Google's ngrams: for entertainment only?

I admit it: I like to look for the problems, the bugs, the anomalies. So I couldn't resist using Google's new ngrams toy, with its nifty view of usage over time, to look for some anachronisms. Part of what prompted that: recently I was looking up a technical term in Google Books and it showed up in a book that was at least a decade too early. But it turned out that the book was not as described, in the most literal sense: the catalog information described one book, but the scanned content was of another book entirely.

The occasional mixup is not surprising in an effort of the scale of Google Books. But looking for anachronisms turned up a disturbing catalog error: periodicals misclassified as books. The problem is, whichever volume of the Memoirs and proceedings of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society it might be that discusses computer programming languages, it definitely is not one from 1888. But it seems they all get that publication date because the publication is (according to Google’s catalog data) a book.

Some other misleading finds:

• Annual Report of the National Academy of Sciences, 1888
• IEEE Science Abstracts, 1898
• ACS Chemical Abstracts, 1907
• American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism Journalism quarterly, 1928

I could go on. The point is, if you’re looking for trends, you are probably just fine. If you are looking for when terms first appeared, ngrams and Google Books must be used with caution.

Epic Journalism Fail

I get the print edition of the San José Mercury News. Sunday's edition left me completely flabbergasted.

The city of Palo Alto was the unfortunate site of a string of teen suicides last year, all by the same gruesome means. The city government, school officials, parents and other community members struggled to deal with the emotional impact of these events and discussed ways to prevent future incidents. One of the common themes repeated by the many psychologists interviewed by the local media was the role of the media themselves in this effort. The media, we were told, must be careful not to glorify or romanticize suicide in any way. Pictures of graves or memorials were mentioned in particular as something to avoid.

So, allow me to describe the front page of the Mercury News for January 24. Half the page is taken up by a feature article about a woman who committed suicide three years after the death of her (adult) son. The article features a lovely, romantic picture of her headstone, which features the same epitaph emblazoned above the article itself: "She died of a broken heart." (You can see the article, without the graphics, at the Mercury News website).

Perhaps it's just me, but describing a self-inflicted gunshot as dying of a broken heart seems like it might be glorifying or romanticizing suicide. In fact, it seems to me like pretty much the height of journalistic irresponsibility. Oh, did I mention the woman lived in Palo Alto?

Now for the part that defies description. I actually hadn't heard the news when I saw that front page, but apparently the editors of the Mercury News had, because they had this story on the first page of the local section of the same edition of the paper.

That's right. They ran a story romanticizing suicide on the same day that they ran a story about another teen suicide.