Dear Journalists,
Please stop describing inanimate objects as "humble". Humility is a human trait, and descriptions of "the humble curry", "the humble potato" or "the humble pine tree" are both hackneyed and illogical. What's so humble about pine trees, anyway? Pine trees have nothing to be humble about. They're fucking majestic.
Which clichés and constructions annoy you? Does anyone care about this kind of stuff? The massive overtracking of paragraphs in thelondonpaper used to really piss me off, which is pretty sad. Anyway, outline your linguistic bêtes noires below. I might put some of them in our style guide.
what does overtracking mean
...
Tracking is the distance between the letters in printed text. If you need to get a line to fit, you can reduce the tracking by a little bit – say from 0 to -5 or -10 – to squeeze it in, although it's better if you cut or rephrase the copy. If you track it back too far, the letters all look squashed together and are more difficult to read; it's often a sign that the copy's been worked on by a lazy sub or someone in a hurry. There's a Wikipedia article here if you're really interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter-spacing
I come on this website to avoid work, and now I'm explaining the rudiments of subbing. I'm not sure how this happened.
thanks Joe
now you've got me all fascinated. I'll get to work on a list of questions
I hear you.
I hated getting a willing helper to lay up a page last year, only for them to have overtracked it because they couldn't be arsed to actully be creative with the material I gave them.
ooh it's kinda like curning
but for practicality rather than aesthetics!
*kerning
'no, YOU'RE the schmoopy'
:)
I just told our art editor to simply 'up the tracking and stop moaning' on a story after I'd taken two lines out. He told me I was a Fisher Price journalist and should shut my mouth.
Fisher Price things can't shut their mouths, can they?
Haha
In my early days as an editorial assistant, a designer was looking over my shoulder at a layout with a load of different boxes on and she said: “The text looks funny in this one. Is that just your monitor?”
“Nah, there was a bit of space at the bottom so I just increased the text size ––”
“You can’t do that!” She went doolally. It was brilliant. I’d only done it idly to see what it looked like, and I explained that I wouldn’t have dreamed of actually making a permanent change without asking her, but I got the lecture anyway.
...
Surely she would prefer that to the usual method of using erotic short stories as placeholder text...
Is that what you use?
"Panting, Lorem Ipsum pushed her up against the wall. "Indolor sit amet," he muttered into her ear. She could feel his consectetur adipisicing her elit, and huskily sed: "Do eiusmod tempor incididunt." That was all the encouragement he needed, and he started to ut her labore et dolore her magna aliqua. She wanted to ut enim. She wanted to ut enim ad minim veniam. She could feel her quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat..."
That kind of thing?
:D
i'm so hot right now
...
You have won Tuesday 22nd July 2008. How does it feel?
:D
working hard on your birthday, obvs.
obligatory mention
for music journalist descriptions of bands like "sounds like the yeah yeah yeahs fucking black lips on a one way train to black sabbath's roadie's urologist's mansion of drugggss".
silence, prats.
We've all done that occasionally.
The trick is not to make a habit of it.
I certainly have not
Not to that extent
But you you're writing about the new Minus album for students who know shit all about music, you have to use comparisons.
I don't mind comparisons
I just hate the fantasy scenarios
I said a Black Lips song sounded like Johnny Cash drunkenly pissing off the back of a train.
Shoot me.
Johny Cash would shoot you if he could
Yeah
Johny
I bet he would.
I think far too many journalists in music forget they're writing for people who probably haven't heard what they're writing about. And yes, fantasy scenarios are ridiculous when they're taken to silly lengths, but they can, if used carefully, describe exactly what something sounds like in a pretty inimitable and witty way. It's not something to make a habit of, but it's often a decent way of making a comparison without seeming blundering and clunky.
Never acceptable
No surrender
Harvey Milk fans should never fight.
Like Scratch Acid on acid
meets Leftover Crack on crack
on tour with
Drunks With Guns drinking drinks from their guns
People who don't know the difference between
'dependent' and 'dependant', even after I've spent 20 minutes explaining it to them.
And people who confuse 'less' and 'fewer', but the only reason that one pisses me off is because I know I'm guilty of doing it every now and then.
I'm sorry to be an idiot
but I've just checked the dictionary and isn't one just a variation of the other?
Nope
A dependant is someone in your trust or care (for example, as a child you would have been a dependant of your parents).
see that's what I thought as
well, but...
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dependent
it's the first meaning.
Unless once again I'm being a buffoon.
Why is EVERYONE
adding 'right now' to the end of their sentences at the moment? Its fucking ridiculous right now.
because "right now" is so hot right now
People who can't differentiate
between there/they're/their and your/you're etc.
your right there dicks
:D
"gentle giant"
seriously, so some guy who was tall died. stop calling him a gentle giant. you make me think of the BFG. shut up.
iwillnevernotloveyou
Oh fuck yes. That kid who got stabbed
why did every reporter have to repeat that phrase
imo
Oh right, not someone else's opinion.
