Post by Verbivore on Mar 10, 2020 21:39:05 GMT
Here is a long-ish but worthwhile opinion piece from a chap who, 20-odd years back, was editor of my (then) local rag. (He managed to drag that redneck paper into the late 20th century.)
It’s from LinkedIn, which I usually avoid (it’s a major spammer and spy, like Fakebook), so I’ve copied and pasted the piece to save others the risk of going to LinkedIn.
Words Have Power: Four phrases that kill modern writing
Published on March 9, 2017
Dean Gould
Writing should be a craft that, when practised well, makes words dance and sing.
But too often 21st century writing – journalism, blogs, fiction and non-fiction – falls short in the area of wordsmith excellence.
There are four phrases in particular that are hammering unnecessary nails into the contemporary coffin of writing. Modern journalism seems to be a major culprit in this crime against the English language.
The four main offenders are:
1. Alcohol-fuelled incident …
2. Back to the future …
3. Rain failed to dampen the spirits …
4. Agreeance … .
Alcohol-fuelled incident or bad behaviour?
I have read way too often the apologist phrase alcohol-fuelled incident.
It appears mostly in sport reporting as journalists become complicit in the sanitising of poor behaviour by athletes. If a footballer peed in a pot plant, then say that. If he swung a punch at someone, say that.
By using the term alcohol-fuelled we put an artificial separation between the person and the behaviour, like they are not responsible for their actions. Bad behaviour by sportspeople is no more or less alcohol-fuelled than it is by anyone else.
Be accurate. State the action. By covering it up with a euphemism, journalists become part of the distortion of the truth when their job is to deconstruct the veil of image management.
Words are our salvation and redemption. We should not allow them to be our damnation and judgement.
Back to the future is rubbish
Back to the future is one I have raged against for years, as a news reporter and then as an editor. Even in the PR world I banned it from my team's writing. Let's get one thing really clear, it is not grammatically correct so does not belong in serious writing. It is a cute name for a movie about time travel, but outside of that context it is rubbish.
Yet generations of journalists and bloggers who watched Marty McFly morph through the centuries seem to believe they are clever by adding it in to their copy. The error is so common that it is now an inappropriate cliché – which is another good reason to never write it.
But the main reason it should be avoided is that in the English language we don't go back to the future, we go back to the past.
Yet dumb writers – sorry, but it is dumb – insist on throwing in this 1980s movie reference when they are actually talking about a revival, a resurgence or a rediscovery of something that has previously been popular. You are talking about the past people, not the future! Your glib default to Hollywood titles is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Rain dampens my will to live
I can hardly believe that rain failed to dampen the spirits still gets air time. But I heard it recently on a TV news report about an outdoor festival that occurred on a rainy day. It was one I always warned my journalists against as soon as the clouds darkened. Just as my editors had warned me 20 years beforehand. Yet we have this insipid cliché still prevalent in the journalistic world.
I have a 1960s journalism text book that condemns it – and yet, 50 years later the advice still goes unheeded.
It is the laziest of reporting to lean on such a cliché to prop up a story. The angle is valid – that enthusiasm remained despite adversity – but find a better way to say it. There are dozens.
Your glib default to Hollywood titles is wrong, wrong, wrong.
We agree this is bad
Okay, agreeance is a word not a phrase, but I had to include it.
The fact is, it's not even a word. It is a mangled made-up verbalisation mostly from television reporters, but I have seen it written as well. Worst still, I now hear it thrown into regular conversations.
Agreeance was used back in the 16th century, but not since. If you agree with someone you are in agreement with them, not 'agreeance'.
Stop using it. It is right up there with brung and rooves.
And in fact, why convolute your writing with in agreement with when agree or agreed will do the same job? So apart from being a fictitious word, agreeance adds unnecessary clutter to the sentence because of the words needed around it.
Where did it all go wrong?
Finally, we ask why is the writing so often dented by these poor phrases?
Much can be directed at the changed structure of newsroom and the reduced level of scrutiny by copy editors that any particular story receives. In many cases now, whatever the reporter submits is the wording, phrasing and delivery that makes it to the consumer. There is much less quality control. That also means young journalists aren't learning like the previous carriers of the craft's torch. It is worse in the blogsphere where independent writers often publish with only their eyes and spellcheck as the gatekeepers. [Insert by Vv – a quotation I recently posted but that bears repeating here: blogging is graffiti with punctuation.]
But there is another reason for the perpetuation of these dreadful turns of phrases. Today's journalism and blog writing is disproportionately measured by Likes and Shares and still, page impressions. Most authors are still driven by the most shallow of online popularity contests.
So when a writer uses clichés with such rampant regularity his or her copy finds a ready audience via search engines. The greater public uses obvious keywords to do their searches (understandably) so the obvious writing is therefore rewarded. If reward is measured by the transient flicker of social media attention.
These particular phrases may not be among the keywords tapped into a search engine or requested through Siri but they are part of the online literacy culture of the obvious and predictable.
There is less applause for well-crafted sentences, for clever use of words and for unusual syntax. Search engines don't seek them out.
So we seem locked in this race to the bottom. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Journalists and bloggers can still pepper stories with strategic search keywords and at the same time avoid these most glaring of clichés and bad phrasing.
