Ed O’Connell of Martha’s Vineyard asks this provocative question:
I’m a New Yorker reader of limited tenure with a question that may expose an embarrassing degree of naivete and/or paranoia but, of course, I’m compelled to ask: is there an inside joke at the magazine about using the same unusual word in different articles throughout any one issue? For example, in the 1/29/07 issue, Schjeldahl on the Art World and Denby on Current Cinema both use the fairly unusual word “deracinated.” I have noticed this in past issues from time to time with other unusual words and have wondered if this is the work of a playful editor or merely coincidence. Thanks in advance for any insight.
It goes without saying that no one on the magazine’s staff would ever declare this to be true on the record, even if such twins were planned; after all, word repetitions are one of the things copy departments try to prevent. (In the brief and surreal, though existentially crucial, period in which I freelanced at Lucky, searching for “reps”—multiple instances of “ladylike” and “foxy,” most likely—was one of my oddly enjoyable tasks.)
Still…things like this, bets and dares and japes, have been known to occur in the magazine world. Perhaps there will be an update. Wait and see.
Send letters to the editor to letters@emdashes.com. As always, nothing is published without permission, so rest easy, paranoiacs.