EntropySink
Entertainment & Artistry => Words => Topic started by: stealth on March 02, 2008, 07:34:44 PM
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Going through a journalism style guide, I came across a list of cliché's and words that shouldn't be used...
A few humours ones...
armed gunmen - An absurdity. Think about it.
enormity - Means "great wickedness", not "huge size".
literally - "He literally lost his head." Did he really?
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Um,
enormity can mean "big"
e·nor·mi·ty
–noun, plural -ties
3. greatness of size, scope, extent, or influence; immensity: The enormity of such an act of generosity is staggering.
And literally could sort of be used right there (def 4)
lit·er·al·ly
–adverb
3. actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy: The city was literally destroyed.
4. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.
I'll give you armed gunmen though.
Better choices for the words exists but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use them if you use them correctly in a sentence.
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literally - "He literally lost his head." Did he really?
"He got shot in the head from a 50 cal and literally lost his head". Yep that works :p
So three armed gunmen enter some place and one of them gets disarmed, wouldn't they then be an unarmed gunman? Ok that one was weak
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literally - "He literally lost his head." Did he really?
"He got shot in the head from a 50 cal and literally lost his head". Yep that works :p
So three armed gunmen enter some place and one of them gets disarmed, wouldn't they then be an unarmed gunman? Ok that one was weak
but thats a good point, what is he called at the point that he drops his gun?
or what if he's in a position with the job title of "gunman" but is not currently armed?
also, you could say something like the following without being redundant:
The gunman, armed with an AK-47, stormed into the bank and fired several rounds into the ceiling.
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but thats a good point, what is he called at the point that he drops his gun?
man?
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Ooh, ooh, my go. My pet peeve is people who talk about "towing the line". WTF?
Oh, and "Baited breath" :lol:
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I think it's toe the line?
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I think it's toe the line?
Indeed. Which is precisely why tow the line annoys me so much. Also it's bated breath.
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I dunno. I've known a few people that certainly seemed to have baited breath.
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I think it's toe the line?
Indeed. Which is precisely why tow the line annoys me so much. Also it's bated breath.
I see. I've never used the phrase as, even when it's used correctly, it's cliche.
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"He was towing the line in with his baited breath after the nasty catfish dinner."
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Um,
enormity can mean "big"
e·nor·mi·ty
–noun, plural -ties
3. greatness of size, scope, extent, or influence; immensity: The enormity of such an act of generosity is staggering.
I know what you mean, and have used it in that context myself. The general view seems to be that it's incorrect usage of the word.
http://www.answers.com/topic/enormity
http://www.cjr.org/resources/lc/enormity.php
http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-eno1.htm
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In college, one of the best essays I had to write was one which we weren't allowed to use any flavor of "to be" (e.g. is, was, etc) and had to describe a fall day.
It was really hard but taught you to use more powerful and meaningful words. This was also the same class that many students were not very good at and the teacher wrote a sentence and told us to circle the noun and underline the verb. About half the class got it wrong.
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Glad I didn't have to take that class. We did something similar though in my engineering writing class. We took a perfectly good sentence and added crap to it to make it bloated. Showed us how a nice succinct idea can be lost in a poor sentence
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Oh, and "Baited breath" :lol:
Aye.
I dunno. I've known a few people that certainly seemed to have baited breath.
Aye aye.
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In most areas of creative writing, states of being are discouraged when describing character trait or state.
Rather than saying, "She WAS worried," you'd say, "She hurried to the freezer and pulled out a gallon of Charitably Chocolate ice cream. It was empty within the hour."
So, action rather than description.
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Unless you set it up earlier that she was one to eat while she was worried that sentance tells me nothing other then she is a fat pig that eats gallons of icecream at a time.
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Well, if you put her in a situation where one would normally be worried, the implications are obvious. She eats ice cream when she's worried.
I've still never been successful at anything creative writing, though, so I'm really just quoting authority.
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fuck creative writing ;)
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Absolutely.
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"could care less"
Yeah it makes sense but if you *could* care less, why don't you? I mean I've only seen this used where normal people would say "I couldn't care less".
Or am I the only one who gets annoyed with this.
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No, that kills me too.
My roommate's been pissing me off by saying, "take one from the team." Terrible phrase to begin with, let's not make it worse.
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Stealthy, are you getting into journalism? In any case, I'm in an editing class right now where taking out redundancies like "armed gunman" is just good practice.
Here's a link to my teacher's blog posting, in which he lists a bunch of redundancies: http://editingmonks.blogspot.com/2006/02/concision-precision.html
edit: and another, http://editingmonks.blogspot.com/2008/01/exercise-in-redundancies-tautologies.html
"ATM machine" and "PIN number" have always been favorites of mine, although in the second link, "violent brawl" is pretty good. Notice how you don't see my post on that assignment...oops!
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>> Stealthy, are you getting into journalism? <<
Yeah, I'm enrolled in a Bachelor of Journalism at QUT. It's quite strange writing news copy, it really looks a lot easier than it actually is.
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>at QUT
man, I wish they went for the full information technology name, then it'd be QUIT.
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>> Stealthy, are you getting into journalism? <<
Yeah, I'm enrolled in a Bachelor of Journalism at QUT. It's quite strange writing news copy, it really looks a lot easier than it actually is.
Most definitely. If you're looking for a job in journalism, might I suggest bragging about your computer skills as much as possible?
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I think that class might be my worst nightmare Ken :screwy:
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if gilmore girls is anything to go by, journalism is not an easy field to break into...
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>> Stealthy, are you getting into journalism? <<
Yeah, I'm enrolled in a Bachelor of Journalism at QUT. It's quite strange writing news copy, it really looks a lot easier than it actually is.
Most definitely. If you're looking for a job in journalism, might I suggest bragging about your computer skills as much as possible?
That won't be hard as I've been working in IT for close to 10 years and have a degree already! Not much bragging required I hope.