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Where Hight Was Right. The late John Holliday, founder of the Indianapolis News, once found height spelled hight in one of his editorials. He stormed into the composing room, where the foreman showed him the word spelled that way in his own copy. Barked Holliday: "If that's the way I spelled it, that's correct." It was hight in the News until a new stylebook came out last year.
In David Lawrence's U.S. News & World Report, the U.S. has no "foreign policy." Internationalist Lawrence has ruled that it has an "international policy." The Denver Catholic Register has to be careful lest its sport page come out with ST. JOSEPH BEATS HOLY FAMILY.
The war ended the Christian Science Monitor's taboo on mentioning death. But the Monitor still prefers the gentler passed away. In Atlanta, residents are Atlantans to the Constitution, but Atlantians to the rival Journal. In the Sacramento Bee the California weather can get warm but never (even on a 114° day) hot.
On the Seattle Times, which turns sideswipe into sidewipe, nothing is ever unique. The Times also dislikes the mere mention of blood "except in the cases of transfusions and hounds." And in the Scripps-Howard papers, among others, robbers are never bandits. Roy Howard says that bandits are found only in Mexico, and that they all died out with Pancho Villa anyway.
*Four years ago Walter H. Annenberg's Triangle Publications killed Click, a thriving magazine with 1,000,000 circulation, in order to use its paper for fast-growing Seventeen.