Letters: Journalism of cliches

This refers to Deepak Lal’s article “Rights, stakes and Newspeak” (February 18). There are other, less pernicious but nonetheless equally irritating instances of linguistic skulduggery carried too far. Certain phrases that catch on in journalism are used to death so that they lose all meaning and novelty. One of my (un)favourites is “tantalisingly out of reach”. Recently, an article in The Economist said: “China remains tantalisingly out of Facebook’s reach.” Well no. It remains determinedly so, blockheadedly so, but not tantalisingly so. Another is “so and so has opened a can of worms”, used with straining regularity with reference to one A Raja. An American friend mentions his absolute disgust with the comma-well-comma, which he claims is terribly overused in American feature writing. One rather funny example: “We call them the liberal arts because they are, well, liberal.”

 

Vikram Johri, Lucknow

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