From Sonya Booth
My personal favorite, seen in fine newspapers everywhere (including, recently, the Chicago Tribune): Death took no holiday…
Spark, spearhead, scramble, nestle
From Paul Bonner:
I’ve been keeping a list. It seems to me that verbs are the part
of speech that most often become hackneyed in newswriting. I think
it must be to cover up the lack of any concrete action in most stories:
spark (as in: “The commissioner’s action sparked a lively
debate among those who signed up to speak at the meeting.”)spearhead (as in: “Pfalphzer spearheaded the fund-raising
drive.”ax (as in: “The item was axed from the budget”) tapped (for “chosen,” as in: “Klutzwater was tapped
for the position.”)scramble (as in: “Officials were left scrambling. …”) nestle (as in: “Nestled between a railroad trestle and
a gulch, the seedy cafe makes what must surely be its last stand.”)
Treacly TV
From Jeffrey Whitmore:
Ban forever the wrap-up line so loved by TV news people:
“. . . and that’s what it’s all about!” It’s typically
uttered (with a smarmy smile) after a heartwarming shot of an indigent
family eating day-old bread donated by the corporate sponsors of a
golf tournament in Palm Springs,Pebble Beach, or on the north forty
of the Taj Mahal.And do away with its sickening brethren:
. . . “but the big [or real] winner in the event was charity. On reflection, Jeffrey added the following:
Soon after I sent the “charity” cliche I recalled another,
possibly more cloying one. It’s the spunky lede that begins with a
truism. Next comes an invitation to the reader to agree. And then
comes the zinger. For example:“Real gourmets don’t drink red wine with fish, right? Wrong!”
Another purgative worthy of banishment:
Nothing could be further from the truth. I just ran an “exact phrase” Hotbot web search on the expression
and came up with 2,961 citations. For each of the many I checked out,
I could readily imagine fifty billion or so statements that were further
from the truth.
Dumps, rashes
Joe Phelan posits the following:
How come a winter storm always “dumps” however
many inches? And why is there a…“Rash” of burglaries or whatever?