J ournalism is the business of communication, and our word choices should serve that interest. Mark Twain is the authority for the self-evident proposition that a writer should seek the exact word and not its second cousin.
Some writers seem to find distant uncles.
James J. Kilpatrick is a veteran newspaper commentator who wrote regularly about the need to choose the correct word. In his columns, Kilpatrick offered some painful reminders of the price writers and editors paid when they were careless in using words. Let's examine a few horrid examples. When mistakes like these are made in stories or on the air, they destroy the credibility of the story, as well as of the writer or speaker. Identify the misused word in each of Kilpatrick's examples and, then, see if you can determine what word would have been correct for the apparent intended meaning.