HANGING ABOVE MY DESK IS A LETTER from the editors of TIME to my grandfather. An immigrant who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, he, like so many others of his era, was introduced to America through the pages of this magazine. Now and then, he returned the favor by introducing TIME’s editors to some of his own ideas—in this case with a dispatch (in rhyme!) pointing out that they had erred in using the word who instead ofwhom on a recent cover.
TIME acknowledged in response that, grammatically speaking, it was “skating on very thin ice” but noted, citing H.L. Mencken, Noah Webster and Do’s, Don’ts and Maybes of English Usage, that traditions change.
Change happens to be a tradition at TIME. This publication has gone from black-and-white to…
