Rose Toubes

I would like Chuck Todd to learn the correct pronunciation of "imprimatur." He used and mispronounced the word on the May 17 broadcast. I think journalists are the last bastion of correct usage and pronunciation of the English language, and they must care about details like that. Earlier this week, I called the Iowa Dept. of Public Health when the spokesperson mispronounced "remdesivir" three times at the daily press conference by switching around the syllables. This person also mispronounced "intravenously" (by adding an extra syllable), but I didn't have the heart to complain about that, too. My community college English classes have ended for the summer -- the last six weeks online -- and my English-teacher sonar is still operating at full strength. I am the woman who, as family lore has it, once used correct tape to mark over an apostrophe on a grocery store sign where the misplaced bit of punctuation appeared in the word "EGGS" -- a simple plural. In truth, all that matters is that we try to stay safe from Covid-19 and pray the best scientific minds in the world devise a vaccine and other treatments to make the virus survivable for humanity. How trivial mispronunciations and misplaced apostrophes pale in comparison to the gravity of the issues we are all facing.