shamed • his new title now he’s finally gone. If any kind of inquiry has found against him, he’s ‘disgraced’.
break his silence • what he’ll do in six months to one of our rivals, or, if he’s really desperate, us.
BANNED
This book isn’t about banning words. But some journalistic constructions need to be banned. No one would miss any of the following if they disappeared for ever.
admit • banned when used of something that isn’t in any way shameful, e.g. ‘Vince Cable has admitted that he has a “sensible business-like relationship” with Labour.’ The cad.
brave • when used to mean ‘very ill’.
bunker • there are too many of these in politics.
claimed • when used of something not actually in dispute.
drama • either untrue or redundant. ‘Dramatic shortage’ is acceptable only in a story about a city-wide actors’ strike.
eaterie • what is wrong with you? Why would you even think of using a word like this?
flagship • banned when writing about dull policy U-turn rather than a vessel carrying a naval commander.
miss • for female teacher. As in ‘School Miss Jailed For Sex Acts With Five Teenage Boys’. See sirs.
sirs • I know, I know. ‘Teachers’ is eight characters, and ‘sirs’ is four, one of them very thin. This matters in headlines. But still, my one regret at never having edited a tabloid paper is that I never had the chance to ban ‘sirs’.
soi-disant • are you writing in French, for a French paper? No? Then you’re without excuse.
spearhead • except when describing battles from the time before gunpowder.
thwart • unless an evil wizard or criminal mastermind is involved.
Tinseltown • you really don’t need to give readers this additional clue that they should hate you, not when you’ve already bylined yourself ‘Mr Hollywood’.
veteran • except for former members of armed forces. It simply does not mean someone who’s done their job for more than five years.
volte face • broadsheet for U-turn.
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
A good reporter never directly boasts about the exciting places they’ve been to, instead dropping them into conversation in passing: ‘That’s a lovely piece. I think I saw something similar in Lashkar Gah last year.’ Of course, those of us whose visits to Tripoli and Baghdad are fleeting and well-protected should never forget the real bravery of men and women who send back news from front lines. Thankfully, there’s little danger they’ll give us the chance.
badlands • the bits of a foreign country between the cities.
bloodletting • poetic way to introduce a bomb that killed 45 people.
brutal dictator • one that kills his opponents slowly. If he just has them all shot, use ‘ruthless dictator’. If our government could easily ‘topple him’, but can’t be bothered, use ‘tinpot dictator’.
bustling • the kind of market where reporters meet lively and quotable locals. Also, sadly, the kind that are targets for rebel bombs and shelling by government forces.
fierce • the kind of resistance that troops encounter as they advance.
firefight • any gun battle we actually saw.
fleshpots • where correspondents head once they’re finished at the bazaar.
henchmen • a dictator’s entourage. The ones who don’t do any killing themselves are ‘loyal retainers’.
London • all national governments should be referred to by their capital cities.
on a knife edge • safest way to describe the situation if deadlines mean you have to file from the airport, an hour after you arrive.
one local • my taxi driver. Or try ‘locals’ – one of the other reporter’s taxi drivers had heard it, too.
ousted • the likely fate of dictators.
razed to the ground • what happened to the village the day before we arrived. There may be ‘smouldering ashes’.
regime • a government of which we disapprove.
restive • a region that the ‘repressive regime’ is struggling to repress. Typically, protesters there haven’t yet put anyone up against a wall and shot them, but some of them are definitely thinking about it.
rich history • what this ‘land of contrasts’ is endowed with.
sporadic gunfire • I was woken up seven times last night.
staccato shots • these alternate with ‘bursts of gunfire’ to ‘ring out’ in the streets.
tensions • always ‘heightened’.
troubled • small country currently enjoying a lull between civil wars.
under cover of darkness • at night. The alternative is ‘in the cold light of day’.
warplanes • this is what they call fighter jets in the Middle East. Or, more accurately, this is what we call fighter jets when they’re in the Middle East.
war-torn • anywhere where foreign correspondents know a decent bar for every night of the week.
TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY
bon viveur
drunk.
concerns for their health
because of all the drugs they’re taking. They may also be described as ‘frail’ or ‘exhausted’ on second reference.
confirmed bachelor
he’s gay.
didn’t suffer fools gladly
nightmare boss.
eccentric
mad.
exotic tastes
we’ve got the photos in our safe, but they’re too horrible to print.
flamboyant
he’s gay.
fun-loving
she put herself about a bit.
gregarious
drunk.
he never married
he was gay.
ladies’ man
they never managed to get the sexual assault charges to stick.
well-turned-out
he’s gay.
