"Women seem to use [the dash] a lot … . as if it were a woman’s prerogative to stop short without explanation..."

"... to leave things open-ended. A friend of mine once swept aside all rules governing punctuation by saying 'Whenever you feel a pause, you put in a dash.'"

She provides a strong—and moving—example with the note from Jacqueline Kennedy to Richard Nixon, responding to his letter of condolence after President Kennedy’s assassination. The note is punctuated entirely by dashes, and Norris shows what it would be like if punctuated by a copy editor: “The conventionally punctuated version gives the prose the appearance of being tightly under control, buttons buttoned, snaps snapped, and jaw clamped shut. Jackie’s dashes are spontaneous and expressive, full of style and personality.”

She = Mary Norris, author of "Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen."

ADDED: The 2 versions of Jackie's letter don't appear at the link, but I found Jackie's letter (and you'll have to picture it with periods and commas_:

Dear Mr. Vice President –

I do thank you for your most thoughtful letter –

You two young men – colleagues in Congress – adversaries in 1960 – and now look what has happened – Whoever thought such a hideous thing could happen in this country –

I know how you must feel – so long on the path – so closely missing the greatest prize – and now for you, all the question comes up again – and you must commit all you and your family’s hopes and efforts again – Just one thing I would say to you –if it does not work out as you have hoped for so long – please be consoled by what you already have – your life and your family –

We never value life enough when we have it – and I would not have had Jack live his life any other way – thought I know his death could have been prevented, and I will never cease to torture myself with that –

But if you do not win – please think of all that you have – With my appreciation – and my regards to your family.  I hope your daughters love Chapin School as much as I did –

Sincerely
Jacqueline Kennedy

Rolling Stone magazine asks the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to investigate "the editorial process that led to the publication of the [UVa rape] story."

"... Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone’s editor and publisher, said that the review would be led by Steve Coll, the journalism school’s dean, and Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs.... The report will be published unedited and in its entirety on Rolling Stone’s website, and excerpts will appear in the magazine."

Good... although I feel some suspicion about this: 1. Their website will get a lot of clicks out of that, 2. Going outside is a way of getting the appearance of absolution, which they're already getting with this announcement, 3....

IN THE COMMENTS: MikeB said:

What's the academic wording for "fake but accurate"?

"Charming guy charms reporter, later writes letter explaining he was trying to not be charming lest he be accused of trying to charm reporter."

A 1-sentence summary of the new episode of "Serial," which people seem to be getting tired of.

BUT:

In a week that has resurfaced the Rolling Stone UVA story and condemnations of reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely who appeared to fudge her handling of sexual-assault allegations, [Sarah] Koenig shows us that she’s a journalist, first and foremost. A story can be sensational by nature, and can be a source of intrigue, but in the end, there are real costs. There are humans involved, with emotions and livelihoods and reputations. It's a journalist's frighteningly awesome job to collect these stories and tell them without bias, insofar as that’s possible. We're reminded that this sometimes means a story entails just plain, dry facts.

"The larger question of whether victims of rape should remain anonymous is a complicated one."

"The initial rationale for anonymity was to afford victims a measure of protection and prevent them from feeling more shame and self-loathing than they already felt. But as Joan Didion explained in 'Sentimental Journeys,' her essay about the Central Park jogger, this anonymity also had an element of the self-fulfilling, 'guiding the victim to define her assault as her protectors do.' In other words, if rape were defined as more shame-inducing than other crimes, then the victims would continue to experience it as more shameful."

Writes Hanna Rosin in "Trolls Are Outing UVA’s 'Jackie.' That’s Rolling Stone’s Fault Too."

"I choose to believe Jackie. I lose nothing by doing so..."

"... even if I’m later proven wrong – but at least I will still be able to sleep at night for having stood by a young woman who may have been through an awful trauma. No matter how the media story ends, or what we come to know, there is a reason that people believed and continue to believe Jackie: There are so many people – too many people – who report similar attacks."

Writes Jessica Valenti in this morning's Guardian.

I choose to believe because I lose nothing by doing so...

Kind of like Pascal's wager, no?

Credulous journalist ponders why journalists are so credulous.

Well, this is rich. I'd never noticed the name Terrence McCoy until yesterday. A tweet of his — featuring a patently defective graph — was embedded at an Atlantic article titled "The Rolling Stone Fiasco Is Terrible News for Rape Survivors." His tweet said "Let's be clear about one thing. Fraudulent accusations of rape are extraordinarily rare. This graph proves it." I used that absurd kicker "This graph proves it" as the title for my post.

