He got his just deserts for deserting his dessert in the desert. He just doesn't deserve dessert!
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Well, there's my "learned a new thing" for the day, and it's not even 8am yet. Thanks, NYTimes!
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I am sure for these readers it was only a momentary seat in the “laps of judgement.”
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Comment below:
"Beating a dead horse" is unpleasant and unnecessary. Please don't use it. No horses -- live, dead or figurative -- should be beaten."
Oh, please. Must we all read our NYT in a safe space?
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Methink the editor doth protest too much.
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After reading the article and the comments, I am craving dessert!
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Lucky you didn't write that elite bankers who commit fraud are to the manner born.
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Next up, we’ll ask people to pronounce the name of the island in Maine that’s home to Bar Harbor.
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I'll clue people in: no respectable local pronounces it "Mount Dessert". Avoid embarrassing yourself, tourists. It's Mount Desert - like the Sahara.
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The grey lady doth protest too much, methinks...
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Gawd, I love accurate copy editors — especially ones who teach me something, such as in this instance. Grammar on, NYT! (Notice in incorrect use of "grammar" as a verb ...)
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I'm a stickler for correct grammar, drummed into me at a very early age.
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I did not see the original article, but find this piece delightful.
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Ha! I always assumed it just meant that after failing to handle dinner appropriately, one got the dessert one deserved. Seriously.
In my house growing up, if I didn't eat dinner, I couldn't have dessert. So it made complete sense to me that dessert could be adjusted based on one's worthiness.
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"His reputation falls far below his desert." - Alexander Hamilton.
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As letters editor of The Times, I fielded many reader complaints as well. I used an explanation from a grammar website - not nearly as eloquent as Mr. Corbett.
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How about horse-ing a dead beat?
Was the Times correct?
Language changes over time and writers have to bow to those changes at some point. The authority you cite to defend your choice published in the 16th and 17th centuries. Is the Times asserting that "just deserts" has been in continuous use since then? We know that is not the case.
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Grump, Grump, Duncan Osborne! Many words have been in use for centuries. :-)
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Hmmm. The name Duncan has been around at least since Duncan I of Scotland (died 1040), king of Alba, represented in Shakespeare's play Macbeth. But I am more familiar with the spelling from Dunkin' Donuts. I suggest you change your name to Dunkin' since we know that it is the case that more people know Dunkin' Donuts than Duncan the former King of Scotland.
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A quick check of Google completely debunks your assertion. In fact, I found dozens of incidences wherein "just deserts", one s, appeared in headlines and pull-quotes since 2000, some as recently as this year, in publications as diverse as The Economist, the Daily Mirror, and the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry.
Languages evolve, it is true. And casual and colloquial speech changes over time as words and phrases fall in and out of fashion. Does that mean errors and sloppiness are now embraced as "changes", though? I guess that would explain why I keep seeing the phrase "I won't step foot in that place" when it should be "set foot". In the end, formal writing, like print journalism, has surely got to follow the publication's established house style. The day they do away with that manual, well, I pity the poor copyeditors!
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I was one who was misinformed. “Just desserts” never exactly made sense either. Delighted to know this!
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Any headline (or metaphor) that readers stumble over -- or have to reread multiple times just to get the gist -- probably isn't working and should be reworded.
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I disagree. I prefer nuance and wit over plain, bland writing. English is a varied, rich language, with great a literary heritage. Why make do with meat and potatoes, ignoring the fruits and vegetables?
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"Stumbles" ?? As in, requires an extra bit of thought?
Let's not start reworking and rewording for the lazy. America is getting dumb enough.
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My frustration in reading articles these days, particularly on line, is a trend toward letting incorrect, intuitive spelling go by unchecked. Not just NYT, but generally. Need increased attention to detail.
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I had just wanted to comment because I thought it was a terribly flawed argument, and was irritated that I could not find a comment page! The spelling briefly crossed my mind, but I was too distracted by my agitation to think about it.
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Should be e-z-peasy, one might think.
But, know.
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I knew the words in the first part of the headline were correct -- what I took exception to was the second part. "Beating a dead horse" is unpleasant and unnecessary. Please don't use it. No horses -- live, dead or figurative -- should be beaten.
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I suppose "horse of a different color" is now racist, too, right? Please, can't we all just let language remind rather than replace history?
English apparently needs a Rodney King
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Maybe people should consult a dictionary before sending in a correction.
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The first part of the headline, whether properly spelled or not, was itself a gloat. And not undeserved.
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"Language Cops Get Just Deserts"
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I understood the title however I'm confused why there's no parallel construction. Please explain.
That is not a rule for headline writing, it is a rule for prose.
Thanks! :-)
You said, "I know that many Times readers care passionately about grammar, usage and good writing."
