New York, Feb. 3, 2002. There is no attribution, no acknowledgment of the source, but a headline writer for the New York Times today uses "Have Pen, Will Grovel."

Under the full-page banner at the top of page 3 of The City section is Tara Bahrampour's article on the travails of freelance writers. However, it now turns out that not even Vicki was first to use it. That honor belongs to a humor writer for the Toronto Star Magazine Section (as well as playwright and CBC television broadcaster), in a piece called "I'll tell you it's not easy being free all the time" (December 27, 1986, p. G2).

Unaware of the earlier authorship, Vicki used the parodic catchphrase in her email sig ten years ago, ironically labeling the pain and hardship endured by the print-writing profession. The slogan now appears on Vicki's letterhead, business card, fax cover sheet, and, of course, on this Web site. Someone from nytimes.com hit this site dozens of times in the last month. The hits stopped about ten days before the Times article and headline appeared.

Vicki also used the phrase in a cartoon picket sign for the newsletter of the New York local of the National Writers Union. Even more ironically, that issue also contained Vicki's parody of the Times headline-writing style, to attack its treatment of freelancers.

The Times has formally refused Vicki's request for a correction, acknowledging the Toronto Star, if not Vicki, as the true source of the headline.

A Times photo of Vicki is on this site. However, Vicki acknowledges the source, the photographer, the reporter for the accompanying article, and the copyright ownership. Nowhere in today's Times article headed by "Have Pen, Will Grovel" is either Vicki or the Toronto Star writer acknowledged.

And Vicki now acknowledges the Toronto Star as having first published humor with the catchphrase in the text, unbeknownst to Vicki for all these years.