What is the best way to say that someone has ... uh, suddenly found himself out of work?

The Associated Press this week reported its ... er, nationwide downsizing five different ways in just the first four paragraphs of a story:

    • "... laid off an undisclosed number of news employees. ..." (Implying they might be recalled)

    • "... refused to specify how many jobs were eliminated ..." (Implying no jobs available to which they might be recalled)

    • "Leaders of the News Media Guild ... said 38 Guild-covered reporters, editors and photographers had been fired ..." (Implying they had it coming)

    • "The Guild did not have a count of how many managers and workers outside the U.S. lost their jobs." (That's funny; they were here just a minute ago ...")

    • "... an undisclosed number of union-represented technicians were cut earlier." (The unkindest kind)

How would you want to "go out"?

Mose doesn't like routine use of the word fired unless the termination was made for cause – that is, she did have it coming, and for good reason.

The denotative (dictionary) meaning of the word is innocent enough –  "[pun on discharge] To dismiss from a position; discharge."

But the connotative (perceived) meaning is much more harsh. People don't get fired for no good reason, do they? Wonder what they did wrong. ...

Writers need to be as precise as possible with word choice to avoid confusion. And, as the parenthetical notes above indicate, words have different meanings to different people.

But even the dictionary agrees that layoff generally implies "temporary unemployment." There's something much more permanent about job elimination. (It's not you; it's your job.)

A few years ago, Mose argued that fired was inappropriate in the case of a woman who had been "dismissed" from her job. Her contract had expired, but she stayed on as interim manager during the search for a permanent director.

When another applicant was chosen, a reporter picked fired as the verb of choice to report the board's termination of her employment. Mose argued that the word's connotation requires the reporter to explain the reason for the "involuntary separation." Members of the board of directors gave none, indicating merely that another candidate was preferred, so fired seemed to be a hammer blow when a mere tap was required.

When it comes time to choose just the right word, pick the one that does the job most efficiently. Consider not only how you write it, but how your audience reads it.

Here's a sentence from a columnist from a big downstate newspaper.

Quinn said he "hopes" all of the inmates have learned their lessons behind bars.

The writer wanted to emphasize that Gov. Pat Quinn said he could only hope, not guarantee, that early-released prisoners wouldn't commit crimes.

But that sentence represents a problem writers often have when they use partial quotes within a paraphrase.

In other words, writers must be careful when they move from direct speech to reported speech, because it often involves a change of person in pronouns.

Direct speech is the use of a direction quotation.

Reported speech is paraphrase, leading with attribution, e.g., Quinn said ...

So, if we believe the quoted word in the columnist's paraphrase – that Quinn used the word "hopes" – the governor must have said, "I hopes they have learned their lessons."

Bet he didn't say that.

The problem came when the writer, in reporting Quinn's first-person statement, changed the verb to be consistent with the third-person pronoun (he) in the paraphrase.

In which case, the writer should not have used quotation marks around the verb hopes.

That's what we call a "false quote."

Beware.

As for the false prophets and false positives, avoid talk radio, cable TV and bad physicians.
 

NPR has been reporting all morning that the alleged shooter in the Fort Hood massacre is in "stable condition."

The Associated Press reported this about the suspect:

He was among 30 people wounded in the spree and remained hospitalized on a ventilator Friday. All but two of the injured were still hospitalized, and all were in stable condition.

Let's get one thing straight:

STABLE IS NOT A CONDITION!

Stable is the lack of change in a condition: Not getting worse; not getting better. Unchanging. Stable.

Good is a condition, which says, “She'll be fine.”

Critical is a condition, which says, “He has life-threatening injuries.”

A victim in good condition can be stable.

A person is critical condition can be stable.

The people in the morgue are always stable.

BUT STABLE IS NOT A CONDITION!

So, are those injuries – to the alleged shooter and the other wounded people – not so bad, very serious, or somewhere in between?

Stable tells me their condition is not changing rapidly.

But it doesn't tell me their condition.

GOT THAT?

Poor apostrophe.

So misunderstood. So misused and abused.

Mose has seen several abuses lately.

A criminal was said to have offenses dating back to the 70's and 80's.

The Jones cousins were referred to in the plural as the Jones'.

The cartoon strip Overboard had pirates discussing "putting fear in peoples' hearts."

One at a time:

1) In contractions, put the apostrophe where stuff is missing, e.g., can't has an apostrophe where we removed no.

So those decades are the '70s and '80s, with the apostrophe filling in for the missing 19.

2) The apostrophe does not often form plurals, even if that sign above your neighbor's mailbox says The Smith's. You have one Jones and two Joneses. 

Apostrophes do form of plurals with letters of the alphabet: She learned her ABC's, and The report card was all D's and F's (probably studying punctuation).

3) People, like men and women, is a plural noun. Form the plural possessive by adding ’s.

Most people don't understand apostrophes, but journalists should.

Any grammar book can help. And the AP Stylebook has a good tutorial in its punctuation section toward the back of the book.

Mose recommends it highly.

Just the other night, a colleague mentioned that his sports team had won a game over the weekend even though it had been "losing at halftime."

That is a misconception that Mose never allows to pass.

You see, that guy's team was really winning throughout the game; it was never losing. The other team just happened to be leading at certain points – including halftime – during the contest.

It all goes back to those present participles, those -ing verbs. They are what an editor once described to Mose as "in the process" verbs.

That's why it's redundant to use "in the process" with a present participle. But it is not uncommon to read something like, "The government is in the process of hiring workers for the 2010 census."

The "in the process" is unnecessary; "hiring" alone implies the act is "in the process."

And so it is with winning and losing.

To say a team is losing is to say it is "in the process" of being defeated. But if it turns out the team wins, it was never losing. It was always "in the process of" winning, even though it trailed in the score during the game.

So when people enter the room while you're watching a game on TV, and they ask, "Who's winning?", you have every right – even if you know the score – to say: "I have no idea. We'll have to wait until the game is over to find out."

Try that one on your sports buddies!

Of course, it will require some explanation.

But then, if the score is 100-6, and only 6 seconds remain in the game, you can go out on a limb and project the winner.

Assuming the other team cannot pull off a 95-point play in the closing seconds.

Conditions. Always, conditions.