Yes, and some of care about the who, what, when, where, why, and how rarely seen now. Some pieces don't even have a simple date, let alone a time of day.
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Not to worry; the same Merriam-Webster department that OK’d “momentary” and “ambiance” should have “just desserts” covered soon.
I was originally intrigued myself regarding the spelling and resorted to the Oxford English Dictionary, that I grew up with, for clarification and found the following although the last line is very interesting:
If a person gets their just deserts they get what they deserve. Deserts here is related to deserve, and is spelled with one -s- in the middle; a dessert is a sweet course eaten at the end of a meal. The -ss- spelling in the sense ‘what a person deserves’ is regarded as an error, although in the Oxford English Corpus it is as common as the correct spelling
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Then there's the matter of "beating a dead horse" and the Wells Fargo logo.
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Yes - thanks for pointing out that subtle horsey innuendo! Which brings up the topic, I've never yet seen addressed, of inappropriate illustrations in lieu of good old school photojournalism. Why do we online subscribers have to suffer (often sexist) cartoons when everyone has a camera in their pocket? Anyone else notice that the avatar is more often than not distinctly female when the topic is negative? Not to blame the Times, this is trans platform, just sayin' while some are sensitive about horse metaphors, what about nonverbal bias via graphic "art" in digital journalism?
How do you write this article and not mention the origin of the phrase "beating a dead horse"?
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I'm jumping out of my stirrups, dying to know.
Somehow, I had the amazing (to me) good sense to Google the matter. While, for my aged brain, the path was a bit tortuous, I did see the light. I was interested that in the correction that the editor assigned the notion of one getting what one "deserves". I am more likely to consider that "just deserts" occur when one is abandoned (deserted) deservedly or no by what might otherwise be supporters. Abandonment in this case being a forerunner to some really bad news. Thus, again, for me, the question was whether Wells Fargo is being properly or improperly "deserted" by those unsympathetic to their situation. And, remember L. Patrick Gray, the FBI Deputy who was left to "twist slowly, slowly in the wind"? Now, that's what I call a desert. So, is this one for Ethicist?
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I didn't have a problem with "just deserts." The term has been around for a long time. I did have a bit of a problem with "beating a dead horse." Certainly clever, given the history of the company and the logo. But by the time I finished the column, I learned that things were looking up for Wells Fargo. Admittedly, the stockholders took a hit, and some execs were given their walking papers, but a "dead horse" it doesn't seem to be.
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Because a cafe called Just Desserts was the site of a horrific murder and thus highly publicized, the misspelling "just desserts" became so pervasive in Toronto that I was on ordered by an executive editor to forgo "just deserts" in other contexts and change spellings to "dessert."
My newspaper then became a literary desert.
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Thanks for this. Learned something new.
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The same problem occurs in Maine. Visitors to Mount Desert Island use the pronunciation for the dry, barren region. However, the name derives from the French word meaning deserted. Hence, the pronunciation—Americanized—into Mount “dessert.”
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I thought "desserts" would have worked too, what with the fines coming only after the main meal of public investigation, revelation and flagellation
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I saw the headline yesterday and wanted to make a comment about your "mistake". But there was no comment area. So instead I looked up the phrase and discovered (to my great suprise) that "deserts" is correct and, as you say, derives from "deserve". A great lesson in language and it's sometimes suprising history!
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Yep, IT'S a great lesson in ITS history.
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"Its," not "it's."
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Its.
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I did not get this this when read in the times, thought Wells Fargo opened a branch in the desert to sell dead horses! that is possible.
I am a non-native speaker but not seen this in Walt Whitman or Hemingway. The Economist no longer uses Whom, what about just keeping deserts for Chihuahua
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I find the headline an awkwardly mixed metaphor, but that's another matter. What's remarkable is that so many readers were sure they were right about the spelling, without adequately researching the phrase. Just another symptom of our culture. I bet someone could start a meme with "New York Times Spells 'Desserts' Wrong" that quickly would go viral.
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Confusing indeed.
It looks as if the roots of dessert and desert (homophone) are the same - from "serve well', or 'deserve;' while desert (the place, or the act of abandonment) has a different lineage, from Latin for leave, or forsaken. So it would actually make more sense if the archaic spelling desert (entitlement to praise or punishment) were to modernized to dessert.
But then what would we argue about?
There are really more irritating glitches in more of the writing of late - - but not in headlines meant to draw the wrath of the observant.
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Of course, there’s also the fact that “just” has multiple meanings as well. The headline just doesn’t scan well. Although I was familiar with the correct spelling of “just deserts,” at first I parsed it as “Are fines simply arid regions, or beating a dead horse?” And that made no sense at all.
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What they get wrong is not writing at a level that is more accessible to the audience.
I don't know what audience you refer to, if not English speaking readers who prefer good writing. This isn't USA Today.
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