It’s News to Me

Interesting.

Only a year ago, podcasting was an arcane activity, the domain of a few techies and self-admitted “geeks.” Now you can hear everything from NASCAR coverage to NPR’s All Things Considered in downloadable audio files called “podcasts”. Thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store, and websites such as iPodder.com and Podcast.net track thousands more. That’s why the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary have selected “podcast” as the Word of the Year for 2005. Podcast, defined as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player,” will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006.

‘Podcast’ Is the Word of the Year: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Few things grate on my nerves more than grammatical errors as glaring as the one in the title to this post of mine. When I see them flowing from the pens of professional writers or hear TV news anchors or sports announcers blurting them out, I am even more appalled because those folks wield so much influence on the national idiom and, to my consternation, on my grandchildren’s language skills.

This morning I saw this headline in a story on Yahoo News under the byline of one Jay Lindsay, an Associated Press writer, and I cringed. There’s no email address for Mr. Lindsay, nor for the AP. No complaint department to which I can address my indignation. So I’m left with ranting here on my blog about these egregious maulings of the English language.

If you are asking yourself “What is he talking about?,” let me point out that my headline should have read, “They should have gone to school!” and Mr. Lindsay’s headline should have read, “Scientists: Titanic May Have Sunk Faster.” Not only does nobody read, nobody conjugates any more. I go (today), I went (yesterday), I have gone (many times before).

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