I participated in an interesting disagreement the other day
over word use. It came up on a post with a headline on a story about a sled dog
race which in part said "… temperature hovers near minus 50 …"
Instead of taking my own counsel and letting it go, I posted a comment simply
asking "Why do temperatures always hover?"
One of the first things they teach you in journalism school,
if not in creative writing courses, is to avoid cliches. Still very seldom is a
story written that concerns weather and particularly temperature when the
temperature doesn't hover. It's one of those words so overused the mind barely notices it and if it were
left out the reader's mind would put it there anyway. Incidentally the temperature here today rose and around 20
F. (Admit it, you thought "hovered" didn't you?)
Anyway another commenter, incidentally a writer, wrote
something like because it is a "cool" word. My thought was maybe it
was a cool word the first million times it was used, but has lost its cool and
is just another cliche poor writers use for lack of creativity and vocabulary.
I didn't say that, I posted that it was a cliche and let it go at that except
for an admonition that writers ought to be constantly looking for original ways
to say things but I didn't add the rest of that thought that when nothing
clever comes to mind, write it the regular way. Just say the temperature was
minus 50 instead of writing a cliche thinking it is clever or even cute writing.
What was most bothering was not the use of the word itself,
but that a working writer would defend its use, defend an overused cliche as if
it were something to admire as cool rather than admit it was at least questionable given how often it shows
up.
It may sound petty but these are the kinds or discussions
tossed around copy desks the world over. The joke is you go through copy
looking for cliches with a fine-toothed comb.
In my most recent turn
on a copy desk I encountered a fellow traveler and we agreed on many of
these uses. Two of our favorites were "white stuff" and
"football fields." Time after time writers looking for synonyms for
snow will use white stuff. And who hasn't read a story where the length of
something is compared to football fields. I even used it recently in a post saying I had no idea how many
football fields it took to measure the mass of acreage withdrawn into
wilderness in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I always wondered, do
average readers recognize what three football fields look like any better than
they can visualize 900 feet? Doubtful. Might as well be accurate.
I have ranted before about terms that run through the
national syntax until they are exhausted. These three have endured and, outrageously
some have defenders among the newest crop of writers. Language is alive and
changing and that's as it should be, but does every generation have to learn
all the mistakes of the past first, or can we start where we left off. It
really gets old changing things like football fields and white stuff and
hovering temperatures as each new batch of writers offers their perfectly
crafted creations. It gets even older having to argue about it. Even good
editors some days must want to throw their hands up and say the hell with it,
write it the wrong way, see if I care.
No comments:
Post a Comment