The other day, listening to the radio while driving to work, I heard a nationally known print journalist say, “Do we want a President that . .  .” What’s wrong with “who,” I wondered, as he repeated “that.” Within minutes, a university law professor uttered the words “close proximity,” a ridiculous redundancy that has the same effect on me as chalk screeching across chalkboard. I held my breath, waiting for the next breach of proper usage, but nothing else made me flinch before I arrived at work.

In their professions, both journalists and lawyers need to be careful and exacting when it comes to words, at least when the words are in print. Do they not speak as carefully as they write? Or do they write as poorly as they speak and an editor comes along and corrects their errors? Or could it be that I’m the only one bothered by “close proximity”? I just came across the phrase in a book by Alexander McCall Smith, leading me to think that it may have become an accepted idiom for many people.

These thoughts brought to mind Luis Marden, a writer and photographer on the magazine’s staff for more than 40 years (and who continued to contribute to the National Geographic for another 20 years after he retired), who always spoke as eloquently and correctly as he wrote. In an article about Luis, in the November 2000 National Geographic, author Cathy Newman wrote:

        Language, nuanced and precise, was sacred
        to him. To place a word gracefully in front
        of the reader was as important as the proper
        presentation of a fly to a discriminating trout.
        Almost the right word was unacceptable. Only
        the right word would do.

Luis corrected people who misused words, such as “raised” instead of “reared,” and those who used redundancies, such as “opening gambit.” He once pointed out to me that true mahogany grows only in the Western Hemisphere, and similar wood from other parts of the globe must be identified as African mahogany or Philippine mahogany, an explanation I immediately inserted as an entry in the National Geographic Style Manual.

I am positive Luis would not tolerate "close proximity."  After all, as he once told my predecessor Margaret Bledsoe, "If we keep talking this television English, the next step will be "temper tantrum."

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