Thank you for your support. It’s been a long week since David Sanger’s story broke. I have nothing against the way David portrayed my remarks. I just wish everyone could have heard the rest of the phone conversation we had. I left no doubt with David as to what happened regarding the applause. I read your post, and I was gratified not to see my remarks heckled or belittled for once. Thank you.

Tom Earnhardt

The editors just tightened it up a bit.

Whenever I have questions about the actual meaning of words in literate, edited prose, I turn to my favorite reference: the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage. Unlike an ordinary dictionary, which simply chronicles how people tend to use a term, a dictionary of English usage actually looks at how words, and even terms, have been used throughout the history of literature by the best of writers, not the worst.

The essential difference between the two adverbs is that “evidently” means (as it suggests) that there is some actual evidence supporting the following statement; while “apparently” means the same as “seemingly,” that the following statement appears, on the surface, to be true, but there is no evidence for it… and in fact, if evidence exists, it tends to belie it.

Apparently is properly used of that which seems, but may not be, real; evidently, of that which both seems and is real.

(A.S. Hill 1895)

Thus, by using “apparently” instead of “evidently,” the Los Angeles Times gives us a choice of two: either it means that the applause was seemingly initiated by a staffer from la Casa Blanca, but really not… or else it means that the L.A. Times is illiterate.

Dafydd

My guess: if you write them, they’ll tell you they never said the aide started the applause; just that the aide “apparently” did so.

Either that, or that they never said the aide started anything, only that he apparently sparked it. See, e.g., Xrlq v. Dog Trainer (2004) (federal law prohibiting interstate purchase of firearms no “bar” to interstate purchase of firearms).

maybe he read it on a blog? I did.