'my bad'
just stop it.
I love saying this
I say it to annoy people now.
at the end of the day -
not being funny yeah -
...
In the world of business 'you', 'me' and 'us' has transmogrified into 'yourself', 'myself' and 'ourselves'.
"This document needs to be signed by Julie Simm and yourself..." ARGH!
"He sent the invoice to Tom Charles and myself..." AAARGGHH!!
...then there was the one time I heard "Ourself". Yeah!
I've seen "ourself" a number of times.
Is it possible for people to be singular and plural at the same time? It's an interesting metaphysical conundrum.
we are become one now
it's the company motto
Do you work for Maxi Jazz?
sometimes,
i'm dido
...
Dido, my annaeus.
You don't look anything like her.
9/10
Classical pun of the day.
I hope one day Shakin Stevens
becomes schizophrenic and changes his name to Ourself Islam.
oh chuff
so so so so so so so
much this. SO SO SO much.
I hate this too
Why are people so fucking snooty about using plain English?
People that start sentences with
'Going forward...'
Use of the word 'refute' by journalists/politicians when they actually mean 'deny'
^ This too
...
Yes. See also: Refute/Rebut.
I hate that.
Even Channel 4 news has started getting confused.
Fisher Price journalism, that.
I'm loving it
No, cuntface, you either love it at the moment, or you love it full stop.
DON'T QUOTE FUCKING MACDONALDS.
...
"It went down like a lead balloon."
Aside from being a shit sitcom, it doesn't work. Lead balloons wouldn't rise in the first place, so they can't go down.
It would be better to say "it went down like a slowly deflating balloon". MUCH better.
On Braniac (i think it was Braniac anyway)
last week they actually proved that Lead Balloons are capable of flight.
"Licence to Thrill"
no-one EVER needs to use this phrase again, especially in the promotion of James Bond gubbins.
The power of Christ compels you
I hate that
Bla Bla Bla.
'go take a running jump'
what the fuck does that mean you fucking fuck? *smashes shit up*
...
It's an elliptical phrase. The second part is "...off something of sufficient height as to cause your death or serious injury, you cunt."
While we're at it
the word "elliptical" can get to fuck. What's so goddamn mysterious about ovals?
:D
i love you mahoney
COCK PISS PARTRIDGE!
COOK PASS BARTBRIDGE!
isn't it
Babtridge?
'I must say'
Must you?
Slash's biography is riddled with I must says, and it detracts from what is otherwise an lighthearted, enjoyable romp through the world of a depressive coke addict.
I hate the term 'romp' as well, but that only really applies to tabloid newspapers.
romp just makes me think of Stephen Fry
I'm not sure why, and that makes me even more deeply disturbed.
"Get a room"
With all due respect.
Hnnnngh. Thanks. Why not just say that you think I’m a moron?
My biggest bugbear though is when journalists use the word ‘impact’ when ‘effect’ will do just fine. And journalists who continue to think that people get evacuated rather than buildings. And journalists that use ‘crisis’, ‘chaos’, ‘outrage’ and ‘controversy’ when ‘mild irritation’ will suffice.
And while I’m on the topic of ‘controversy’ – it really annoys me when newsreaders put the emphasis in the wrong place. It’s ‘contROVersy’, not ‘contraVERsy’.
'Chillax'
the worst word of 2008. Perhaps of all time.
People don't say it seriously though,
god forbid you know anyone who actually says seriously.
Overuse of 'literally'.
e.g. "I was LITERALLY exploding!"
Also "and so on and so forth", because it doesn't really mean anything. See also "basically..."
I like to use ‘ostensibly’
instead of ‘basically’. It makes me sound cleverer.
I frequent a forum on which someone fiddled with the code so that every post that used ‘literally’ had it replaced with ‘figuratively’.
...
...but don't ostensibly and basically mean two totally different things?
I've literally failed, haven't I?
..
I'm going to allow you because you've reminded me of something I heard some politician on TV say once: "Ostensibly, that would appear to be the case..."
NO! Kill all redundancies!
"For sure"
I don't know how not to start a sentence with it when speaking irl, and it makes me sound foreign.
(I'm not sure if I typed what I actually intended to after "irl", but it looks about right. I got distracted by realising that if you take the "p" out of "speaking" it spells "seaking". Interesting, huh?)
that technique is called transferred epithet and is completely valid
arn't journalists allowed some degree of poetic licence?
Not on my watch.
...
Except when it's overused, at which point it becomes cliché, which is always to be avoided.
You got greedy, Jim!
"That Friday feeling"
For fucks sake, what does that even mean? Fridays are shit days anyhow. Anyone who says it should be pushed off a cliff. So annoying.
"I'm sorry, but..."
hit the ground running
holistic approach