SignWriting List
April 14, 2002
Dear SW List Members:
An article about SignWriting, written by reporter Margalit Fox, was
published in the Sunday edition of the New York Times today, April
14, 2002, Week in Review Section, Ideas and Trends, page 3, bottom of
page!
I want to thank reporter Margalit Fox, and all the wonderful people
who spent hours being interviewed for the article....I will be
posting the text for the article in the next email message. Plus, I
will ask the Times for permission to re-post the article on the web.
The positives are many. It is a good article generally. And of course
we are all grateful for it. And the reporter, Margalit Fox, who is a
former linguist herself, understood the subject matter well. But the
article was written a long time ago, and many people and projects
were left out completely...I am so sorry about that!
The only true mistake that I caught is the headline itself. The
headline was not written by Margalit, but by an Times Headline Editor
at the last minute. The "headline editors" on the newspaper staff
read each article before they go to press, to create a "quickly
understood" and catchy phrase that readers will notice in the
headline. That is why headlines oftentimes do not really fit the
articles, because the Editor had no time to really study it before
going to press.
So I am always afraid of headlines, because in our case, SignWriting
is a very hard subject and it is not easily "captured in a quick
phrase"....so the headlines usually are not true...in this case
unfortunately my worst fears were realized.... The author made it
clear that we did not invent a new language, but the headline reads:
"Another Language for the Deaf".....my heart sank when I saw that -
but if people take the time to read the article, they will see that
the author knew better!!
So in the next message, I will post the text -
--
Val ;-)
___________________________
Valerie Sutton
....visit the...
SignWritingSite
https://www.SignWriting.org
Read & Write Sign Languages
SignBankSite
https://www.SignBank.org
Sign Language Dictionaries
DanceWritingSite
https://www.DanceWriting.org
Read & Write Dance
MovementWritingSite
https://www.MovementWriting.org
Read & Write Movement & Gesture
Deaf Action Committee for SignWriting
Center For Sutton Movement Writing
an educational nonprofit organization
Box 517, La Jolla, CA, 92038-0517, USA
tel: 858-456-0098....fax: 858-456-0020
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