Life On Snob Hill’s meditation on writing, hubris, and why nobody—no matter how clever—owns the alphabet
We were leafing through one of our favorite Southern magazines the other day—the kind that swaggers with cultural critique, back-porch philosophy, and just enough grit to scuff up its own boots. It’s not your garden-club-and-grits type of publication. No, this one likes its bourbon neat and its history complicated. It’s the South with the varnish peeled off — just the way we like it.
Which is why we nearly dropped our glass of tea when we saw a curious byline tucked under a story:
“Words by Jane Doe.”
Not “By.”
Not even the classic “Story by.”
But “Words by.”
Now, we know what they’re going for. A little edge. A little style. That writer-as-artisan touch. We suspect they want the phrase to hum with intimacy and authorship—like the writer just plucked these syllables from some wild linguistic garden and arranged them in a hand-thrown clay bowl. And sometimes, to drive it home, the same byline appears beneath a photo with “Photos by” the same person. Which is fair—photographs are made. Composed. Captured. Shaped in the eye and the hand. But by that logic, why stop at “Photos by”? Why not go full tilt and credit them with “Pixels by”? Because that’s where this new logic leads—credit for the raw materials themselves, not the craft of arranging them.
But still. We squinted. We winced. We sighed.
Because writers don’t make words.
They inherit them.
Let us not mistake arrangement for invention. You can string together a sentence so clean it whistles, build a paragraph with the structural integrity of a Greek temple. But you didn’t mint the words. They come from somewhere older, deeper. From etymology, oral tradition, kitchen tables, church pulpits, dictionaries, dive bars, and dust jackets.
We’ve long said—often while trying to explain our livelihood at a dinner party or to an incredulous uncle—that it’s amazing we make a living using words. All those thousands and thousands of (free!) entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, far too many to choose from, and yet people who don’t—or can’t—use them with any real precision pay us to do it for them. Incredible. Not alchemy, exactly. But close.
And here’s the thing: we don’t own those words. Not really. No one does. There are a few exceptions—phrases freighted with so much history, trauma, or reverence that they demand our precision and respect. The Holocaust, for instance. Or Jim Crow. Or 9/11. Words and phrases that carry the weight of memory, injustice, grief, or collective experience. But most of the time, as writers, we are not owners—we are stewards. We are like the old knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, guarding a shelf full of options and whispering to ourselves before we type: choose wisely.
And yes, choose with honor. Like those little roadside produce stands where a dozen ears of corn and a tin cash box sit unattended under a hand-painted sign that reads “On Your Honor.” No cameras. No checkout clerk. Just trust. That's the spirit we believe words deserve—honor and care.
And we can’t help but recall that line from R.E.M.:
“On your honor / on your honor / you promised...” A line that reminds us, if not binds us, to remember: the words we use say something not just about our craft, but about our character.
Even Flannery O’Connor, not known for her modesty, put it plainly:
“The writer can choose what he writes about but he cannot choose what he is able to make live.”
The words are not ours. They are what we make live.
And if you're still thinking we're being too fussy, allow us a moment with Tom Waits, patron saint of gravel-throated wisdom:
“Words are just words. They don’t mean nothing until you give them something.”
To say “Words by” feels, frankly, a bit hubristic. It’s like admiring a quilt and saying “Thread by.” Or staring up at a barn and calling it “Hammer by.” We don’t do that. We say “Built by.” “Crafted by.” Because we understand the difference between tool and creation.
We’re all for honoring the writer. Believe us—we are writers. But a little humility isn’t a bad accessory to wear with that editorial swagger.
So here on Snob Hill, we’ll stick with “By.”
Just “By.”
Quiet. Confident. Durable.
(Story, by us. Words, on loan from the ages.)