word choice: it matters!

One of the great things about reading The New Yorker is that you get used to lucid, beautiful writing, completely free of errors in grammar, syntax, spelling, and punctuation. Naturally, when an error does appear, it's far more jolting than when one shows up in, say, Salon, which has yet to publish a single edition without a gaggle of horribly embarrassing goofs.

Here's a fun one:

The Dutch-speaking Flemings, he said, had no trouble accommodating the small, mostly wealthy Francophones in their midst.

Since he's speaking about the minority of Francophones in the town of Vilvoorde, I tend to think he means "the few." Nonetheless, I have fun picturing the situation as he describes it.