Let's All Talk (and Write) Good II
I have a long, still-unwritten post about the fascinating subject of my refrigerator that I'm procrastinating on. So while I muster the energy to do that, here's another quick list of pet writing peeves, things that make me wince when I see them used in copy:
On Steroids: This was really kind of tired the first time it was used to mean something that looks like something else but bigger. There are so many ways to say that one thing is bigger than another. Do we really need to keep flogging this particular phrase?
The New Black: This is, or was, a trendy way to say "trendy." I suggest saving the keystrokes and just saying "trendy."
X is the new X-10 You've heard this one—fifty is the new forty, and so on. But nothing has changed, it's pretty much the way it's always been—some people age very gracefully, others hit a wall early, and the rest of us tend to look, and act, our age. An acquaintance of mine was sitting around once with friends, and the subject of looking one's age came up. The whole group averred that they did not, themselves, look their age. The acquaintance, who was and is extremely bright and amusing but not always equally tactful, became impatient with the implications of this. "That's crazy!" she said. "Somebody has to look their age! You!" she said, pointing at one friend. "You look your age!" But she might as well have pointed at all of us. Strive to be vibrant, by all means. But except for a very lucky few, your age is pretty much your age, and magazine articles fishing for overoptimistic readers by claiming otherwise won't change it. Wish it did, but no.
In Specific: The opposite of the phrase "in general" is "in particular." You hear "in specific" fairly often—I just read it in something by the best living journalist on the planet (that would be James Fallows). But saying things like "Wombats in general, and this wombat in specific," always sounds to me like a clinker in a piano piece. "This wombat in particular" just sounds better.
Food Faux Pas: Why is it that people drinking wine at a social occasion are always described as "sipping" it? The term gets overused and sounds a little precious, like they're butterflies gathering nectar. All sorts of people drink wine, and not always in a decorous manner, so if the occasion was ritzy, there just have to be other ways to get that idea across. At least let the attendees actually drink the wine, occasionally, or just hold the glasses in their hands if they feel like it. They can't spend the whole evening sipping. The same for "munching" hors d'oeuvres. They're human beings, not rodents. Munching implies continuous and often audible jaw motion. If you're blasting through a piece of writing and not thinking hard about it, you might feel it adds a touch of breeziness to say "munching," but it's been worn out for decades now and breeziness is overrated. Last and least: "veggies." I have many dear friends who use this term, but it always sounded like baby talk to me and I can't be the only person who feels that way. Why? Why why why? Why say veggies? How does that make life better? Let us put away childish things and not say "veggies."
Enter: As a way to introduce a new, situation-changing element in a story, this has one advantage—brevity—and a whole bunch of drawbacks. "Waterloo Falls had always been a sleepy Midwestern town." (Add two or three proofs of its sleepiness.) Then the next paragraph begins like this: "Enter Franz McGillicuddy." This is a breezy and kind of lazy way to say that Franz is going to shake the town up. But it interrupts the flow of the story—it makes us about a million times too aware of the writer's stage-managing the events in the piece, since it literally is a stage direction. If you're not writing a play, I think it's best that things not enter that way. Let Franz show up in town in some normal manner.
The Kind of Small-Town America That Doesn't Exist Any More: Speaking of so-called "sleepy" towns, I've read this confident assertion many times over the years, and once is too many. Yeah yeah yeah, postwar demographic trends, all that. But as it stands, the statement is a bit sweeping. It gives the impression to people who mostly live in cities and their suburbs that all of the nation's smaller communities are abandoned, shutters banging, doors hanging off hinges and such like those ghost towns in the California gold country. I assure you, Urban Writer People, that small towns still exist. I live in one, and so do people of all ages including those of the young persuasion. I've been to about a million others. I have a friend who actually moved, Urban Writer People, from suburban Philadelphia to a town in Montana called Hamilton. Hamilton literally has one stoplight. There's a trout river right there, and mountains in the windows. It's peaceful, if chilly in the winter. My friend likes it there a lot. He's a jazz-guitar-playing science dude, by the way, just to swirl a swizzle stick in your stereotypes for you. There's a small division of GlaxoSmithKline near Hamilton, and a job opened up and he jumped at it. At any rate, when someone says small-town America doesn't exist any more, I turn the page and find somebody to read who gives evidence of getting out of the city now and then and getting the facts. There are kajillions of small towns still in this country, and the reports of their nonexistence have been greatly exaggerated.
