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Words on Words
I have worked as a
sub-editor
and writer
for 25 years and read
the broadsheets (posh
newspapers)
every week.
I love playing cliché bingo.
Here'll you find tips on writing and language, with genuine examples from the media. Plus oddities, curiosities and games.
Hover over the arrows in the left-hand column to expand the links.
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Latest Additions:
Verbing – that ghastly American habit of turning nouns into verbs (impact, task, target etc)
Neologisms from "dromeage" to "quilted-sampler cliché".
Lots of mixed metaphors, as financial chains set the stage for pressures that will dog our lives.
More euphemisms, from regeneration (destruction) to modernisation (privatisation) to micromanagement (bossing).
More Pedantry
which, less/fewer, between/among, hawk/handsaw,
camel/eye of needle
a figure of speech mixing the high-falutin' with the mundane ("My heart didn't exactly leap up when I beheld the gasworks, sir").
Another figure of speech, Hypallage – the wandering adjective ("they were clutching at wild straws").
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Society for the Protection of the Apostrophe?
Sorry, you won't find any pedantry
– just perversions, fashions, fads, solecisms, howlers, newspeak, clichés, obfuscation, management blether – what are they really saying?. | |
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painstaking Research is always painstaking. "After many years of painstaking research
and sheer hard work, a lifesize replica of the mosaic has been created,
using authentic materials and dyes." Visitthecotswolds.org.uk
dabble Black magic is always dabbled in.
derail Peace talks are always in danger of being derailed rather than halted or stopped or diverted.
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Links
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