PEDANTRY ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

PEOPLE DON’T ALWAYS LISTEN!

Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

When I was eight years old, I was racing another boy on the school playing field, when he sprinted past me at the last second.

“Ha, ha! I took over you,” he cried out in triumph.

“No you didn’t,” was my reply. “You overtook me.”

And so there it began — a lifetime of pedantry about words, at an age when I didn't even know what pedantry meant.

But as a journalist, I’ve always thought it important to care about the precision of words and language.

The other day, I was so fed up with seeing a certain phrase in newspaper and news website copy and headlines, that I pointed it out to the media group on LinkedIn.

I was stunned by the amount of people who had bothered to read it, so I thought I’d try it out on you. It’s when a writer says that a (named person in the news) has “broken their silence” about something.

In almost all cases, the subject of the story has not “broken a silence”. They’ve merely talked about something because they’ve been asked, or they’ve commented at the earliest reasonable opportunity about something relevant to them that is newsworthy.

The only time you could possibly use the expression “breaks their silence” is when it’s been very clear over a long period of time that someone in the news has actively refused to talk about something newsworthy or controversial, and now they’ve decided to speak publicly.

Even then, it’s a piece of journalese. Who uses that expression in real life apart from headline writers? That said, I’d love to write the headline: “Trappist monk breaks his silence…”

In my journalistic career I was often encouraged to be the dispenser of advice about words. I have scores and scores of examples, but don’t worry, I will only share a few here.

I am astonished by how often journalists don’t understand the difference between infer and imply. A very senior correspondent got it wrong on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 the other day. And it wasn’t a slip of the tongue because it was a recorded report during the bulletin.

And then there’s the fact that even journalists don’t always know the difference between less and fewer — as in “less rain - fewer raindrops.” If you can count them, it’s fewer. Fewer cows, less milk.

People who’ve worked with me know that the failure to understand the difference between “historic” and “historical” used to drive me mad. Historic means important in history, like the Battle of Waterloo or the Gettysburg Address.

Historical just means something in the past, rather than the present. But the problem for news organisations is that so many other people speaking in public mess it up, like senior police officers talking on camera about “historic allegations.” It’s just hysterical!

So how about some journalistic cliches to chuck on the fire, while we’re here?

(A person) “choked back tears” as they spoke….

People are “counting the cost” after a flood/fire/storm

When somebody finds a dead body, it’s always a “grim discovery.”

Removing or identifying bodies is a “grim task.”

Someone who’s not saying much has to be “tight-lipped.” Again, nobody uses that phrase in real life.

Every place affected by something awful is always a “tight-knit community” and the people there “are still trying to come to terms” with whatever happened.

“Fingertip search.” We know what it means, but it is a cliché. It always makes me want to ask if any fingertips have actually been found.

And then there are the words that are either overused, or simply wrong. We’ve all seen pictures of the police carrying out what a reporter describes as a “dawn raid” in complete darkness, two hours before dawn breaks. How about an “early morning raid?”

One word that is overused perhaps more than any other is “iconic”. Originally an icon was a sacred religious image, but has come to mean something of exceptional cultural importance.

Journalists are guilty of overusing it, but the advertising and marketing industry is at least as much to blame. There is no such thing as an iconic breakfast cereal, thank you very much.

And what about “legend/legendary” - also used too casually in news writing. If your friend tells you that you’re a legend because you bought them a pint, then I think that’s fine because it’s casual conversation. But for online, newspaper or broadcasting scripts, you need to be clear that the subject of your sentence is worthy of that description.

Football reports are notorious for cliches and idiosyncrasies. The one I find the funniest is when a reporter says or writes that a team, on scoring a second goal, have “doubled their lead.” Why say that? Just say Arsenal scored again , or scored a second.

I recognise that language evolves. Otherwise, we’d all still be speaking like characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

And so sometimes pedants lose. I definitely feel like I’ve been defeated over the words “invite” and “invitation.”

Invite is a verb. You invite people to a wedding. Invitation is a noun. It’s the gold-embossed entreaty to go to the event. Or even a WhatsApp message. Or maybe you didn’t get invited!

I reckon eighty per cent of people now use “invite” as the noun. If I say to someone under the age of thirty that it’s not an “invite”, it’s an “invitation,” I will get that slack-jawed, quizzical look that says: “Ugh?”

So, yeah. It looks like I’ve been overtaken again.

NOTE: If you’re interested in words and language, see my article in LoweNotes entitled “Kiss My Ass”, inspired by Donald Trump,,,,,