Later in the day, I see that the tweet doesn't display, so I go to Twitter, find Terrence McCoy's Twitter feed, and I say:

I'm surprised to see he's a Washington Post Foreign Affairs Reporter. He's got a new tweet that says: "Just read more into the Enliven graph. It was a misleading graph. I've since taken it down." He links to a January 2013 WaPo article about the graph "Patrick Pexton: A flawed image of rape on Wonkblog":

... On Jan. 7, an infographic citing rape statistics appeared on Wonkblog in a post written by Dylan Matthews, who came to The Post last year after graduating from Harvard....

The blog post generated a lot of Web hits for The Post and the Enliven Project. It stirred controversy and discussion of sexual violence. But it damaged Wonkblog’s credibility, and that of The Post, and harmed the legitimate issue of addressing violence against women.

Real reporting takes time, analysis, and inquiry. Post bloggers need to be more careful.

This morning, I look at The Washington Post, notice the latest coverage of the Rolling Stone story ("The epic Rolling Stone gang-rape fallout — and how major publications get it wrong"), and I'm amazed/amused to see the byline: Terrence McCoy!

Among the first to perceive cracks in the facade of Rolling Stone’s piece on campus gang rape was editor Richard Bradley. On Nov. 24, days before The Washington Post reported problems with the piece and Rolling Stone confessed its failings, Bradley said he smelled something fishy. “I’m not convinced that this gang rape actually happened,” he wrote. “Something about this story doesn’t feel right.”

He should know. He once edited Stephen Glass, the notorious fabulist who authored a series of made-up stories for the New Republic and other publications....

Journalists pride themselves on their skepticism. But this one, Bradley said, passed his smell-test because it exploited pre-existing biases...

Just like the way that Enliven graph was the slam-dunk shut-up-already proof that false accusations of rape are extraordinarily rare.

“Stephen wrote what he knew I was inclined to believe,” Bradley wrote on his blog. “And because I was inclined to believe it, I abandoned my critical judgement. I lowered my guard.”....

“One must be most critical about stories that play into existing biases,” he wrote. “And this story nourishes a lot of them: biases against fraternities, against men, against the South; biases about the naivete of young women, especially Southern women; pre-existing beliefs about the prevalence — indeed, the existence — of rape culture; extant suspicions about the hostility of university bureaucracies to sexual assault complaints that can produce unflattering publicity.”...

“The lesson I learned,” wrote the editor Bradley, is that “One must be most critical, in the best sense of that word, about what one is already inclined to believe.”

Not a word about McCoy's own embarrassment over yesterday's tweet.

The expression "fake but accurate" is really all we need to understand the problem, and it's pathetic that journalists at the WaPo level haven't fully internalized the lessons of these old scandals. Tweeting one day and cogitating over the general problem the next — it's so sloppy, so lazy, so stupid.

By the way, the phrase "fake but accurate" only comes up once in a search of the Washington Post archive, and it was not in the context of self-criticism. They were excoriating "This American Life." WaPo has done a fine job leading the way in dismantling the Rolling Stone's big story. But that was making click bait out of their competitor's click bait. I need to see self-criticism to believe I'm witnessing any commitment to journalistic ethics. McCoy's piece today only makes me feel more skeptical, because he's writing about journalism in the abstract and what other people have done wrong, and I saw what he did yesterday.

ADDED: I must stress that when McCoy took down his tweet, he shifted the blame away from himself, saying: "Just read more into the Enliven graph. It was a misleading graph. I've since taken it down." He didn't just take down the graph. He took down his own mistakenly self-assured statement: "Let's be clear about one thing. Fraudulent accusations of rape are extraordinarily rare. This graph proves it." It wasn't just "a misleading graph" by Enliven. It was a misleading assertion by a journalist. If he's done a mea culpa for that, I haven't seen it.

"This graph proves it."

Let's be clear about one thing. Fraudulent accusations of rape are extraordinarily rare. This graph proves it.— Terrence McCoy (@terrence_mccoy) December 5, 2014

Image at the Atlantic article "The Rolling Stone Fiasco Is Terrible News for Rape Survivors/When sexual assault reports turn out to be inaccurate—even slightly so—nobody wins."

