Spearheading the blue ribbon commission

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Ivan Weiss will be glad to celebrate at the wake of these:

  • “In the wake of:” How about “after” or
    “since?”
  • “As many as” when used with a specific number.
    It’s totally meaningless. “About” or “an estimated”
    usually will do.
  • “Spearheaded” for “led”
  • “Underscored“: my pet peeve — It’s muddy. Emphazised,
    pointed out, demonstrated, illustrated, reinforced are all more specific.
  • “Announced” for “said”
  • “Blue-ribbon commission.” Dead on arrival at my
    desk.
  • “A pair of” for the simple “two”
  • “Burgeoning:” Another yuppie trendoid buzzword.
    How about “fast-growing?”
  • “Crafted” for an abstract concept. A wood-carving
    is “crafted.” Legislation is “drafted.”

    • Those crack fielders

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    Matthew Carrick volunteers these annoyances:

  • “Crack” — not the drug but the description, as
    in “The crack SAS/Green Beret unit . . .”
  • “Fielded‘ – Farmers MAY field but anyone else might
    simply answer the question.

    • Lost at sea

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    Max Hughey respectfully submits the following (and cites Willy the
    Shake to prove that he really means it):

    Ban “sea change” until people learn its meaning.
    It does NOT mean a watershed event but, rather, indicates a miraculous
    change into something finer, such as from a grain of sand into a pearl.
    (See Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” Act I, Scene II; Ariel
    sings, “Nothing of him doth fade/But doth suffer a sea-change/Into
    something rich and strange.”) For example, the 1994 Republican
    takeover of Congress was NOT a sea change — unless one is a Republican
    — although I’ve heard it used dozens of times on radio and television.
    One might almost believe that this usage has been orchestrated by
    Newt Gingrich et al.

    Raining 110 percent performers

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    Greg Wait has multiple irritations, probably the direct result of watching
    too many local TV newscasts:

  • One phrase that always bothered me is, “Pouring down rain,” as in, “It was pouring down rain all week.” As opposed to
    what? Molasses? Sprite?
  • A distinction of language that many journalists seem to miss is
    the difference between “less” and “fewer.”
    More and more the word “less” is being used in instances
    where “fewer” is appropriate. The difference is simple —
    if you want less traffic, you need fewer cars.
  • And please, would everyone stop “giving 110%?”
    It’s mathematically impossible, and you’re making the rest of us look
    bad. 100% will be just fine.
  • “In conclusion,” don’t tell me you’re finished,
    just stop talking or writing. I’ll figure it out. And no more “wrapping
    it up    ,” as in, “That just about wraps it up.”
    If I hear that one more time, I’m going to drive down to the local
    station and rap someone upside of his head.

    • Which state, what art?

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    Rory Thompson posits a rave and a challenge:

    I’ve had QUITE ENOUGH of the (un)descriptive phrase, “State
    of the art…    ” I used to relish tearing into lazy reporters
    who tagged the phrase on whenever they had nothing creative to say
    about a new product. Can any of your more seasoned correspondents
    tell me where “state of the art” originated? I need to know
    so I can wave it in contributors’ faces when they try to slink it
    into one of their features pieces.

    My favorite train wreck tale

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    From Tom Barber:

    Ever notice that when a tornado strikes, “tossing mobile homes
    about like children’s toys,” a witness inevitably is able to
    buttonhole a wire service reporter within moments of emerging from
    his storm cellar to announce, “It sounded like a freight train!”

    My freight train file was swelling impressively when a prized catch
    came in an AP second lede writethru from Motley, Minn., where a bumbling
    dispatcher had sent two Burlington Northern coal trains down the same
    track to a head-on crash 200 yards from Andrew Paife’s home. “Paife
    captured the moment for reporter Karren Mills, volunteering:

    ‘It sounded like a tornado.’ “

    A heartbreaking work of staggering cleanup

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    From Stephen Mcilwaine:

    In natural-disaster-prone Australia (“I love a sunburnt country
    …” is our national poem) we can rely on at least one TV reporter
    per bushfire or flood telling us, “Now begins the heartbreaking
    task of cleaning up    .”

    Dig those coffers, man

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    From Gene McCarthy:

    One very overworked pet peeve-word I’ve always had was “coffers” and people, usually municipal/government officials, “digging deep” into them to pay somebody or something. In a day when cash is becoming obsolete and funds are whizzed around the world in
    a millisecond, isn’t it a bit ridiculous to continue to use a term
    which Webster’s New World dictionary says was a “chest for holding
    money or valuables?” Maybe just plain old “accounts”
    would more than suffice.

    A scrambled egg

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    From Tim Christie:

    When I worked at the Yakima (Wash.) Herald-Republic in Eastern Washington, and one of the big city papers would come into town to write about a local issue, you could count on one of the many small towns in the Yakima Valley described as a “hard scrabble hamlet.”

    Which always made me think of a hard-scrambled omelet.