Words are our salvation and redemption. We should not allow them to be our damnation and judgement.
It’s from LinkedIn, which I usually avoid (it’s a major spammer and spy, like Fakebook), so I’ve copied and pasted the piece to save others the risk of going to LinkedIn.
Words Have Power: Four phrases that kill modern writing
Published on March 9, 2017
Dean Gould
Writing should be a craft that, when practised well, makes words dance and sing.
But too often 21st century writing – journalism, blogs, fiction and non-fiction – falls short in the area of wordsmith excellence.
There are four phrases in particular that are hammering unnecessary nails into the contemporary coffin of writing. Modern journalism seems to be a major culprit in this crime against the English language.
The four main offenders are:
1. Alcohol-fuelled incident …
2. Back to the future …
3. Rain failed to dampen the spirits …
4. Agreeance … .
Alcohol-fuelled incident or bad behaviour?
I have read way too often the apologist phrase alcohol-fuelled incident.
It appears mostly in sport reporting as journalists become complicit in the sanitising of poor behaviour by athletes. If a footballer peed in a pot plant, then say that. If he swung a punch at someone, say that.
By using the term alcohol-fuelled we put an artificial separation between the person and the behaviour, like they are not responsible for their actions. Bad behaviour by sportspeople is no more or less alcohol-fuelled than it is by anyone else.
Be accurate. State the action. By covering it up with a euphemism, journalists become part of the distortion of the truth when their job is to deconstruct the veil of image management.
Words are our salvation and redemption. We should not allow them to be our damnation and judgement.
Back to the future is rubbish
Back to the future is one I have raged against for years, as a news reporter and then as an editor. Even in the PR world I banned it from my team's writing. Let's get one thing really clear, it is not grammatically correct so does not belong in serious writing. It is a cute name for a movie about time travel, but outside of that context it is rubbish.
Yet generations of journalists and bloggers who watched Marty McFly morph through the centuries seem to believe they are clever by adding it in to their copy. The error is so common that it is now an inappropriate cliché – which is another good reason to never write it.
But the main reason it should be avoided is that in the English language we don't go back to the future, we go back to the past.
Yet dumb writers – sorry, but it is dumb – insist on throwing in this 1980s movie reference when they are actually talking about a revival, a resurgence or a rediscovery of something that has previously been popular. You are talking about the past people, not the future! Your glib default to Hollywood titles is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Rain dampens my will to live
I can hardly believe that rain failed to dampen the spirits still gets air time. But I heard it recently on a TV news report about an outdoor festival that occurred on a rainy day. It was one I always warned my journalists against as soon as the clouds darkened. Just as my editors had warned me 20 years beforehand. Yet we have this insipid cliché still prevalent in the journalistic world.
I have a 1960s journalism text book that condemns it – and yet, 50 years later the advice still goes unheeded.
It is the laziest of reporting to lean on such a cliché to prop up a story. The angle is valid – that enthusiasm remained despite adversity – but find a better way to say it. There are dozens.
Your glib default to Hollywood titles is wrong, wrong, wrong.
We agree this is bad
Okay, agreeance is a word not a phrase, but I had to include it.
The fact is, it's not even a word. It is a mangled made-up verbalisation mostly from television reporters, but I have seen it written as well. Worst still, I now hear it thrown into regular conversations.
Agreeance was used back in the 16th century, but not since. If you agree with someone you are in agreement with them, not 'agreeance'.
Stop using it. It is right up there with brung and rooves.
And in fact, why convolute your writing with in agreement with when agree or agreed will do the same job? So apart from being a fictitious word, agreeance adds unnecessary clutter to the sentence because of the words needed around it.
Where did it all go wrong?
Finally, we ask why is the writing so often dented by these poor phrases?
Much can be directed at the changed structure of newsroom and the reduced level of scrutiny by copy editors that any particular story receives. In many cases now, whatever the reporter submits is the wording, phrasing and delivery that makes it to the consumer. There is much less quality control. That also means young journalists aren't learning like the previous carriers of the craft's torch. It is worse in the blogsphere where independent writers often publish with only their eyes and spellcheck as the gatekeepers. [Insert by Vv – a quotation I recently posted but that bears repeating here: blogging is graffiti with punctuation.]
But there is another reason for the perpetuation of these dreadful turns of phrases. Today's journalism and blog writing is disproportionately measured by Likes and Shares and still, page impressions. Most authors are still driven by the most shallow of online popularity contests.
So when a writer uses clichés with such rampant regularity his or her copy finds a ready audience via search engines. The greater public uses obvious keywords to do their searches (understandably) so the obvious writing is therefore rewarded. If reward is measured by the transient flicker of social media attention.
These particular phrases may not be among the keywords tapped into a search engine or requested through Siri but they are part of the online literacy culture of the obvious and predictable.
There is less applause for well-crafted sentences, for clever use of words and for unusual syntax. Search engines don't seek them out.
So we seem locked in this race to the bottom. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Journalists and bloggers can still pepper stories with strategic search keywords and at the same time avoid these most glaring of clichés and bad phrasing.
Words are our salvation and redemption. We should not allow them to be our damnation and judgement.