Temperature hovers near zero as white stuff falls on a ship three football fields long

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I even used it recently in a  post saying I had no idea how many football fields it took to measure the mass of acreage withdrawn into wilderness in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.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.