Comment on December 20th, 2006.
Statement meaning it was something that was distributed and was not said in a one-on-one interview with the reporter.
And, yes, I know what you mean about stock phrases. Both "decimate" and "begs the question" have become stock phrases and, when used, are used erroneously. I've given up on "decimate", but I'm still hanging in there with "begs the question". http://begthequestion.info/ Yes, I sometimes fight losing battles. *sigh*
Comment on December 20th, 2006.
I was just tweaking them about "statement"; it bugs me a little that the media now use "statement" to mean "printed statement", but it is a widely understood convention.
Decimate doesn't bother me, because many of the words used to mean large general effects once meant something more specific, or something entirely different, and because there are in fact very few uses for "decimate" as a strictly observed word. "Beg the question", though, makes me wince every time, because it means something completely unrelated and specifically useful. And because misused phrases always annoy me more than misused words. Phrases are bigger building blocks of thought, and misusing them messes things up more.
Comment on December 21st, 2006.
May I add "I could care less" to the list? That one drives me nuts.
I'd support more interpretive dance-based press releases, though.
Comment on December 21st, 2006.
Yeah, although "I could care less" is so firmly ensconced (stock phrase alert!) as a substitute for "I couldn't care less" that we might as well just assume it's shorthand for "I could care less, but not much."
Idiom is a funny area. Lots of idiom violates rationality in some way, but it makes the language more colorful. If I were inclined to be difficult, I'd point out that it doesn't actually literally drive you nuts, and for that matter what the person says is literally true: they probably could care less. And we object to the phrase because it mangles an idiom that is literally false.
More insidious to me are colorless phrases that have through repetition become automatic verbal blocks on their own. Most attentive readers have some reaction to "I could care less", whether annoyed or not, that recognizes the potential problems with the phrase. But we skim right over language like, oh, for example, "our future depends upon" (just choosing one at random) -- the kind of phrase that indicates an intended rhetorical effect more than it does a thought.
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