It’s Wednesday and the Red Phone returns to get you over the
hump. A sincere thanks to the many callers who dialed up the
Crimson Crusader this week. Your comments are much appreciated and
rest assured the Red Phone has heard you. If you don’t see your
call here, hang in there, the Red Phone has heard you. Got gripe,
comment or question? Call up the Crimson Crusader
– always listening, always online, always at 635-9219.
It’s Wednesday and the Red Phone returns to get you over the hump. A sincere thanks to the many callers who dialed up the Crimson Crusader this week. Your comments are much appreciated and rest assured the Red Phone has heard you. If you don’t see your call here, hang in there, the Red Phone has heard you. Got gripe, comment or question? Call up the Crimson Crusader – always listening, always online, always at 635-9219.
You hard-heads
A caller pointed out a poor choice of words in a recent caption in the Free Lance.
“In the article on the historical park with the picture, they call concrete, cement. Cement is a powder. The man is working with concrete. Cement is an ingredient in concrete. Thank you.”
The caller is referring to the caption appearing underneath a collection of photographs taken at the pouring of the new, permanent San Benito Historical Park bridge in our Saturday, Sept. 25 issue. The Red Phone doesn’t know much about construction and neither, it seems, do Free Lance editors who admit to making the mistake out of ignorance. The caller is correct. Cement is typically a powder of alumina, silica, lime, iron oxide, and magnesia burned together in a kiln and finely pulverized and used as an ingredient of mortar and concrete, according to the Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.
“I had always thought that concrete and cement were synonyms,” Free Lance City Editor Marcus Hibdon said. “It’s not a mistake I’ll make again. I should have double checked and I’m sorry and embarrassed considering I did work a side job a few years ago building a home where I helped pour a concrete driveway, used mortar to grout a slate floor and built a stone fire place. I even mixed the concrete and mortar. It was during those grueling tasks I decided construction was not for me and set my sights on journalism. I apologize for the error.”
Acronym attack
A caller can’t stand all the SBC’s out there.
“I’d like to see when we have headlines and the paper is talking about San Benito County it should say S, B, C with a small o (SBCo) rather than SBC. Every time I see a headline with SBC, I don’t know if it means Pacific Bell or San Benito County. I think it’s necessary because I have a lot of people and we’ve talked about it and it’s very annoying. All media need to get on the ball and do this.”
Interesting, but SBC is a proper acronym for San Benito County and it has been used in the Free Lance for years. In fact, Red Phone did a quick search for SBC on our Web site and all the returns with SBC in the headline were for San Benito County, none for Southwestern Bell Company. Likewise the suggestion does little to clear up possible confusion for readers because the “Co.” abbreviation is Associated Press style for company. Here’s an easy way to keep it straight in the Free Lance: SBC stands for San Benito County in headlines; we’ll make it clear if were writing about the communication company. Of course, readers can always read the first paragraph of a story to clarify questions because we spell out all acronyms on first reference.
