My colleague Patrick LaForge offers more examples of news-writing clichés:
Our previous post on “journalese” stirred up a lot of commentary on Twitter, so I decided to “circle back” (sorry) with some examples I neglected the first time around. As noted earlier, journalese refers to a strained and artificial voice more common to news reports than to natural conversation. Writing in The Times should aim to be free of such banalities. We should strive for clear, simple prose that is fresh and intelligent.
Some examples in the previous post were words often used imprecisely as synonyms for controversy: “brouhaha,” “imbroglio,” “donnybrook.” Readers had additional nominations in that category, so we’ll start with two recent examples from The Times.
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Then there are the towering billboards, and the requisite kerfuffle about whether Ms. James’s tiny waist was digitally whittled down even further.
More than a flap but less than a brouhaha? This informal Britishism seems to be trying too hard.
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In this melee of mounting frustration, they discover that Javi, Richard’s unreliable business partner (and Ann’s former lover), has put them at risk of losing their life savings.
This word is overused even when it correctly refers to “a noisy, confused fight or hand-to-hand struggle among a number of people.” But this description of a troubled marriage doesn’t seem to fit the meaning.
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Eric Larsen seemed ill at ease in his tuxedo. He is more inclined to trudge across an ice shelf than mingle at a fancy party in Manhattan. Yet here he was, in black tie, nibbling on canapés at the American Museum of Natural History.
Journalese often describes people eating, but seldom says they are “eating.” Instead, they “nibble,” “pick at” or, conversely, “feast on” whatever is on the menu. Often the entire detail is pointless — yes, people eat when they’re at parties or in restaurants — but let’s at least cut down on the “nibbling.”
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And during Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address last month, Mr. Menendez sat grim-faced as other Democrats cheered the president’s promise to veto any effort to roll back his domestic agenda.
He was grim, and he sat there grimly, but in journalese people in such situations are always “grim-faced.”
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G.M. dismissed him in June, and he went into seclusion, refusing interviews.
Readers rightly suspect that “in seclusion” is often just journalese for “won’t return our phone calls.”
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Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Chechnya, has been at the center of intrigue surrounding the murder of Boris Y. Nemtsov, a prominent critic of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
A classic for decades now. Why do we never hear about weakman leaders?
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The powerful Investigative Committee, which is leading the probe, was reported to have few doubts.
Let’s limit the use of “probe” as a noun to spacecraft and medical devices. As a synonym for “inquiry,” “investigation” or “investigate,” The Times’s stylebook warns, “the effect is journalese.”
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Eddie Castillo is an ex-con whose dream of a quiet life is shattered when his brother is killed in an illegal underground fight.
Dreams and quiet are inevitably shattered.
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That the cuts came without warning and with little time to implement them was especially irksome to the Monnaie’s general and artistic director, Peter de Caluwe.
Many things in our pages are irksome, apparently. Characters in movies and books. Choreography. A coach’s systems. But as much as we overuse that word, this variation with the intensifier “especially” has a place in the irksome hall of fame (along with the “hall of fame” device).
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Under Mr. Xi, Beijing has also put itself at the center of a four-year-old grouping of 16 Eastern and Central European countries, promising investment to the region in a push for economic and political influence that has raised eyebrows in Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union.
Eyebrows have been raised more than 75 times in our stories over the last year; perhaps we should look for other facial expressions to report.
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Ashley, fully healthy, was the outstanding player in Arizona’s romp through the Pacific-12 tournament last week.
And …
There are two unclaimed bedrooms upstairs for when the couple decide to start a family, and a backyard where their basset hound, Trudy, and mixed-breed rescue puppy, Hobbs, can romp.
Romps are rarely encountered in normal conversation.
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It is perhaps a bitter irony that SkyMall was undone by the very same phenomenon — new in-flight technology — that inspired its creation.
Or perhaps not. The stylebook warns that the use of “irony” to mean incongruity is trite, adding: “Not every coincidence, curiosity, oddity and paradox is an irony, even loosely.” And too often “bitter” is the cherry on top, perhaps intended to reassure readers that there is nothing funny about what we’re pointing out. Readers would probably be more satisfied to notice ironies themselves, without us pointing them out.
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With Republicans and Democrats at loggerheads, it’s highly unlikely that any decision will be forthcoming.
The word dates back to Shakespeare, apparently, with an origin that might be nautical in nature. For a fancy way of saying “disagreement” or “impasse,” it is overused by journalists.
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This sometimes means that they’re the only ones filming when drama erupts — as was the case in Ferguson on Wednesday night, when several shots rang out, hitting two officers guarding the station.
