Blog Post 3: The A**hole Dilemma

First of all, my stance on obscenities and profanity would be to only use them if they were necessary and exclude or put asterisks in place of them if they're unneeded. My main argument for this is that profanities and vulgarities are used in excess by some people that they lose their meaning to the point where they equate to an "uh". While I'm not trying to paint the whole usage of profanity with a broad brush, I definitely know that there are people who use it too liberally that it loses meaning. 

That stance applies mostly toward private citizens because they're status is not looked up to on a daily basis. 

Situations 1:

I wouldn't run this usage because it does not add anything else to the story. By blurring it out with an asterisk, we would not take anything away from the statements of the individual toward the dancing studio. And since there is no benefit to running the words, there could be more risks in readers angry about the use of profanity in a paper.

Just as well, there is nothing newsworthy about a private citizen cursing. I think it should only be reserved for public and popular figures in society.

Situation 2:

Yes, I would publish Bush's slip up of the word 'asshole'. Though Bush believed he was in a private setting, this is newsworthy because it reveals how a presidential candidate is behind-the-scenes. Rarely does the public ever get to see public figures as they truly are. Public figures always have a veil of theatrics over them because they have to satisfy certain standards. Moments like these, though Bush did not mean to say it publicly reveal a character trait that would otherwise be unable to be found. 

And I would not put them in asterisks because it would detract from the immense verbal slip-up made by Bush. 

Situation 3:

This is tricky for me because it's a public figure who knew what they were going to say, but what they were going to say does not carry as much impact as does the Bush situation. Including 'asshole' in this would be more like shock factor than the newsworthiness of Bush's situation. For the sports community though, it would be big news for them to see a coach insult a whole team. Overall, I'd publish this with the word substituted with asterisks like 'a**hole' or '***hole'. 

I think the main point of the asterisks would be understood without actually having them written down. Unlike the Bush situation, the characteristics of an NBA coach do not weigh as much as the POTUS. 

Blog Post 2: The Importance of Semantics for Copy Editors

Understanding semantics is vital for a copy editor because it allows them to grasp the full meaning of words. Though everyone talks using words and types using words, the breadth of words is overlooked in day to day life.

But I don't think it's just about isolating a single word or phrase. I think it's just as important to see the meaning of a word in relation to another word that it is commonly used with. Or how space and time affects the meaning of words. "He was with us" could be someone passed away or that someone physically was in the presence in one instance and left to be in another physical area. "I saw the president" could mean you physically saw him live or on a documentary.

Two easy terms for an example are caught and found. Caught always carries a negative connotation. It implies that whatever the subject of the sentence was doing was wrong, unethical, or illegal. Found has more innocence and less malice in it's meaning. However, both terms can be understood through context, which is why I believe semantics is overlooked, because context helps people understand the main point of a sentence.

"I caught him at the store"
"I found him at the store"

While we can understand both sentences to mean that one person interacted in some way with another in a store, caught is an incriminating word and ambiguous. The word caught doesn't explicitly say whether the person saw the other person with their eyes or grabbed the person with their hands. Yet either one could be a correct interpretation while still carrying negative connotations. Whereas 'found' has little if any physical touch behind its meaning. Found is a word connected with visuals from the eyes. Found is also attached to another preceding concept. For something to be found, it has to be lost. So found introduces the concept that one person is purposely out to find the other in a store.

Understanding these differences is key for a copy editor because plenty of words are loaded with different interpretations and meanings. One point of journalism is to effectively communicate. And effective communication can not be reached if the people in journalism do not understand the words they're using.

Additionally, I do know there is a branch of philosophy that argues that words never mean what we actually think they mean. And I'm just mentioning that to show how deep semantics can be argued or thought about.



Here are three examples of loaded terms from other news sources.

http://nypost.com/2015/11/04/more-than-half-of-black-millennials-say-they-know-or-have-been-victims-of-police-abuse/

In this image, it could be "whites" and "Latinos"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/05/psychiatry-doesnt-recognize-orthorexia-an-obsession-with-healthy-eating-but-the-internet-does/


In this image, the loaded term is "purity".

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/us/illinois-police-officers-shooting-was-suicide-officials-say.html

In this image, the loaded term is "conservatives".