me something will occur without a doubt, I begin to doubt.

Unconvincing: “After convincing one of his customers to loan him $500, Cuban launched MicroSolutions….” (Feb. 15, 2004) Convince should be followed by that or of, not to. Persuade is followed by to. As for loan, the Wall Street Journal stylebook advises: “Avoid as a verb. Use lend, lent.”

Another slip: “They run their regions like fiefdoms….” (May 4, 2003) The New York Times stylebook points out: “fief means land or domain. So fiefdom is redundant.” The stylebook of the Wall Street Journal and that of the British newsweekly The Economist say tersely, “Fief, not fiefdom.”

Misplaced modifier: “It’s gotten so bad that today most of the young women only feel safe if they’re covered up or if they stay at [no need for at] home.” (May 16, 2004) Only is in the wrong place. The sentence should read “…young women feel safe only if they’re covered up or if they stay home.”

Another error: “Faenza says medical research shows that a past history of serious mental illness is not a predictor of future violence….” (June 29, 2003) All history is past. And the business of a predictor is to predict the future. So delete past and future.

Wrong word: “But fake golf clubs don’t begin to suggest the enormity of the problem.” (Aug. 8, 2004) The problem is enormity. The stylebook of Canada’s Globe and Mail says of enormity: “It means heinousness, extreme wickedness or an outrageous or heinous [offense]. It has nothing to do with size, for which we would have to use the word enormousness or, preferably, a less awkward synonym such as immensity….” Willie Weinbaum of ESPN suggests magnitude.

Free advice: “If we want advertising, we’ll stay home and watch it for free on television.” (Aug. 15, 2004) Free can be a verb, an adverb, or an adjective. But, as the Wall Street Journal stylebook notes, “It is not a noun, so for free is a solecism. Drop the for.” Free means “at no cost” or “for nothing.” (Did anyone ever tell you there’s no such thing as a for-free lunch?)

One in the eye: “You’re one of the few theater owners who doesn’t run commercials before the feature film starts.” (Aug. 15, 2004)

Should be: “You’re one of the few theater owners who do not run commercials….” Why the plural do instead of the singular does? An explanation by Bryan A. Garner in Garner’s Modern American Usage:

“…the verb should be plural because who or that is the subject, and it takes its number from the plural noun to which who or that refers….” Garner is one of the experts who explain it best.

The biggest cluster of boo-boos in one “60 Minutes” story in the past 10 years:

“He [an economist] says the average French citizen hands over fully 46 percent of all his income to the government in all kinds of taxes. The average American, he says, hands over just 30 percent. That’s more than 15 percent less.” (Dec. 3, 1995)

Whoa! And woe unto those of us who trip over simple numbers. The difference between what Americans pay, 30 percent, and what the French pay, 46 percent, is 16 percentage points. And the American payment is about 33 percent less, not 15 percent.

The last sentence of the boldface excerpt—”That’s more than 15 percent less”—poses another problem. With more and less so close, it’s hard for a listener to get the point.

But the numbers in that script aren’t its only problem. The words also need work. The correspondent says the average American hands the government just 30 percent of his income. Just 30 percent? Just or unjust, let the number speak for itself: 30 percent will do. As for “fully 46 percent,” that number doesn’t need a modifier.

The correspondent also reports that the director of a French orchestra says the government provides “a full 20 percent” of his budget. I don’t want to fulminate about full and fully, but they suggest that the writer was straining.

Another faux pas: the correspondent calls the Champs-Elysees, an elegant boulevard, “noisy and fume-filled.” Noisy it may be. But “fume-filled” is not conversational. “Full of fumes” is conversational, but how could the Champs-Elysees—230 feet wide and 6,266 feet long—be full of fumes?

The correspondent goes on to say that a French actress in the 60-percent-tax bracket must pay an extra wealth tax that boosts her tax rate to 70 percent. He calls the jump to 70 percent from 60 percent an increase of “10 percent.” Wrong. It’s an increase of 10 percentage points. Correct: 16.7 percent.

If you’re an innumerate, welcome to the club. Many of us need to review a high school textbook that deals with percentages. And we all need to keep in mind some advice in the newsletter Copy Editor. It offers five rules from Edward MacNeal, author of Mathsemantics: Making Numbers Talk Sense, rules worth reviewing:

* Mistrust all percentages over 100. Don’t use the word times with comparative modifiers, such as more, larger, better, less, fewer, smaller and worse.
* Double-check comparisons containing words like tripling and threefold.
* Avoid mixing fractions, percentages and decimals within [a script], and never mix them within a single comparison.
* Mistrust percentages added to other percentages.

Copy Editor also passes along a passel of other tips on percents. Two of them:

* A tripling is an increase of 200 percent, not 300 percent. A quadrupling is an increase of 300 percent. [Doubling is a 100 percent increase.]
* A phrase like six times fewer than is absurd.

To see that your math doesn’t do a number on you, make sure someone else in your newsroom checks your math. (No, it isn’t called aftermath.)

