The New Yorker

If you're 100, and someone says you don't look a day over a 100, is that a compliment?

ChatGPT said:

It depends on the tone and context! If they say it with a positive, lighthearted tone, they might just be joking or acknowledging your age in a fun way. However, if it’s said in a flat or serious tone, it could imply you look exactly as old as you are, which might not feel like the most flattering compliment.

So, in short, it can be a compliment, but it really depends on how it's said and the vibe behind it! What do you think — does it come off as a compliment to you?

I think someone slid a slider past the editor when in the recent story about changes to The New Yorker's Style Guide, the NYT reporter, Callie Holtermann, acknowledges that the magazine is celebrating 100 years of publishing and that, "it doesn't look a day over 100." 

I think that's an ouch. When your celebratory logo is a picture of a monocled Eustace Tilley wearing a top hat, I think she's right. The image of Eustace appeared on the cover of their first edition in 1925, and they've been proud of it ever since, annually putting it on their cover every anniversary. That's called tradition. Or something else.

The New York Post used to brag that is was a paper started by Alexander Hamilton, but probably since Rupert Murdoch took over they pulled back on that boast. After all, Alexander Hamilton's long dead, having lost a duel to Aaron Burr in Weehawken, New Jersey in 1804. 

The two men were bitter political rivals. Burr was Thomas Jefferson's vice president at the time. Hamilton died of his injuries the following day, and Burr fled the country after being indicted for murder.

Alexander Hamilton was the Secretary of the Treasury, and is perpetually honored by being on the $10 bill. A wallet full of Hamiltons in your wallet is a welcome sight, as is a wallet full of Jacksons, Grants, and of course Benjamins—so long as they're not counterfeit.

But back to The New Yorker. In a front page article in the March 15, 2025 print edition of  the NYT, the reporter Callie Holtermann and her editor proclaim in a four-column headline: The New Yorker Reëxamines Style Guide and Those Dots Stay. This is big news for some.

Those two dots over the second e in the word reëxamines, or reëlection are called "dieresis." The word is not to be confused with a medication hawked on the evening news to treat watery lungs. 

While most editors would do without those two dots, the head of the copy department at the magazine, Andrew Boynton, tells us, "for every person who hates the dieresis and feels like it's precious and pretentious and ridiculous, there's another person who finds it's charming." Obviously only found riding in an elevator in the building that houses The New Yorker. Probably alone.

Consulting the OED you find there are two acceptable spellings of the word. Figures. This is going beyond my highest level of education.

Look up "dieresis" and the OED tells you to go to diaeresis where you will find three definitions, the third of which leaves me completely out to sea, thinking fuhgeddaboudit!

1. The division of one syllable into two, esp. by the resolution of a diphthong into two simple vowels.

2. The sign placed over a vowel to indicate that it is pronounced separately as, in Brontë, naïve.

3. PROSODY. A break in the line where the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word.

(Best I can tell prosody refers to poetry, and foot refers to a metrical unit with a varying number of syllables. Like I said...see above.)

Lest you think The New Yorker is unwilling to change anything, Ms. Holtermann tells us they have approved some changes to their style guide. "The magazine will abandon 'Web site,' 'in-box,' and 'Internet' in favor of the more familiar 'website.' 'inbox' and 'internet.' 'Cellphone' will be one word, rather than two." 

I keep what might be a slightly outdated NYT Manual of Style and Usage guide next to my two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Inside this edition there is no suggested way to spell reexamine other than to spell it without the diacritical mark diaeresis. And there also no need to spell reelection other than to spell it also without the diacritical mark. Cellphone is already one word; website is website; inbox is inbox, and internet is the Internet. Bronte is not to be found at all, but naïve is with the diaeresis mark. I might not really need a new edition that badly.

The New Yorker has outlived early everyone on Earth, and sustained publication will keep it that way.  Whatever its age, it will continue to not look a day over it.

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