Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Rank Ignorance II: The New York Times Blows it Again!
And it’s in an otherwise tremendous article!
“The other day I told General Petraeus about a young specialist fourth class I had met while waiting for a military flight out of Baghdad.”
The problem is, there’s no such thing as a “specialist fourth class” in the Army.
The author, Lucian K. Truscott IV, is himself a West Point graduate. I suspect he used the outdated abbreviation, Spec./4 in his copy. That would have been correct when he was in the service, when there were several different 'specialist' ranks. That hasn't been the case for a few decades, though. And the 4 refers to a pay grade, not to a class. That’s one difference between Navy and Army ranks.
I suspect some copy editor, looking to eliminate jargon from the article, decided to spell it out, and guessed wrong.
Once again, a New York Times writer is let down by the exclusion of veterans in the editorial ranks.
Cultural diversity counts.
Splash, out
Jason
“The other day I told General Petraeus about a young specialist fourth class I had met while waiting for a military flight out of Baghdad.”
The problem is, there’s no such thing as a “specialist fourth class” in the Army.
The author, Lucian K. Truscott IV, is himself a West Point graduate. I suspect he used the outdated abbreviation, Spec./4 in his copy. That would have been correct when he was in the service, when there were several different 'specialist' ranks. That hasn't been the case for a few decades, though. And the 4 refers to a pay grade, not to a class. That’s one difference between Navy and Army ranks.
I suspect some copy editor, looking to eliminate jargon from the article, decided to spell it out, and guessed wrong.
Once again, a New York Times writer is let down by the exclusion of veterans in the editorial ranks.
Cultural diversity counts.
Splash, out
Jason
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