Editrix

What, Pray Tell, Is a New Novel Flu Case?

One of my readers, Dawn, wrote me last week to complain about swine flu's new name -- and I'm not talking about "H1N1." She writes:

I happen to work at [a] state health department . . . and was puzzled when I received a press release sent to my work email with the title 'New Novel H1N1 Flu Cases Confirmed.' I'm sure you can see the source of my puzzlement - "new novel" - wtf?

As I told Dawn, "new novel" is definitely "wtf"-worthy. It's like saying, "I found an old, ancient turnip in the back of my fridge." I mean, why?

Frankly, I was annoyed enough when the CDC tried to change swine flu to H1N1, because at that point, all anyone had been hearing about was swine flu, swine flu, SWINE FLU for days on end, so it seemed a little late for rebranding. (Plus, swine flu is eight thousand times more memorable than H1N1, which has always sounded like a Star Wars character to me.) I didn't realize people were saying "novel H1N1 flu," though, much less "new novel H1N1 flu."

Dawn goes on to say:

Having been on something of the front lines of this over-hyped event, I know that it didn't take long before the "swine" in swine flu became a detriment to the pork industry. After that, our esteemed government officials began changing the name - Influenza A (oops, already have one of those), North American flu (too wordy), Mexican flu (bad for foreign relations), Spanish flu (already used in 1918) - clearly this is one aspect of the next pandemic for which there was no plan.

So, now they call it the "novel" flu virus. But, seeing as the word "novel" actually means "new," would you agree with me that then announcing to the world "new novel flu cases confirmed" sounds more like an actual new virus? I'm really just curious to get your take on this.

So, the problem may go deeper than (a) redundancy and (b) closing-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-ran-out branding. What we may have on our hands in an ambiguous phrase. "New novel flu cases confirmed" (or "new novel H1N1 flu cases confirmed") could be taken to mean that more people have come down with swine flu, but it could also mean that a new mutation of the swine-flu virus has been discovered.

No matter how you look at it, "new novel flu cases" is sickening.

P.S.: It occurs to me only now that the key may lie in the absence of a comma between "new" and "novel," which indicates that the two words could not have and put between them, and that the word novel is too closely tied to flu to ever be separated. Still, "new novel flu"? That can't be right.

Feeling Down About Down('s) Syndrome

All this talk in the news about Down syndrome has got me thinking.

When I was in high school, we covered Down syndrome, among other genetic disorders, but I swear we didn't call it "Down syndrome." We called it "Down's syndrome." So, the first time I saw something like this in the news, I thought it was a mistake:

Amid the barbs and hockey banter Wednesday night, Gov. Sarah Palin directed an emotional appeal to the hearts of millions of parents with children who have special needs . . . As she spoke, the camera panned to her baby, Trig, who has Down syndrome.

I felt kind of smug. Clearly, I was a better editor than the one who edited that article for a big-time, hoity-toity news organization. Nyah-nyah-nyah. But then I started seeing "Down syndrome" everywhere (for example, here, here, and here), and I started to wonder if I was misremembering that high school bio class.

So, I did a little bit of digging. Both Webster's and American Heritage list Down syndrome as the preferred spelling and Down's syndrome as a variant. AP is explicit: "Down syndrome Not Down's." Neither the National Down Syndrome Society nor the National Association for Down Syndrome uses the variant spelling. The CDC favors Down syndrome. So does the Mayo Clinic and the Harvard Gazette. What's more, if you Google "Down syndrome," you get 4,390,000 hits. Googling "Down's syndrome" generates slimmer results: 942,000.

However, the new Fowler's dissents. It prefers Down's syndrome, dating the earliest example of the term to 1961. That makes me wonder if Down's syndrome is simply the older spelling, which has been superseded by the newer, less cumbersome Down syndrome. So, now I turn to the OED . . .

A-ha! The OED prefers Down's syndrome, too, and gives Down syndrome as the variant. However, the timeline it provides shows considerable overlap. The first instance (in, as Fowler's noted, 1961) was in the journal Lancet, which said that the term mongolism was often replaced by " 'Langdon-Down anomaly', or 'Down's syndrome or anomaly' or 'congenital acromicria.' " After that, there's flip-flopping. 1978: Down's syndrome (in an American book). 1989: Down syndrome (in Time magazine). 1993: Down's syndrome (in a Toronto newspaper). 2001: Down syndrome (in a Denver newspaper).

Since Down's syndrome seems to be favored more often by non-U.S.-based publications (the Canadian newspaper, and Lancet and Fowler's, which are British), I have to wonder if national preferences are at work. Anyone have any thoughts on this theory?

Was anyone else surprised when Down syndrome, rather than Down's syndrome, was all over the news?

And for extra credit: Am I the only person who thinks Down syndrome baby is one offensive-sounding term?

Update: Kristy Colvin, president of the International Mosaic Down Syndrome Association, has sent me some information on this topic. An excerpt:

Down vs. Down's. NDSS and NDSC use the preferred spelling, Down syndrome, rather than Down’s syndrome. While Down syndrome is listed in many dictionaries with both popular spellings (with or without an apostrophe s), the preferred usage in the United States is Down syndrome. This is because an "apostrophe s" connotes ownership or possession. Down syndrome is named for the English physician John Langdon Down, who characterized the condition, but did not have it. The AP Stylebook recommends using "Down syndrome" as well.

People with Down syndrome should always be referred to as people first. Instead of "a Down syndrome child," it should be "a child with Down syndrome." Also avoid "Down's child" and describing the condition as "Down's," as in, "He has Down's."