Reason #528,716 (or so) ...

to be thankful I did not follow through on my dream of being an English major.

Language Log points out a quirk on the New Yorker website that has to be a contender for snootiest web search feature of the year. Yes, I just made up that award, but I guarantee the New Yorker would win - hands down.

As with many websites, the New Yorker's site allows you to search for information using keywords. What if you search for something and there are no hits for your keyword? Well, most people would respond with something along the lines of, "Sorry, couldn't find what you were looking for." Right? Not the New Yorker. No, the New Yorker's website responds with:

I'm sorry I couldn't find that for which you were looking.

Seriously, I'm not joking. I started to rant about this, but then I thought I should go check to make sure this wasn't some urban myth. Well, it's true. It took me a minute to come up with a keyword that did not show up somehow, but then I just used an intentionally misspelled word and I got, "I'm sorry I couldn't find that for which you were looking."

Who, in his right mind, would think that is the appropriate response to display when a search comes up empty? The only answer I can come up with is a frustrated English major who is tired of asking the usual English major question, "Would you like fries with that?"

Even if one accepts that, "I'm sorry I couldn't find that for which you were looking," is more grammatical, it absolutely sucks when it comes to flow. Maybe it's because I am so bad at remembering ALL those inane usage rules, but I feel that flow is more important that strict adherence to the grammar gods' edicts - as long as the phrasing is clear and understandable (an important caveat). Does the alternative (couldn't find what you were looking for) pass that test? YES! Further, even if one feels this allegiance to THE RULES, what about the two contractions ("I'm" and "couldn't") in the New Yorker's phrasing? Should not those be spelled out?

It's no longer "talk like a pirate day", but shiver me timbers, that drives me batty! I stopped reading the New Yorker the last time my subscription lapsed. I really hated to do that because it is a wonderful source of fiction (currently a story by one of my very favorite writers) and, in my opinion, it's THE best source of in-depth essays on the popular magazine market. I was willing to put up with its shrill political tone, but I finally called it quits when the writers' self-obsession levels got to be too much. I grew weary of reading how momentous events made authors "feel" rather than reading about the actual events. I first noticed this after September 11, 2001. I thought the New Yorker would put out a wonderful post-9/11 issue, but instead I read over and over how some elitist member of the literati had been inconvenienced. It's hard to capture my frustration now, but at the time I thought it was more than a little silly that I was supposed to be concerned that some pretentious twat was not able to attend the opening of a new performance art exhibit uptown. Okay, that's not an actual example, but the issue was full of stuff like that.

I'll let the language log guy have the final word:

[W]e now find ourselves, in the 21st century, confronted with educated Americans who seriously think that a search engine should say it is sorry it could not find that for which you were looking. It's staggering. It really is. And The New Yorker apparently encourages this absurd misconception about grammaticality in English. I simply can't imagine what they're thinking of. Or as they would put it, I simply cannot imagine of what they are thinking.

Sigh, I suppose I was meant to be an economist after all - or maybe a baseball player?

Hat tip to Newmark's Door.