Well! That'll do for today. Until next time, strive to your utmost to write good and so will I.
On Steroids: This was really kind of tired the first time it was used to mean something that looks like something else but bigger. There are so many ways to say that one thing is bigger than another. Do we really need to keep flogging this particular phrase?
The New Black: This is, or was, a trendy way to say "trendy." I suggest saving the keystrokes and just saying "trendy."
X is the new X-10 You've heard this one—fifty is the new forty, and so on. But nothing has changed, it's pretty much the way it's always been—some people age very gracefully, others hit a wall early, and the rest of us tend to look, and act, our age. An acquaintance of mine was sitting around once with friends, and the subject of looking one's age came up. The whole group averred that they did not, themselves, look their age. The acquaintance, who was and is extremely bright and amusing but not always equally tactful, became impatient with the implications of this. "That's crazy!" she said. "Somebody has to look their age! You!" she said, pointing at one friend. "You look your age!" But she might as well have pointed at all of us. Strive to be vibrant, by all means. But except for a very lucky few, your age is pretty much your age, and magazine articles fishing for overoptimistic readers by claiming otherwise won't change it. Wish it did, but no.
In Specific: The opposite of the phrase "in general" is "in particular." You hear "in specific" fairly often—I just read it in something by the best living journalist on the planet (that would be James Fallows). But saying things like "Wombats in general, and this wombat in specific," always sounds to me like a clinker in a piano piece. "This wombat in particular" just sounds better.
Food Faux Pas: Why is it that people drinking wine at a social occasion are always described as "sipping" it? The term gets overused and sounds a little precious, like they're butterflies gathering nectar. All sorts of people drink wine, and not always in a decorous manner, so if the occasion was ritzy, there just have to be other ways to get that idea across. At least let the attendees actually drink the wine, occasionally, or just hold the glasses in their hands if they feel like it. They can't spend the whole evening sipping. The same for "munching" hors d'oeuvres. They're human beings, not rodents. Munching implies continuous and often audible jaw motion. If you're blasting through a piece of writing and not thinking hard about it, you might feel it adds a touch of breeziness to say "munching," but it's been worn out for decades now and breeziness is overrated. Last and least: "veggies." I have many dear friends who use this term, but it always sounded like baby talk to me and I can't be the only person who feels that way. Why? Why why why? Why say veggies? How does that make life better? Let us put away childish things and not say "veggies."
Enter: As a way to introduce a new, situation-changing element in a story, this has one advantage—brevity—and a whole bunch of drawbacks. "Waterloo Falls had always been a sleepy Midwestern town." (Add two or three proofs of its sleepiness.) Then the next paragraph begins like this: "Enter Franz McGillicuddy." This is a breezy and kind of lazy way to say that Franz is going to shake the town up. But it interrupts the flow of the story—it makes us about a million times too aware of the writer's stage-managing the events in the piece, since it literally is a stage direction. If you're not writing a play, I think it's best that things not enter that way. Let Franz show up in town in some normal manner.
The Kind of Small-Town America That Doesn't Exist Any More: Speaking of so-called "sleepy" towns, I've read this confident assertion many times over the years, and once is too many. Yeah yeah yeah, postwar demographic trends, all that. But as it stands, the statement is a bit sweeping. It gives the impression to people who mostly live in cities and their suburbs that all of the nation's smaller communities are abandoned, shutters banging, doors hanging off hinges and such like those ghost towns in the California gold country. I assure you, Urban Writer People, that small towns still exist. I live in one, and so do people of all ages including those of the young persuasion. I've been to about a million others. I have a friend who actually moved, Urban Writer People, from suburban Philadelphia to a town in Montana called Hamilton. Hamilton literally has one stoplight. There's a trout river right there, and mountains in the windows. It's peaceful, if chilly in the winter. My friend likes it there a lot. He's a jazz-guitar-playing science dude, by the way, just to swirl a swizzle stick in your stereotypes for you. There's a small division of GlaxoSmithKline near Hamilton, and a job opened up and he jumped at it. At any rate, when someone says small-town America doesn't exist any more, I turn the page and find somebody to read who gives evidence of getting out of the city now and then and getting the facts. There are kajillions of small towns still in this country, and the reports of their nonexistence have been greatly exaggerated.
Well! That'll do for today. Until next time, strive to your utmost to write good and so will I.
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