Issues with The Beatles

I once read an extremely inspiring article, I think in The New York Times, about words on the “don’t use” list at publications. It made me laugh because I know that at my years at The Post, we’ve acquired many of them.

I can’t find the original article anywhere but I found one to illustrate my point. A medical journalist gives the seven words not to use in medical journalism: cure, miracle, breakthrough, promising, dramatic, hope and victim. (http://www.tc.umn.edu/~schwitz/The7words.htm)

Every publication or genre of journalism has a similar list of words not to use, and The Post is no exception.

So while we opine about the merits of using the word “cunt,” or whether “fuck” can be used in a quote, there are other minor words that are definite “no’s,” yet still sneak into the newspaper. (By the way, we used “fuck” in a quote a couple weeks ago, justifying that it added something to the story to illustrate the suspended aviation student. See Aviation senior has history of allegations dating from freshman year and tell me if you agree with our decision.)

Basically, a lot of the words that make us cringe and that writers should really learn not to use are regular, run-of-the-mill words that are vague or cliché or overused or just plain spoonfed to us. Every publication has them. They aren’t in the stylebook (although maybe they should be). Last quarter I surveyed The Post editors to find out what words make them cringe. Here are a few nominations:

issues
*This is one of the those catch-all words journalists get thrown a lot. It’s vague. The funny thing is, some beats (an area of coverage an individual journalist is assigned to) have “issues” in the title, such as the “women’s issues” and “student issues” beats.

diversity
*Similar to issues, this is overused and broad. People are always trying to foster “diversity.” I love diversity, don’t get me wrong, but the word makes every Postie cringe. And if people want diversity, give us numbers and tell us what you're actually talking about.

community
*Don’t even get us started on this word. How does one become a member of the community? Is there an initiation? Tom Suddes, a journalism instructor who runs our weekly critique, instilled the belief in us that this word is the devil. It can sometimes be used correctly though when describing a genuine group of people, such as in our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender series: Finding a center: LGBT included in new “comprehensive diversity program”

The Beatles
*Really, the local band sounds like The Beatles? Good for them.

Campus Editor Rick Rouan had some fun ones that come up in campus stories a lot: “vision, residence hall, strategic plan, transparency, multicultural, realignment, implementation, community, likely, could, would, should (the previous words because they all basically say ‘who the heck knows if this is going to happen, so we're just covering our tails’), issues.”

Every editor also has their grammar quirks. Associate Editor Matt Zapotosky hates how people misuse the word “hopefully.” Brittany Kress hates the word “amongst.” (It should be among.) Culture Editor Caitlin Price has what she calls “got-it is:”

"My sophomore high school English teacher, no matter how much I despised her, got me into this mindset of hating the word ‘get.’ … It's such a weak verb — especially for journalism — and you can use so many other colorful words. For example, the simple sentence ‘I got a promotion’ could turn into ‘My boss promoted me.’ The latter sounds so much better than the former."

I hope others will comment and add to my “List of Words Not to Use at The Post.” Or make fun of how nerdy journalists really are.