POLICE STORY
Like all specialist reporters, crime hacks come to resemble the people they cover (cops, in this case, not criminals. Well, not often). They dress like them, they talk like them, but we can be thankful they don’t write like them. Police statements are written in a particularly diabolical form of English that is apparently required to secure convictions. It is the crime reporter’s job to turn them into prose that secures readers.
blaze • what firefighters race to.
booze-fuelled rampage • what vile thugs went on, to the dismay of revellers.
bubbly • how friends described the victim. She may also have ‘loved life’.
champagne lifestyle • typically, what someone ‘plundered bank accounts to fund’.
children • all violence towards animals inevitably happens in front of children.
clan • the collective noun for members of a criminal family whose relationships are so complex even the cops have lost track.
cold-blooded • any planned crime.
crackdown • the only way to fight crime.
devil dog • a pooch gone bad.
drug kingpin • anyone sufficiently senior in the drug-dealing hierarchy that they don’t actually have to go out on the streets and meet addicts.
dupe • how fraudsters take money from grannies to pay for their champagne lifestyle. Or try ‘hoodwink’.
fiend • typically either a ‘drug fiend’ or a ‘sex fiend’.
fierce • how we distinguish a serious ‘gun battle’ from the mild ones, where none of the participants can really be bothered.
firebugs • affectionate term for the people who started a ‘warehouse blaze’ that killed three.
foiled • one possible outcome of a heist. Rarely what happens if a have-a-go hero is involved.
fracas • people have ‘come to blows’. Or try ‘altercation’.
fraudster • one who dupes.
frenzied • what the attack was.
have-a-go hero • a nice cheery way to describe someone who, if they’re lucky, is
currently in intensive care with a fractured skull. Or on a manslaughter charge. See ill-fated.
heartless • used to distinguish the thieves who steal gifts from kids’ hospitals at Christmas from ordinary, run-of-the-mill thieves, who only take from those who can afford it, and then use the cash to buy bread for homeless families.
heist • the means by which jewels, gold or sometimes very large sums are stolen.
high-speed • what car chases are. To distinguish them from 25-mph ones.*
hurtle • the way in which cars move down streets in wild or high-speed chases.
in collision with • a way of getting round the tricky question of whose car hit whose.
inferno • any blaze on second reference.
innocent bystanders • the people who look on in horror when bad things happen. If injured themselves, they become ‘innocent victims’, to distinguish them from the victims who pretty much had it coming.*
Jekyll and Hyde character • no one predicted he’d go on a killing spree. Probably because neighbours described him as a ‘loner’ who ‘kept himself to himself’.
lags • affectionate term for sex beasts, ‘heartless thieves’, ‘knifemen’, ‘fraudsters’ and ‘drug fiends’ once they’re safely in prison. Or try ‘cons’.
looked on in horror • what passers-by did. If there’s a school, or shops, or houses, within half a mile, consider the possibility some of the passers-by may have been children. Unless it’s after dark, in which case any children out would have been ‘young thugs’.
named locally • the cops aren’t saying who it was, but fortunately everyone in the pub knew.
our reporter made his excuses and left • at least, we hope he did. Last time he wrote this, there were pictures on the internet afterwards that told a different story.
plundered • what happens to bank accounts.
probe • what police do instead of investigate. Best of all is a ‘murder probe’, which sounds like something from a Ray Bradbury novel.
prowler • anyone alone on the streets after midnight.
raced • the manner in which ambulance crews got to the scene, unless they ‘sped’ there. Perhaps they should take their jobs more seriously.
ring out • what gunshots do.
quiz • what police do to suspects. As Michael Deacon of The Telegraph observed, ‘every time I see the words “Rape Quiz”, I think “This time, Channel 4 has gone too far.”’ Or try ‘grill’.
rampage • what hitmen and drunken yobs go on.
ramped up • what happens to security measures following any warning or scare.
reveller • anyone on the streets after 8pm in a group. Sometimes ‘boozed-up’.
scale • what intruders do to walls. I once subbed a piece of copy that described how thieves had scaled the wall around a footballer’s house, and then later on mentioned that this wall was four foot high. It failed to say whether police were looking for a gang of dwarves.
sex beast • a bad thing to be. Not to be confused with ‘he was an animal in bed’, which seems to be a good thing. Typically he’s either ‘struck again’ or ‘been caged’.
sex pest • a sex beast in training.
showed no emotion at the verdict • what the guilty prisoner did. The victims ‘maintained a dignified silence’. At preliminary hearings, it’s a fair bet that the accused ‘spoke only to confirm his name’.
slay • what ‘sick killers’ do to their victims.
smut • keep reading for a taster.
swoop • how police arrest suspects, ideally at dawn.
tec • headline abbreviation of ‘detective’, whose virtues in terms of shortness may be outweighed by its disadvantages in terms of incomprehensibility.
trained negotiators • the people the police prefer to use in hostage situations, because it gets messy with amateurs. Presumably they do the same course as ‘trained counsellors’. But a different one, we hope, from ‘trained marksmen’.
vice den • where vice girls and ‘drug fiends’ ply their trades.
vile thugs • not nice thugs. See also vile racists.
wild • what car chases may be as well as high-speed. Ideally, the pursuit should have mounted the pavement at least once.
