Boards
irritating phrases
Dear Journalists,
Please stop describing inanimate objects as "humble". Humility is a human trait, and descriptions of "the humble curry", "the humble potato" or "the humble pine tree" are both hackneyed and illogical. What's so humble about pine trees, anyway? Pine trees have nothing to be humble about. They're fucking majestic.
Which clichés and constructions annoy you? Does anyone care about this kind of stuff? The massive overtracking of paragraphs in thelondonpaper used to really piss me off, which is pretty sad. Anyway, outline your linguistic bêtes noires below. I might put some of them in our style guide.