Linguistic Erosion

Contributor: Donal Mahoney - - For 35 years, Mike Fitzgibbons had never missed a day driving off at 4 a.m. to buy the newspaper at his local convenience store. Snow, sleet, hail or rain couldn't stop him. There was only one paper being published in St. Louis at the time but Mike was addicted to newspapers. He had spent his early years reading four papers a day in Chicago--two in the morning and two in the evening. He worked for one of them and enjoyed every minute of it. However, an opportunity to earn more money as an editor for a defense contractor required his large family's relocation to St. Louis. Mike needed more money to feed a wife and seven children. "Words are words," Mike said at the time. "Being paid more money to arrange words for someone else seems like the right thing to do." Writing and editing were the two things...

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.