As for “60 Minutes,” they need to take more time.

By MERVIN BLOCK
August 2004

The crew of CBS’s “60 Minutes” investigates wrongdoing, but let’s try to right—or rewrite—some of their wrongs. Fortunately, we can benefit from their missteps because each one provides a lesson. So let’s look at some flawed scripts from the Sunday edition:

“They say that the only reason they let you go was because of an act of clemency by King Fahd.” (May 9, 2004) Clemency is an act of leniency, so delete an act of. The New York Times stylebook says: “…because and why are built into the meaning of reason. So avoid the reason is because and the reason why.” And delete that that. And that’s that.

Verbal abuse: “South American shoplifting teams feed a black market for stolen goods that flourish in most big cities.” (July 11, 2004) Subject-verb disagreement. Stolen goods don’t flourish; the black market flourishes. The verb should agree with its subject, not with a word that comes between them.

Overkill: “Saddam tried to have him assassinated eight times.” (March 30, 2003) Better: “Saddam tried eight times to assassinate him.”

Update (Aug. 28, 2004): A reader has rejected my rewrite. He says Saddam didn’t personally try to kill the intended victim but sent underlings. So the reader prefers “Saddam tried eight times to have him assassinated.” My defense: People say, “Hitler murdered millions,” “Stalin murdered millions” and “Mao murdered millions.”

Update (Oct. 1, 2004): Don Kirk, a journalist, also objected to my rewrite. So now it’s 2-1 against it, and I’m the lonely only 1. Don, writing from Baghdad, says Saddam himself well might have murdered eight people–or eighty. But in the script I dealt with, Saddam had farmed out the job. Inasmuch as he’s reputed to have sometimes taken such matters into his own hands, my rewrite should have been taken that into account. So I’m reversing myself and redoing my rewrite: “Saddam tried eight times to have him assassinated.”

Double trouble: “Ricker said in a sworn affidavit that he witnessed that inaction….” (May 11, 2003) Sworn affidavit is redundant. If it’s not sworn to, it’s not an affidavit. Witnessed? Why not saw? And how on earth (or in orbit) can someone witness inaction? Also: the script has one that too many.

A grammatical lapse: “This whole question of those mobile labs roaming around the country making biological weapons was a big factor in us going to war.” (March 7, 2004) Us should be our. Why? Because a pronoun preceding a gerund should be in the possessive form. But even if a correspondent gets it right (“our going to war”), the wording raises questions: Is “60 Minutes” at war? Does “60” have its own militia?

Oops: “But the plot is ripped from the pages of the Bible, so it all winds up here in Israel, where according to the Book of Revelations….” (June 8, 2003) According to the New Testament, it’s the Book of Revelation. (A mistake like that could lead to Lamentations.)

Unstylish: “He pled guilty to six out of 13 counts….” (June 27, 2004) The stylebooks of the AP, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal agree with the Washington Post: “The past tense of plead is pleaded, not pled.”

Dangler below: “Born in 1943, his mother was a Boston blue blood and his father was an Army Air Corps pilot who later became a Foreign Service officer, which meant that [John] Kerry, the second of four children, moved from place to place in the United States and Europe.” (Jan. 25, 2004)

The subject of that sentence is John Kerry, and he was born in 1943. But the sentence says Kerry’s mother was born in 1943. Besides, the sentence is too busy and too long (46 words).

And the correspondent said of Kerry’s wife, “Born in Mozambique, Africa, her father was a Portuguese doctor.” Same problem. Mrs. Kerry was born in Mozambique, but the sentence says her father was born there. (He was not.)

Strunk and White’s Elements of Style says: “A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.” Sentences violating that rule, the book says, are often ludicrous. And it offers this priceless (or priced less) example: “Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap.”

Another correspondent spoke of deadly chemicals:

“The American Chemistry Council did oppose Corzine’s bill, which required chemical companies to stockpile less chemicals on site….” (June 13, 2004) Less? No, fewer. If the correspondent had been talking about a bulk quantity of one chemical, less of the chemical would have put him on safe ground. Maybe he meant fewer chemicals and less of them.

The verbivore Richard Lederer says: “Less means ‘not so much’ and refers to amount or quantity. Fewer means ‘not so many’ and refers to number, things that are countable—’less food’ but ‘fewer cookies’; ‘less nutrition’ but…’fewer calories.’ ”

The grammarian Patricia T. O’Conner advises in her book Woe is I, “Use fewer to mean a smaller number of individual things; use less to mean a smaller quantity of something.” Something is singular. And less takes a singular noun. So for that “60 Minutes” script’s “deadly chemicals,” less is dead wrong.

Another lapse: “This fifth installment in the Harry Potter series will doubtless set all sorts of new publishing records.” (June 15, 2003) New record is an old redundancy. When someone sets a record, it supersedes the previous record, so it is new. And when someone tells me something will occur without a doubt, I begin to doubt.

