Even in the rush to publish, writers and editors at The Times strive for polish and precision in our prose. Sometimes we succeed.

But sometimes, after the dust settles, we are dismayed to see painful grammatical errors, shopworn phrasing or embarrassing faults in usage. A quick fix might be possible online; otherwise, the lapses become lessons for next time.

These comments are adapted from After Deadline, a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the deputy news editor who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual. The goal is not to chastise, but to point out recurring problems and suggest solutions.

Since most writers encounter similar troubles, we think these observations might interest general readers, too.

A Phrase to Watch

Not long ago, I gently noted (again) our frequent misuse of the phrase “beg the question.” I pointed out that in precise usage, it does not mean “to raise the question” or “to beg that the question be asked” or even “to evade the question.” Rather, it refers to a circular argument; it means “to use an argument that assumes as proved the very thing one is trying to prove.”

After my latest complaint, which included several examples of lapses, a couple of colleagues asked if I could supply some examples of the traditional, precise use.

That’s not easy if we stick to The Times. Out of 17 uses in the last year (many in quotes), I found only two that were basically right. They’re too complicated to summarize, but if you’re interested, here they are, in a magazine item and a response to a letter in the Book Review.

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Instead, I’ll try to clarify the meaning with a pair of made-up examples. Imagine that we’re discussing Lindsay Lohan.

YOU: I can’t understand why the news media give so much coverage to Lindsay Lohan. It’s ridiculous. She’s not that important or newsworthy.

ME: What? Of course she’s important and newsworthy! Lindsay Lohan is a big deal. Why, just look at the newsstand. People magazine, The Post, you name it. She’s everywhere.

YOU: That begs the question.

ME: Huh?

Your use of the phrase is correct. In arguing that Lindsay is important enough to merit heavy news coverage, I cite as evidence the fact that she gets heavy news coverage. It’s a circular argument that begs the question.

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But imagine this conversation.

ME: I can’t understand why all the news media give so much coverage to Lindsay Lohan. It’s ridiculous.

YOU: I’m sure they do it just to sell papers and magazines.

ME: Yeah — which begs the question, why do people want to read about her?

YOU: That’s not begging the question. That’s simply raising the question.

ME: Huh?

My use is incorrect, though it is becoming extremely common. There’s even a Web site dedicated to stamping out this abuse of the term (begthequestion.info). You can print out handy cards that explain the correct meaning, and pass them out to strangers if you hear them misusing the phrase. (I am not endorsing this approach.)

Phrases We Love Too Much: ‘Call Out’

Coincidence? Or a new cliché in the making?

In recent days I’ve noticed a flurry of uses of “call out” when we didn’t mean “shout.” The phrase is popping up left and right in political stories, in the sense of “challenge.”

Examples:

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For the architect of the two successful Bush presidential campaigns [Karl Rove] to call out his fellow Republican, that was surprising enough.

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The McCain campaign is also on the offensive in trying to stoke anger about perceived sexism. The campaign has designated a squad of prominent Republican women to call out what they see as gender-based smears against Ms. Palin.

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Indeed, in recent days, Mr. McCain has been increasingly called out by news organizations, editorial boards and independent analysts like FactCheck.org. The group, which does not judge whether one candidate is more misleading than another, has cried foul on Mr. McCain more than twice as often since the start of the political conventions as it has on Mr. Obama.

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Indeed, the Republican tradition of media-bashing goes back decades, at least to the convention of 1964 when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower called out “sensation-seeking columnists and commentators,’’ and the Cow Palace in San Francisco burst into jeers and catcalls at the reporters there.

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Rather than call out biases, as John F. Kennedy did in the part of his 1960 acceptance speech that dealt with anti-Catholicism, Mr. Obama sought to transcend race and find a plane of unity.

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Dictionaries give one meaning of “call out” as “challenge to a duel,” and that seems to be the sense reflected here. The metaphor is apt enough, if a bit hyperbolic. Like most metaphors, though, it wears out quickly with overuse.

But I suspect these uses are also conflating “call out” with “call on,” an expression that can mean “express disapproval of, censure”: She called him on his vulgar language.

In any case, the phrase seems in danger of becoming an instant cliché in our political coverage. Let’s look for alternatives whenever possible.

More on the Quiz

Last week’s quiz focused on misused words. But several readers suggested that some of the passages from recent articles had other problems, too, including awkward, convoluted or overlong sentences.

I agree. In fact, that sort of tangled prose is one of the biggest problems in our writing, and I’ll return to the topic in future posts.

On checking back, though, I realized that one passage was particularly garbled because a comma was missing.

9. While Ms. Palin spent Friday greeting large, enthused crowds in the Midwest, chatting up families eating ice cream and shaking hands with police officers, she held no news conferences before the crew of reporters who are already trailing her, step by step, along her political journey.

That’s how the sentence ran in the paper, and how it was reproduced in the quiz. But without the key comma, the participles are a jumble, and it’s not clear who’s eating ice cream or shaking hands. Place a comma after “families,” and we get the picture: it was Ms. Palin who was greeting, chatting, eating and shaking hands.