Category Archives: News

Driving us to drink

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William B. Eustis suggests there’s surely a better way to say:

  • “Drugs and alcohol.” — I know that this is a style
    required by some organizations. It is clearly redundant and suggests
    that alcohol is not a drug.
  • “Substance abuse.” – What substance is being abused?
    Walking on my lawn could be considered “SA.”
  • “Self-titled.” (As in: “Joe Blow’s new self
    – titled CDƒ”) What, the CD gave itself a name? Either use
    the title or use the perfectly useful “eponymous” and make
    ’em look it up.
  • A further note on “At this point in time.” – Not
    only is this used for “now,” it has also become a bad synonym
    for “then.”

    • Quakes alive

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    Steve Parker sends these observations:

    For anyone in earthquake country, the inevitable description called-in to a radio news station right after a temblor:

  • “It was like a rolling motion” and (with apologies
    to tornado country) “It sounded like a freight train”.
  • For those who hate “state-of-the-art”…how about …
    the various uses (and spellings) of “hi-tech,” “high-tech”
    …etc.

    • Notes from an English teacher

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    Anyone who says “the wave of the future” is clearly “mired
    in the past,” says retired English professor Helen H. Gordon, who
    defines a composition teacher as one who, for the love of good writing,
    reads more bad writing than she’d ever have to read in any other occupation.
    The Professor submits these choice annoyances:

  • “the bottom line”
  • “blow-by-blow description”
  • “last but not least”
  • “unsung hero”
  • “couldn’t care less” (or erroneously, “could care
    less”)
  • “man’s best friend”
  • “sacred cow”
  • “whose ox is being gored”
  • “man (or woman) who needs no introduction”

    • They’ve got ’em in India too

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    Sidharth Bhatia sends these fresh (stale?) from the Asian Subcontinent:

    I chanced upon your excellent site and enjoyed all the cliches. In
    India, we suffer from the hangovers of the archaic English left back
    by our erstwhile colonial masters, the Brits. While they have moved
    on, we stick to Ye Olde hackneyed English. And of course, our hacks
    have also developed their own peculiar phrases. Some examples:

  • The detenus flew the coop
  • Ministers air-dashed to the capital (they never fly, always airdash)
  • A favourite with ponderous edit writers: Needless to say (then don’t
    say it)
  • It ill behoves us
  • Culprits nabbed (a very common headline)There are many more, but let me conclude with this story of the editorial
    writer who was summoned by his boss and told to write 600 words on some
    matter of grave importance. At about 5 p.m., when there was no sign
    of the editorial, the Big man himself went to his junior’s cabin and
    found him lying slumped on his typewriter (those were the days before
    PCs), quite dead. On the sheet in the typewriter there was just one
    word:
  • “Notwithstanding… “

    • Avoid these like the plague

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    Pat Churchill sends these along:

    An old news editor of mine (probably quoting a revered source) used
    to tell us “Cliches should be avoided like the plague.” The cliches that irritate me:

  • “Well positioned to take advantage of (an upturn in the economy)”
  • Captions reading “Blabla and blabla sharing a joke”
  • People who have obviously been sacked “resigning to pursue
    other interests.”Along with:
  • Take no prisoners
  • Given no quarter
  • Worst-case scenario
  • Mortifying experience
  • Gets the nod
  • Continue to monitor developments
  • Showered with good wishes
  • Brandishing a [sawn off shotgun]
  • Went the extra mile
  • Beyond his/her wildest dreams
  • A disaster waiting to happen

    • Nailing hammers

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    From Laura Moyer (don’t tempt her to give up her day job to become a folk singer):

  • How about, “Legislators hammered out an eleventh-hour compromise.” Sounds like it should be in a folk song:
      If I had a hammer,
      I’d hammer out a compromise
      At the eleventh hour
      All over this laaa-and
  • Also, there are oodles of nice nouns for frozen precipitation. No
    need–ever–for “the white stuff.”

    • This one is a riot

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    Bob Noble, a former UPI wire editor who wants broadcasters to stop
    referring to baubles and bangles as “JOOL-er-ee” instead of
    “JOO-wel-ree” and ban the insidious “Smith’s Paint Store
    is having THEIR (instead of its) semi-annual sale,” also wants
    to toss this out:

    In cases of rioting, it seems the stories invariably have the miscreants
    throwing “rocks and bottles.” Take a walk down any
    city street, and there may be an occasional bottle, but few rocks.
    “Debris” would have probably sufficed.

    Not exactly a day at the beach

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    Karl Witter sent this voluminous list of suggestions along:

    Banned images:

  • The intrepid reporter standing at a beach’s high-water mark in the onslaught of a hurricane or other coastal storm. I’m waiting to see a wave crashing over the reporter, and, after subsiding, the
    camera op reeling in a snapped cable with no mic or reporter attached.
  • The transitional bantering in which news anchors, meteorologists and sports anchors appear on screen together for several seconds.

    • Banned words (not including spillover from the corporate lexicon):

  • “And you’re not going to believe this…”, “Get
    ready for this…”, or similar, prefacing a TV news story which
    will shock us with needlessly tragic human suffering or bureaucratic
    nincompoopery.
  • “Grow” as a verb done by the subject to the object. One grows neither the economy nor a dog. One can feed a puppy, house-train it, and take it to the vet. Then it grows.
  • “Random violence” isn’t; lightning is. The phrase
    seems to have been invented for contemporary street and blue-collar
    crimes, and gangs. Old-fashioned American shootouts, from the Old
    West to the Roaring Twenties, needed no such distinction for the accidental
    shooting of non-involved bystanders.
  • “The mother of all…” is this decade’s mother
    of all cliches.
  • “Abortion clinic,” “abortion doctor“. Hmm…nobody’s called John Salvi’s victims “abortion receptionists” yet. Hey, I’m just glad the press hasn’t adapted the right-to-lifers’ terminology and started calling women’s health clinics “fetus
    farms”! (Half-kidding but barely.)
  • “xxx-ly correct” when one really means “just
    plain accurate and right.” Included uses of note are geographically
    correct, historically correct, and, the winning stretch-of-phrase,
    orinthologically correct.
  • “Politically correct” applied ex-post-facto to
    anything. Someday a journalist will describe the Underground Railroad,
    the Pure Food and Drug Act, or the Taylor Act as “P.C.”
    Actually, “politically correct” is a “feely” word
    with no definition anymore. Restrain its use to the original higher-education
    meaning and trash it in other arenas.

    • Oscar, meet the grouch

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    In honor of Oscar Night (March 24, 1997), Craig Sonnenberg nominates
    for banishment:

  • “The feel-good movie of the year.”
  • So-and-So…”delivers the performance of his/her career“
  • So-and-So “gives a triumphant performance that is sure to
    be remembered at Oscar time    .”

    • Other banishment nominations:

  • Reporters pronouncing the word “nuclear” as “nucular”
  • “There’s more bad news today for (The White House, O.J.
    Simpson, Timothy McVeigh’s defense team, whoever)…”
  • “The latest (CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, USA Today, NY
    Times, Gallup, etc.) poll is out, and it’s not good news
    for     (President Clinton, Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich, The First Lady,
    etc.)

    • Wonk on the head

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    Kim Welch suggests these words/phrases:

  • wonk (as in policy wonk, as in virtually every story on Clinton appointees and hires).
  • mosh pit (enough already).
  • virtually (see above); virtual reality (seriously overused)
  • paradigm shift (gag).