Greek to Me, by Mary Norris | The New Yorker

Greek to Me, by Mary Norris | The New Yorker

"On returning to New York, I registered for an elementary class in ancient Greek at Columbia University and blithely submitted the bill to the [New Yorker] magazine's new executive editor, Tony Gibbs. To my disbelief, he turned me down, saying that ancient Greek was not relevant to my job. After a year in collating, I had moved to the copy desk, and so I started a dossier of sorts, keeping a list of words from the Greek that cropped up in The New Yorker, everything from 'pi' to 'ophthalmologist,' which is often misspelled with a 'p' instead of a 'ph.' John McPhee was then in his geology period, and from his work I learned the word 'autochthonous' (autós, 'self,' plus chthón, 'earth'), which means something like 'self-generated from the earth' and contains a tricky consonant cluster in the transliteration of chi (χ) and theta (θ). To reinforce my petition, Eleanor Gould, whose cool intelligence made her something of an oracle to the editors, wrote a letter to Gibbs stating that her own knowledge of the language might not be current enough to save us from 'ignorant mistakes.' I showed the document to my friend John Bennet, an editor, who said, 'You're using a cannon to shoot a flea.' Tony Gibbs was persuaded.