Words We Love Too Much

Yes, I’ve voiced this complaint before. But our love of “famously” appears undiminished.

The word is often superfluous and sometimes slightly annoying. If the situation in question is truly famous, it’s usually unnecessary to say so; a reader will already know. And if the situation isn’t widely known â€" if I’ve never heard the story before â€" insisting that it’s famous just makes me feel clueless.

Nonetheless, we recently managed to use “famously” six times â€" in a single day (June 9). Help!

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Then as now, it was a cash transaction. Among its many criteria for allowing transfers of ownership, the famously selective co-op board at 778 Park accepts only cash. Turndowns of even all-cash suitors are not unheard-of; Brooke Astor’s much-photographed 16th-floor apartment, originally on the market for $46 million and ultimately bought by a hede fund manager for $21 million in 2011, was at the mercy of the board through three years of price reductions and repeated offers from affluent buyers nonetheless deemed ineligible.

Surely you were aware of how selective that particular co-op board is. No? Why, it’s famous!

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Bruce and Kris Jenner, married since 1991, are the subject of tabloid divorce rumors in part fueled by a story line on the show. On last week’s season premiere, Ms. Jenner appeared briefly to discuss the state of her parents’ marriage.

In the suite, in a rare unrehearsed moment, she said of the divorce rumor, “It’s just stupid; that’s not true.”

(Her mother, who famously manages her children’s careers, was not in the room.)

If you follow the Kardashians, you probably know this; if you don’t, you don’t. Either way, “famously” is superfluous.

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But Ms. Power is no John R. Bolton, George W. Bush’s United Nations envoy, who once ! famously remarked that nobody would notice if someone lopped the top 10 floors off the United Nations Secretariat building.

I have no recollection of this “famous” remark. Should I feel dumb? (Perhaps we meant something like, “who once created a stir by remarking …” If so, let’s say that.)

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Larger publishing houses use the expo to promote titles they want everyone talking about come fall. This year, that includes Elizabeth Gilbert’s first book of fiction in more than 12 years, “The Signature of All Things”; Jonathan Lethem’s novel “Dissident Gardens”; and “Blowback,” the first thriller in a planned series written by Sarah Lovett and Valerie Plame, the former C.I.A. operative whose cover was famously blown by Robert Novak’s column in 2003.

If we want to remind people of the circumstances surrounding this case, we have to say more than this. If we think everyone remembers, there’s no need to say “famously.”

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p>It was a folksy and apt metaphor for an unproductive political convention grinding to an exhausted halt. But then he [Earl L. Butz, President Gerald R. Ford's secretary of agriculture] went on to tell the famously nasty racist joke that got him fired.

Ditto.

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Having moved only weeks before from Philadelphia, where Santa Claus himself was famously booed during an Eagles game, I half expected the guy to slug me. Instead, looking taken aback, he said, “I hadn’t thought of it like that. I’m sorry.” I was stunned into silence.

I doubt many people outside Philadelphia recall this “famous” incident. I don’t.

 
And Another One

A colleague notes a recent rash of “foes.” The Times’s stylebook warns that the word, which means “enemy,” is frequently hyperbolic in political and other contexts. It’s seldom used in ordinary conversation and has a flavor of journalese. Let’s! be judic! ious.

A couple of recent questionable uses:

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He nominated Gina McCarthy to lead the E.P.A. even though he knew she would stir opposition among foes of environmental regulation.

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Against Rufin [at the French Open tennis tournament], he was facing a foe 12 years younger but far less accomplished.

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The Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan, where the service was held, was filled with a tableau of political friends and foes ranging from local New Jersey lawmakers to Washington fixtures.

Besides the hyperbole of calling a political rival a “foe,” this “friend/foe” formulation is a tired cliché.

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Mr. Dingell has earned himself foes and friends and watched his cherished Congress change from the days when committee chairmen held sway to a body overrun with partisan discord and strife.

Ditto.

 
In a Word

This week’s grab bag of grmmar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.

