Wednesday, December 28, 2011

the importance of choosing words carefully

i was always a big fan of the thesaurus. even though i still pronounced it like it was a type of dinosaur until i reached about 15. it helps choose the right word when your close, but haven't quite found what your looking for. I imagine that anyone who uses words a lot uses them, except for journalists.

i don't mean to generalise so i'll just say most journalists are lazy. take this hilarious story of a crocodile attacking a lawnmower.

you will note that the story is mostly about a crocodile who attacked a lawnmower. the excuses for this act of insanity are given as he's territorial and he likes meat. which doesn't really cut it for me. but the funniest part of the story is buried and only briefly mentioned. in fact, it's only funny because of the ridiculous choice of words by the author of this article (who didn't source his comment):

"At the crocodile farm he was first brought to after being caught, he ate two of his girlfriends."

GIRLFRIENDS!?

i'm not sure that any animal of the opposite sex qualifies as girlfriend. i'm also pretty sure that girlfriend is not a term that has ever been used by david attenborough when narrating his nature programs. "penguins, choose their girlfriends carefully, as they will marry and stick with their husbands/wives till death does them part"

it seems the croc agrees with me and didn't see them as "girlfriends" either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always thought full time journalism would do to writing what full time poker playing did to poker, i.e take away all the fun. From the output of 99% of journalists I think this is a sound conclusion.

How's the poker going? Just throwing myself back into the game after Chrimbo.

Mudwig said...

i agree with your analysis although i am not sure about the conclusion since most of the population aren't particularly smart and there's no reason to think that journalists are smarter than average.

as for the pokers, i kinda want to quit after my first ever losing year. not sure what to do. was gonna post something but probably not till i decide what to do. which will likely be on the 18th of january.
maybe i'll write one before about making that decision...

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