advertisement

Grammar Moses: Z is always first in my heart

While wearing one of my other columnist hats recently, I wrote about our policy for handling election mug shots in the newspaper.

It wasn't the idea that we run them with an eye toward fairness - ensuring that the candidates for a given race have similar, suitable expressions or that we always run them the same size - that got reader Stan Zegel's goat.

Zegel expressed what I now surmise (from our follow-up conversation) was feigned outrage over the ORDER in which we run them.

Remember the name of the guy who lodged the complaint, folks.

"The Daily Herald's institutional alphabetist bias is revealed in an admission in today's issue confessing that the newspaper sequences opposing candidates in the same story by the spelling of their surnames.

"Alphabetism invidiously and permanently discriminates against persons whose last names start with a letter in the latter part of the Latin alphabet. The A-B-Cs (the "Abees") of this world always come first, us X-Y-Zs (the "Whyzees") people always come last. We are treated as 26th-class citizens."

Stan even took a swipe at me for me having explained our policy because I'm one of the Abees.

"Do you know what it is like growing up what a 'Z' surname?" he said. "Sempre Finalis! We are an oppressed minority."

Stan continued with a list of protestations that would have left Martin Luther shaking his head. He finished his faux rant with: "We Whyzees are ignored and skipped over, in favor of those Abees who get first crack at everything, while those at the tail end of the alphabet have to settle for any leftovers."

Listen up, Stan. None of us is ever satisfied with his station in life. Nobody I know, anyway.

Even though I've always been an Abee, during high school I was envious of Benjamin Ahrens, because he always came before me. Always.

I am more attuned to the inequities of poor alphabetic placement than you might think. I married a Zucker girl, you see.

Yes, Stan, she would have been the girl sitting behind you in class.

And not only was she a Zucker, but she also was the most disadvantaged Zucker, on the 26-letter scale, of all nine members of her family: Bill, Gini, Kathy, Larry, Leo, Louise, Marty, Mike and ... Patt.

I asked Patt whether she was bothered by our policy. "No. What would you replace it with?"

Exactly. We can't very well put Democrats on the left and Republicans on the right. What about the Independents, the Libertarians, the Greens, the Socialists?

Reordering mugs to reflect ballot order would require too much rework.

How would we handle it in the primaries - Bernie on the far left, Hillary somewhere in the middle?

As my wife and I discussed this, she revealed something that I never suspected in our 30 years together.

"I have to tell you, the BA- thing was the most appealing thing about you," she said.

I'll just assume that was tongue in cheek as well.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put Grammar Moses in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.

Article Comments
Guidelines: Keep it civil and on topic; no profanity, vulgarity, slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about tragedies will be blocked. If a comment violates these standards or our terms of service, click the "flag" link in the lower-right corner of the comment box. To find our more, read our FAQ.