Editore"s Note
Tilting at Windmills

Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Sign up for Free News & Updates

July 27, 2005
By: Kevin Drum

YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW....This is the ultimate in trivia, but I'm curious about something. When I was in journalism school I was taught never to use "yesterday" or "tomorrow" in news stories, since those words could be misconstrued depending on when the reader happened to be reading the story. ("Today" was OK, though.) Thus, instead of "The president said yesterday that Karl Rove is a fine human being," it should be "The president said on Tuesday that Karl Rove is a fine human being."

This always seemed like a sound rule to me, and it seems even sounder today given that stories are often published on the web on the day before they appear in print. For example, if a story is dated tomorrow, but refers to "yesterday" in the text, it's actually referring to the same day that I'm reading it. Pretty confusing, no?

Despite this, I see "yesterday" and "tomorrow" used all the time in news stories these days (although you might notice that I almost never do old training dies hard), and I'm wondering what happened to the old rule? Is it dead and gone? Are copy editors just being sloppy? Or what?

Kevin Drum 1:33 AM Permalink | Trackbacks

Bookmark and Share
 
Comments




 

 

Read Jonathan Rowe remembrance and articles
Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Sign up for Free News & Updates

Advertise in WM



buy from Amazon and
support the Monthly


Place Your Link Here

--- Links ---

Boarding Schools

Addiction Treatment Centers

Alcohol Treatment Center

Bad Credit Loan

Long Distance Moving Companies

FREE Phone Card

Flowers

Personal Loan

Addiction Treatment

Phone Cards

Less Debt = Financial Freedom

Addiction Treatment Programs