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But Hezbollah’s large-scale entry into the fight in recent weeks and the Assad government’s firepower has tilted the battlefield in favor of the Syrian government.

Subject-verb agreement; Hezbollah’s entry into the fight and the Assad government’s firepower have tilted the battlefield, not has tilted.

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Selecting jurors may prove to be the most longest part of the trial of Mr. Zimmerman, 29, the neighborhood watch volunteer who claimed self-defense in shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in a gated community here more than 16 months ago.

Our ragged edges were left to show in our haste to post this online update.

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[Caption] Sarah Murnaghan, left, with her adopted sister, Ella, in her hospital bed.

We should refer to adoptive status only when it’s relevant an! d the rel! evance is clear, which was not the case here.

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ISPARTA, Turkey â€" After retaking Taksim Square in Istanbul after hours of ugly street battles with police officers firing tear gas this month, many of the haggard protesters cracked bottles of Efes beer and raised them in a mock toast to their prime minister, who had recently pushed through a law to curb drinking.

Two “afters” make the phrase awkward and the timeline overly complex.

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At that point, neither knew his name yet.

Redundant; we could have omitted “yet.”

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In many ways, the Sunday morning talk shows are like ID lanyards and BlackBerries. While much of the nation has lost interest in them, they hold a big â€" some would say disproportionate â€" sway in Washington.

For the proper name, the plural is BlackBerrys.

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Despite not having a high school degree, he was later hred by the C.I.A. to work on information technology security, serving in Geneva.

Generally use “diploma” for high school, not “degree.”

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Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a veteran Republican member of one of the Senate’s most testosterone-driven panels, was now flanked by them on both sides, including by two Republican colleagues, Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska.

Perhaps we meant “male-dominated”? We might want to leave endocrinology to the experts and be sparing with this increasingly common trope.

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When his blog was picked up by Salon, said Kerry Lauerman, the magazine’s departing editor in chief, Salon agreed that Mr. Greenwald would have direct access to their computer system so that he could publish his blog posts himself without an editor seeing them first if he so chose.

Agreement. Make that “its computer system” or “the sit! e’s com! puter system.”

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Last year’s meeting in the Bronx drew 21 speakers (of which 12 were tenants) compared with 55 in Manhattan, he said.

Make it “of whom.”

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Mr. Zimmerman talked to police repeatedly and willingly, making statements that lay the groundwork for his self-defense case.

We use the article: “the police.”

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Johnny Johnston in “This Time for Keeps” (1947), John Carroll in “Fiesta” (1947) and Peter Lawford in “On an Island With You” (1948) were male ingénues whom the studio was hoping might turn into stars.

Who, not whom; it’s the subject of “might turn.”

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Throughout the recent upheaval, Mr. Erdogan’s behavior has given new fuel to already-simmering questions about his aims and methods â€" whether he has turned more autocrat then democrat, or at the least whether a deft politician has fallen into overconfidence.

“Than,†not “then,” of course. A distressingly common typo.

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More important, Weebly continuously adds themes and removes old and outdated ones.

“Continuously” means uninterrupted in time or space. We meant “continually,” which means periodically, or on a regular basis.

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Under the new system, 20 percent to 25 percent of a teacher’s rating score would be determined by state-approved measures of students growth.

We needed an apostrophe: “students’ growth.”

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The singer Ashlee Simpson has a young son named Bronx, and a hard-core punk band from Los Angeles also chose that name before ever stepping foot in the Bronx proper (the members have visited since).

Make it either “setting foot” or “stepping.”

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ALBANY â€" At 74, Justice Sidney F. Strauss loves his job and has no desire to stop working. But at the end of 2014, he may be forced into his golden years by a ! mandatory! retirement rule.

“Fifty years ago, when the life expectancy was 61, if you said, ‘You want to work to 76?’ They’d say, ‘You should live so long,’ ” said Justice Strauss, a State Supreme Court judge in Queens. “But as long as I am physically and mentally capable of doing this, I want to keep doing this.”

The highlighted phrase is not a quote with a quote, so it should not have single quotation marks or be set off with a comma.