I'm here because they're paying me to do my thing

I've become enamored with nit-picking other people's writing. I even considered nit-picking my own writing, but remembered that it would be considered giving an opinion on material published by my employer and that is not allowed (most people would say 'verboten' right there, but i won't).

This jumped out at me from a story I read this morning about a firefighter rescuing a person who had driven his car into some water.

The writer tells the reader that the firefighter "stripped to his pants and T-shirt" before getting in the water. There are a couple of things that i find interesting about the use of that phrase, and I'll be surprised if i can present this in any sort of way that makes sense.

So to help keep things moving along as best I can, I'll break it down into two separate but parallel but also intersecting points: A. The use of the verb stripped and B. Relevance of the verb stripped relative to its location in the story.

I hate to ruin the ending and all, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up being OK with how the writer uses the phrase.

A. The use of the verb "stripped."

Let's look at the phrase "stripped to his pants and t-shirt." I wouldn't be writing about it if it didn't initially strike me as odd.

To me, that could be reworded to mean "the firefighter took off his shoes, socks and possibly an outer-layer shirt." That to me, is not an act that would qualify as "stripping."

Then I thought about it for a second -- the writer did exactly what every journalism student is taught to do: use strong verbs.

"stripped" clearly moves the action along better than "took off his shoes..."

And how many people besides me are going to be anal retentive enough to actually catch something like that?

So i started to congratulate the writer for doing a pretty good job and i congratulated myself for being able to admit i was wrong.

But then I thought about it further.

Maybe the writer meant that the firefighter had gear on when he reached the scene, so he had an additional layer of clothing to take off, which would amount to stripping.

That, in turn, created another question in mind. How come when I read the article I assumed that the guy who made the rescue just happened to be a firefighter and not that he had been called to the scene as part of his job?

B. Relevance of the word stripped relative to its location in the story
While the rescuer is referred to in the headline and first paragraph as a firefighter, it's not until the third paragraph ('stripped' appears in the second graph) that it becomes evident (but not completely obvious) that the firefighter was called to the scene and was not a convenient witness to the accident.

So why didn't i immediately make the connection that "stripped" indicated him taking off his fire suit?

I was taught by Dee Dee Thurston (who stressed this to me until her eye balls bled) that "real people" go early in the story, officials go later.

My default mechanism told me that since the firefighter was mentioned early, that he must be a "real person." Had he been acting in the scope of his job, he would have been a firefighter first and, thus, the person who drove the car into the water should lead the action of the story with those acting in the scope of their profession being secondary to the story. Ergo (what?), since he was in the lead, he was not acting as a firefighter in an official capacity, and wouldn't have been wearing anything additional that would have necessitated "stripping."

But upon further reading, it is noted that the water temperature was in the mid-40s and that the firefighter was without feeling in legs for some time following the rescue.

That meant that the rescue was made under extraordinary circumstances and thus justified both 1)using the firefighter in the lead and 2) the verb stripped.

nice job by the writer (although a bit more explanation would have saved us all from the headache of this post).

Incidentally, I think this will inspire me to begin a second blog to write about stuff like this, while saving you from having to read it.