The chart is puzzling:

As the chart above, from The Enliven Project, shows, only about 2 to 8 percent of rape claims turn out to be fabricated, but those that are echo in the media and in public discourse for seemingly much longer than the true ones do.

The 2 figures down there in the lower right corner are necessarily within the category of persons who've been falsely accused. The light brown figures are all rapists who have not been accused of rape.* The unaccused individuals must be those against whom a true accusation of rape could be charged. Quite aside from the usual question about how one arrives at the number of those who could accurately be accused but were not, in order to visualize the proportion of falsely accused persons, we'd need another set of figures on the chart: those who would be falsely accused if the reporting of rape occurred often enough to include all of the light brown figures on the graph.

The graph-makers presume they know that the unaccused are really rapists, but no one is testing the veracity of their nonexistent accusers. It's built into the concept of the graph that we know the accusations against them are true. The 2 figures in the lower right corner are separated from the group in the upper right corner, the persons against whom accusations were made. The proportion looks much different if you put them there, where they belong. It's important to realize that we can only have a falsely accused person when a person is accused.

And what does it mean to say that "only about 2 to 8 percent of rape claims turn out to be fabricated"? In the United States, anyone accused of a crime has the presumption of innocence, and when a complaint is made but the accused doesn't end up in prison, we don't learn whether the complainant was lying, only that a decision was made not to charge, or the effort to force the accused into a plea bargain failed, or the evidence didn't convince the factfinder of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In some of those cases, perhaps the claim was "fabricated." Anyway, "fabricated" is a strong term, and it seems chosen to minimize the problem of possibly excessive reports of rape. "Fabricated" excludes complaints based on confusion and mistake, which might arise after intoxication or through a failure to understand the legal elements of rape.

"This graph proves it." That's either stupid or evil.
________________________________

* Why are we counting "rapists" rather than rapes? Did the Enliven Project leap from a number for unreported rapes to a number of individual rapists? It's scary to have a graph covered in little figures of men, but if rapists don't commit multiple rapes, they're less scary, if you bother to think about it logically.

UPDATE: The original post embedded a tweet that became unavailable later in the day. I got the same graph from here, and I left the text of the tweet from the HTML code for the embed.

AND: Here's Terrence McCoy's Twitter feed. I'm surprised to see he's a Washington Post Foreign Affairs Reporter. He's got a new tweet that says: "Just read more into the Enliven graph. It was a misleading graph. I've since taken it down." He links to a January 2013 WaPo article about the graph "Patrick Pexton: A flawed image of rape on Wonkblog":

It’s a fact of journalistic life today that blog entries aren’t vetted as thoroughly as fully reported news stories are... On Jan. 7, an infographic citing rape statistics appeared on Wonkblog in a post written by Dylan Matthews, who came to The Post last year after graduating from Harvard.

The Enliven Project, a new nonprofit advocacy group that promotes more open discussion of sexual violence, produced the infographic... One reader wrote to me and Matthews, however, to say that it was distorted, misleading and a lie.... I read the studies that underlay the infographic and its critiques. Individually, some of the statistics that Enliven used do appear in the studies. But Enliven made assumptions and extrapolations in consolidating this information into one graphic, rendering it misleading....

The blog post generated a lot of Web hits for The Post and the Enliven Project. It stirred controversy and discussion of sexual violence. But it damaged Wonkblog’s credibility, and that of The Post, and harmed the legitimate issue of addressing violence against women.

Real reporting takes time, analysis, and inquiry. Post bloggers need to be more careful.

Post bloggers and Post tweeters.

Lamest effort to deflect blame I have seen all year.

"In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced."

More at the link, but that one sentence is a masterpiece of mealy-mouthedness.

"Rolling Stone Never Gave the Villains of Its Gang Rape Story a Chance to Defend Themselves."

Writes Judith Shulevitz in The New Republic.

[T]he reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, allowed herself to be bound by a vow she made to Jackie not to contact the alleged rapists, especially the pseudonymous Drew, said to have lured her into the room where seven men raped her. Erdely may not even have tried to identify them....

“If I had to guess what happened at UVA—and at this point, we can only guess (which is why we should not be passing judgment),” Wendy Kaminer, a civil libertarian and feminist who has written extensively on both rape and free speech on campus, emailed me, “I’d guess that the story is neither entirely fabricated nor entirely true, and, in any case, compels a real investigation by investigators with no stake in their findings.”