The Old Prof Thinks Out Loud

One of the most common, and unbearable, redundancies in American English -- and, for once, the AP Stylebook agrees -- is to say someone died of "terminal cancer."
Gee, don't you think we can figure out the cancer was "terminal" by the very fact that the person is now deceased?
And I, as usual, would take it one step more and suggest that we shouldn't be using "terminal" at all in any of these death-inviting phrases. For example, people tend to say "So-And-So has terminal cancer." Well, does she? If she is still alive we can't be sure at all. And, if you're working in journalism, it is nothing more than a prediction, like the weather, not a verified fact until it occurs; you'd have to wait until she actually died to be sure the cancer was, in fact, "terminal," and then you wouldn't use it, either, because of the redundancy already cited here.
What if the poor woman lives another six months? Or another year? Or another decade? It can -- and has been known to -- happen. And, when she finally does kick the bucket -- with or without completing her "bucket list" -- the cause of death isn't cancer? So, she would never have had anything you could label "terminal cancer," and your earlier report turns out to be not only premature, but completely false.
It seems to me it would always be a lot safer to bury the term "terminal (illness)" and revert to one of the old standbys, like "the doctors don't expect her to live six months" or "the doctors are saying it's terminal." Then the doctors can be proved wrong, but you can't.
Are you listening, AP Stylebook?

As part of my lifetime of teaching copy editing, which necessarily includes headline writing, I have accumulated a wonderful collection of miswritten, misguided, and nonsequiturian headlines, most of them written by real professional headline writers and published in actual professional publications and almost always hilariously outlandish.
Today's addition from Fox Sports on MSN.com:
"How drivers can race a day after death in a fiery crash"
Man, those are great doctors working on those guys! Is one of them named Frankenstein?
(This is one of those headlines that I would classify as "Medical Miracles" headlines -- such as "Death In the ring: Boxers are not same afterward" and "Smokers are productive, but death cuts efficiency"! -- more likely to show up in Weekly World News than a professional publication or Web site, I'd think.)

Rheta Grimsley Johnson, the Southern newspaper columnist, is one of my favorite non-fiction writers. She almost always manages to hit whatever nail she is pounding squarely on the head.
One of the most memorable times she did that was several years ago when she penned a column that concluded that Republicans should simply stay away from art -- i.e., the National Endowment for the Arts -- because they have absolutely no affinity for it. They don't have the right genes to appreciate any art beyond the Sunday comics or rest room graffiti (this was before the Larry Craig episode).
They don't have the "feel" or the temperament to appreciate art, especially when their political and religious views get between them and Mozart or Monet or Eugene O'Neill. They become virtually inert in the presence of the works of Picasso, Ezra Pound, or Marlon Brando.
I think Rheta nailed the insensitive bastards right on the head. In case she left any doubt, here's the most recent collection of Republican arts awards (from the wire service in my head):
Best Painting -- "Dogs Playing Poker"
Best Artist -- Thomas Kinkaide
Best Movie Actor -- Keanu Reeves
Best Movie -- "The Ten Commandments" or anything with Julie Andrews in it
Best TV Actor -- David Caruso
Best TV Show -- "Deal or No Deal"
Best Song -- "Let the Eagle Soar" by John Ashcroft
Best Poet -- What's a poet? Oh, you mean like the guys at Hallmark?
(more to come)

Hey, a kid from the Hoosier state won the National Spelling Bee! How do you like them appels?
Now if we can only get him together with our state's most notorious misspeller, J. Danforth Quayle (see, he can't even spell his own last name).