Gunshots sound nothing like bells. They ring out only in pulp novels and newspapers. We should try to be fresher.
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Several people are injured as a car ploughs into a crowd at a Christmas market, the third violent attack in France in as many days.
An annoying and illogical journalistic mannerism. “As many” as what? Third? “Three attacks in as many days” would at least make sense, but better to just say “the third attack in three days.” (Also, the American spelling is “plows.”)
In a Word
This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.
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The new rules caused grumbling from Mumbai’s cosmopolitan, sometimes beef-eating elite — a group that includes some Hindus — who were sore over the sudden disappearance of steaks in restaurants.
This sense of “sore” is informal and seems out of place here.
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Still, the controversy over Mr. Noah’s tweets poses a challenge for Comedy Central and its prestige show.
The adjective is “prestigious.”
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[Video caption] Can the West trust Iran? Can Iran trust the West? A look at the bet each side is making in the nuclear talks, along with the challenges and risks that they face.
To avoid switching from a singular to a plural subject in the same sentence, try “A look at the bets the two sides are making … and the risks that they face.”
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Visar Berisha and Julie Liss, professors of speech and hearing science at the university, compared transcripts of all 46 news conferences that Mr. Reagan held to the 101 sessions President George H. W. Bush held in his term.
The stylebook says this:
compare. Use compare to when the intent is to liken things: The book compared the quarterback’s role to the job of a company’s vice president for operations. When the intent is to compare and contrast, or just to contrast, use compare with: They compared Terry’s forecasting with Dana’s, and found Dana more accurate.
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This would represent a further corruption of an account created to underwrite the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but has since been used for purposes unrelated to these conflicts, like the bombing in Syria.
The two constructions referring to “an account” are not parallel. One simple fix: “an account created to underwrite … but since used for …”
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With neither she nor Halep able to impose herself on serve, two-thirds of their games (18 of 30) ended in service breaks.
Two-thirds of 30 is 20; 18 of 30 is three-fifths. But why not just say “18 of their 30 games ended in service breaks”? (Also, the opening “with” construction is awkward and best avoided. But if we use it, it should take the objective case: “with neither her nor Halep …”)
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He often jokes about what would happen if he was to “drop dead.”
For this hypothetical condition, use the subjunctive: “if he were to ‘drop dead.'”
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In addition, Ms. Galligan said the quality of the recordings were “poor.”
Make it “the quality … was.”
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If that number of troops were to decline significantly, intelligence officials have warned that they may have to reconsider how large a C.I.A. presence to keep inside Afghanistan.
The conditional “if” clause is part of the warning, but that sense is not conveyed by the sentence as constructed. One fix is to make the attribution parenthetical by setting it off with commas: “If that number were to decline, officials have warned, they may have to reconsider.” Or put the “if” clause after “warned”: “Officials have warned that if the number were to decline, they may have to reconsider.”
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There is no school in this area, so she and everyone else nearby is illiterate.
The compound subject is plural and would need a plural verb: “are illiterate.” A more graceful alternative might be, “she, like everyone nearby, is illiterate.”
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If you’ve seen Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg” you may remember a scene in which the title character, played by Ben Stiller, unleashes a tirade against a roomful of 20-year-olds whom he believes have been ruined by sensitive parenting, among other things.
Make it “who,” the subject of “have been ruined.”
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And while Ms. Smith’s publicist insisted that she was joking, it looks like she was right all along.
Use “as if” or “as though,” not “like,” to introduce a clause.
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“The school is going to close,” the school’s interim president, James F. Jones Jr., declared flatly, seated in the parlor of the 18th-century yellow brick home of the school’s founder, Indiana Fletcher Williams, who in 1901 bequeathed her estate, a former Virginia plantation, to establish Sweet Briar in memory of her deceased daughter, Daisy.
As a reader noted, the intermingling of attribution and background information is likely to make readers lose track of what the speaker said.
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The principle authors of the report were Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, Edwin Meese III, the former attorney general, and Timothy J. Roemer, a former House member from Indiana and former ambassador to India.
“Principal,” not “principle.” Also, use semicolons to separate items in a series that contain commas of their own. (This was fixed for print.)
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Meanwhile, prosecutors in Marseille, who have been tasked with a separate criminal inquiry into the crash, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Avoid this business jargon. We could say “have been assigned” or “have been charged with,” or simply “have begun.”
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After five years there were 2.5 times fewer cardiac events. Blood flow to the heart improved by over 300 percent.
The stylebook says this:
[D]o not write times less or times smaller (or things like times as thin or times as short). A quantity can decrease only one time before disappearing, and then there is nothing left to decrease further. Make it one-third as much (or as tall, or as fast).