A Letter from the Publisher: Aug. 19, 1985

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In the 1920s and 1930s, TlMEstyle was a clever, sometimes irreverent blend of double-barreled adjectives (bald-domed, haystack-haired), word combinations (Nobelman, cinemaddict), neologisms (tycoon, socialite) and inverted sentences. Although that approach changed long ago, style, in a different sense of the word, remains vital to the magazine. Maintaining TIME's linguistic standards and revising them when necessary are the responsibility of the Copy Desk. Says Copy Chief Susan Blair: "Our main concern is to make the magazine as easy as possible to read. We don't want to throw the reader any curves."

Blair and her deputies, Judy Paul, Shirley Barden Zimmerman and Eleanor Edgar, along with 19 copyreaders, check every article for grammar, syntax and usage. Some common errors: confusing who and whom, which and that, and homonyms like horde/hoard; mismatched subjects and verbs, as in "One out of five deaths were . . ." (the subject is one); and dangling modifiers like "Winner of the Nobel Prize, her neighbors did not know . . ." (the neighbors did not win).

TIME generally avoids slang and jargon and feels gutter language is best left there. Among discouraged words are cop and kid. Also scowled upon are clichés--nothing should become a household name--and the likes of "tantamount to" and "may well," "arguably" and "recently." (One of the managing editor's most sweeping suggestions, arguably, was: "Approach with caution any word that ends with ly.") For consistency, numbers below 13 are always spelled out, and contractions are avoided, except in quotations. Particularly troublesome are transliterations from such languages as Chinese, Russian and Arabic. In TIME, Libya's leader is Gaddafi, not Gadaffi, Khaddafi or Khadafy.

The guidelines are contained in a 182-page style manual and an 83-page list of proper names plus phrases or words that TIME may spell in ways that differ from standard dictionaries (racquet, kidnaped). The manual and word list are constantly evolving. Foreign words, for example, are italicized (contras, Ostpolitik) until they have entered the language (détente and nouvelle cuisine)

The Copy Desk also assesses the evolution of usage in the U.S. A current priority is to eliminate language that is considered sexist. All but gone are such implicitly pejorative nouns as poetess, murderess, coed and comedienne. Sighs Blair: "I have tried to eliminate waitress and actress too, but we have not come that far yet." Well, each thing in its own time.

John A. Meyer