Unconvincing: “After convincing one of his customers to loan him $500, Cuban launched MicroSolutions….” (Feb. 15, 2004) Convince should be followed by that or of, not to. Persuade is followed by to. As for loan, the Wall Street Journal stylebook advises: “Avoid as a verb. Use lend, lent.”

Another slip: “They run their regions like fiefdoms….” (May 4, 2003) The New York Times stylebook points out: “fief means land or domain. So fiefdom is redundant.” The stylebook of the Wall Street Journal and that of the British newsweekly The Economist say tersely, “Fief, not fiefdom.”

Misplaced modifier: “It’s gotten so bad that today most of the young women only feel safe if they’re covered up or if they stay at [no need for at] home.” (May 16, 2004) Only is in the wrong place. The sentence should read “…young women feel safe only if they’re covered up or if they stay home.”

Another error: “Faenza says medical research shows that a past history of serious mental illness is not a predictor of future violence….” (June 29, 2003) All history is past. And the business of a predictor is to predict the future. So delete past and future.

Wrong word: “But fake golf clubs don’t begin to suggest the enormity of the problem.” (Aug. 8, 2004) The problem is enormity. The stylebook of Canada’s Globe and Mail says of enormity: “It means heinousness, extreme wickedness or an outrageous or heinous [offense]. It has nothing to do with size, for which we would have to use the word enormousness or, preferably, a less awkward synonym such as immensity….” Willie Weinbaum of ESPN suggests magnitude.

Free advice: “If we want advertising, we’ll stay home and watch it for free on television.” (Aug. 15, 2004) Free can be a verb, an adverb, or an adjective. But, as the Wall Street Journal stylebook notes, “It is not a noun, so for free is a solecism. Drop the for.” Free means “at no cost” or “for nothing.” (Did anyone ever tell you there’s no such thing as a for-free lunch?)

One in the eye: “You’re one of the few theater owners who doesn’t run commercials before the feature film starts.” (Aug. 15, 2004)

Should be: “You’re one of the few theater owners who do not run commercials….” Why the plural do instead of the singular does? An explanation by Bryan A. Garner in Garner’s Modern American Usage:

“…the verb should be plural because who or that is the subject, and it takes its number from the plural noun to which who or that refers….” Garner is one of the experts who explain it best.

The biggest cluster of boo-boos in one “60 Minutes” story in the past 10 years:

“He [an economist] says the average French citizen hands over fully 46 percent of all his income to the government in all kinds of taxes. The average American, he says, hands over just 30 percent. That’s more than 15 percent less.” (Dec. 3, 1995)

Whoa! And woe unto those of us who trip over simple numbers. The difference between what Americans pay, 30 percent, and what the French pay, 46 percent, is 16 percentage points. And the American payment is about 33 percent less, not 15 percent.

The last sentence of the boldface excerpt—”That’s more than 15 percent less”—poses another problem. With more and less so close, it’s hard for a listener to get the point.

But the numbers in that script aren’t its only problem. The words also need work. The correspondent says the average American hands the government just 30 percent of his income. Just 30 percent? Just or unjust, let the number speak for itself: 30 percent will do. As for “fully 46 percent,” that number doesn’t need a modifier.

The correspondent also reports that the director of a French orchestra says the government provides “a full 20 percent” of his budget. I don’t want to fulminate about full and fully, but they suggest that the writer was straining.

Another faux pas: the correspondent calls the Champs-Elysees, an elegant boulevard, “noisy and fume-filled.” Noisy it may be. But “fume-filled” is not conversational. “Full of fumes” is conversational, but how could the Champs-Elysees—230 feet wide and 6,266 feet long—be full of fumes?

The correspondent goes on to say that a French actress in the 60-percent-tax bracket must pay an extra wealth tax that boosts her tax rate to 70 percent. He calls the jump to 70 percent from 60 percent an increase of “10 percent.” Wrong. It’s an increase of 10 percentage points. Correct: 16.7 percent.

If you’re an innumerate, welcome to the club. Many of us need to review a high school textbook that deals with percentages. And we all need to keep in mind some advice in the newsletter Copy Editor. It offers five rules from Edward MacNeal, author of Mathsemantics: Making Numbers Talk Sense, rules worth reviewing:

* Mistrust all percentages over 100. Don’t use the word times with comparative modifiers, such as more, larger, better, less, fewer, smaller and worse.
* Double-check comparisons containing words like tripling and threefold.
* Avoid mixing fractions, percentages and decimals within [a script], and never mix them within a single comparison.
* Mistrust percentages added to other percentages.

Copy Editor also passes along a passel of other tips on percents. Two of them:

* A tripling is an increase of 200 percent, not 300 percent. A quadrupling is an increase of 300 percent. [Doubling is a 100 percent increase.]
* A phrase like six times fewer than is absurd.

To see that your math doesn’t do a number on you, make sure someone else in your newsroom checks your math. (No, it isn’t called aftermath.)

As for “60 Minutes,” they need to take more time.