The sub-header on the post reads, “Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style.”
“Ooooh,” I said to the NYT page, “where have you been all my life…? And why not turn this post into a regular blog?”
But I digress.
Here’s the blurb in question, and the correction:
“You have a candidate who hasn’t been the most popular elected official in the state, who is pushing an agenda that is completely at odds with the constituents in his state, and you have an economic environment that is the worst the state’s ever faced,” says Danny Tarkanian, one of a half-dozen Republicans lining up for the chance to oppose Reid. He is the son of Jerry Tarkanian, the former University of Nevada, Las Vegas, basketball coach, as big of a celebrity as you can find in Nevada.
Delete the “of.” The Times’s stylebook says this:
Omit of after a modifier that is followed by a or an: so big of a deal is regional dialect and should be changed to so big a deal. And write so sweet an apple, not so sweet of an apple.
I searched the ‘net in vain to find the source of the paragraph on Tarkanian. I then emailed the NYT news editor who wrote the post to see if he’ll tell me. Will update if I hear back. Not that you care, Dear Reader, as you likely do not share my obsession with proper grammar and syntax.
Update: Blogger @DullardMush comes up with the source via a Tweet to me. ‘Twas the 1/12/10 NYT Mag piece entitled Reid Faces Battles in Washington and at Home. Paragraph in question is at the very bottom of this page.