* Periodically, someone steals a JCB, or a milk float. Reporters are positively encouraged to describe the ensuing pursuits as ‘low-speed chases’.
* Theologically, of course, there are no innocent victims.
EVERYONE’S A CRITIC
Nancy Banks-Smith, the television critic of The Guardian, whose simple, beautiful prose brings tears to the eye, observed: ‘Anybody who can write can be a TV critic for a month. After that you need stamina.’ If you fancy a go at criticism but can’t write, here are some phrases you might want to try out.
acclaimed • quite good. Or try ‘iconic’ or ‘seminal’.
anarchic • unfunny.
enjoyable romp • although I am a highbrow reviewer, I can appreciate the lighter side of life, and don’t just enjoy 800-page novels about men dying slowly in Antarctica.
helmed by • the means by which a ‘wunderkind director’ brought his new offering into the world.
high-octane • a film that features at least three explosions and a chase where a car spins round while the driver shoots someone.
kooky • the best way to describe any even slightly intelligent female singer.
lapidary prose • I started skipping pages a quarter of the way in, but I don’t think I missed anything.
mixed reviews • friend wrote/produced/starred in it, but to be honest, it stank and we all know it.
muscular riffing • this is how they get the sound of those ‘sprawling guitars’ to dominate the ‘soundscape’.
must-read • a friend wrote it, and it hasn’t been ‘panned’ by everyone else yet.
offering • what the artist has humbly laid before the public.
outing • another way of describing someone’s latest offering.
page-turner • it’s dross, but we’ve got to admit, it’s compelling dross.
plumped for the duck • what one’s companion did in a restaurant review.
ratings smash • the editor’s kids like it.
return to form • we may not have mentioned at the time that their last album stank, but let’s face it, it did.
richly textured • what an offering might be.
rip-roaring • there’s plenty of sex, and it starts early on.
singer/songwriter • interestingly, never used to describe Bob Dylan.
sophomore • their second outing.
soul/funk workout • you’ll really hate this.
tome • of course I didn’t read it all – it’s 700 pages. But I read as much of it as you will.
top director • hasn’t won an Oscar yet.
towering • what guitars, and indeed offerings, often are.
THE VARIATIONS ENIGMA
Good style precludes the repetition of a word in the same sentence, or ideally in the same paragraph. But sometimes there just isn’t an obvious synonym. Luckily, journalists are kings of the ‘Elegant Variation’.* As in this gem:
‘Clarke, known as “two pizzas” because he once scoffed a pair of the tasty Italian meals at one sitting...’
All of the following have been seen in print:
the battered Nordic island
the feathered creatures
the gas-rich emirate
the grey metal
the handheld communications device
the iconic French vacation resort operator
the iconic native marsupial
Michelangelo’s frescoed chapel
the oil and gas-rich north African nation
one of the world’s best-loved insects
the popular fish-eating mammals
the popular microblogging social network
the popular southeast Asian condiment
the red leather orb
the scaly specime
n
the secretive Stalinist state
the snooty law chief
the South American OPEC nation under the leadership of the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez
the sweetener
the tasty bread-based snacks
the tasty savoury snack
the torpedo-shaped pelagic species
the vast brick structure
the white drink
the windswept South Atlantic archipelago
the yellow metal
the yellowy colour
Iceland; birds; Qatar; silver; mobile phone; Club Med; kangaroo; Sistine Chapel; Algeria; Bees; dolphins; Twitter; soy sauce; cricket ball; a fish; North Korea; Lord Justice Leveson; Venezuela; sugar; Sandwiches; Cornish pasty; ‘the humble mackerel’; Battersea power station; milk; the Falklands; gold; yellow.
* Also known as ‘POVs’, as in ‘popular orange vegetable’ (carrots, since you ask).
THE DEVIL READS GRAZIA
There’s a lot of crossover between popular fashion journalism and showbiz, but there are some phrases only typed by people faced with the constant pressure of trying to find a new way to say: ‘This one might suit you.’
adventurous dresser • she looks terrible but we’re trying to get an interview with her.
brilliantly bonkers • she looks mental but she’s too sweet/old/infirm/underage to slag off.
channelling • we need a way to intellectualise her look.
curvaceous • one cream cake or bad dress from unflattering.
daring sheer top • which, it turns out, goes see-through if 20 cameras flash at once.
dressed age-appropriate • she’s too old to be wearing that.
dressed event-appropriate • really predictable.
fabulous • we’re trying to shmooze this person.
fashion maven • one who, even among the ‘fashion-forward’, is considered pretty damn well-dressed.
fashion police • a group of unidentified people who were rude about her look and who are in no way us.
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