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Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios
Being a millennial writer with a boomer editor has hiccups. Some days, I wonder if my editor, Steve, and I are speaking the same language.
Like the time he posed this question about a story pitch: "Is this about the man in the grey flannel suit?"
Huh?
- Steve explained that the idiom went back to a hit novel and film and cultural touchstone in the 1950s. It refers to a corporate cog in the machine — "just another man in a gray flannel suit."
This linguistic gap can make me nervous. Once, Steve inserted the phrase "inside dope" into one of my articles.
- "My story has nothing to do with secret weed, if that's what you mean," I wrote Steve, with some sarcasm. But what the heck was the dope reference?
- Slang for insider info, I learned.
More recently, Steve asked if a company I cover had established a "beachhead."
- This one, I Googled. I now have a starting list for boomer military references.