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The other day, the radio was on and the announcer said
that we were coming up on the ten o'clock hour.
As
the day went on, there were similar horologic
proclamations, and the word hour
was always
involved, as in It's twenty minutes after the three
o'clock hour.
I can't figure out why they have to phrase it that way.
What's wrong with twenty minutes after three
o'clock
? I've asked people in the radio business why
they make it the three o'clock hour,
and the answer
is always that they were taught to do so, but no one ever
told them why.
That's just a minor linguistic annoyance, although it
has plenty of company. For instance, why does the weather
forecaster always talk about a storm event
instead
of a mere storm
?
I understand why Hollywood publicists want us to talk
about the motion picture event of the year
-- they
get paid well to promote their products, and a motion
picture event
sounds much more significant than a mere
movie.
However, those of us who care about what the
weather will be a few days hence will heed the warning of a
storm,
and do not need it exaggerated into a
storm event.
To move on, not only the language gets abused in automotive ads. Public safety must suffer from their encouragement of fast driving and sharp turning in wretched conditions, and our landscape must suffer from their displays of people driving their new spewts across tundra, prairies, wetlands and similar fragile zones. One variant celebrated a soapbox-derby style racer who cheated by leaving the course.
However, the language that grated most was the
encouragement to visit your local Ford store.
Everywhere I've lived, there was a Ford garage
or a
Ford dealer.
I suppose the advertising agency came
up with store
to make it seem easier to buy a new
vehicle: While you're out, could you pick up a dozen
eggs at the market, and a couple of F-150s at the Ford
store?
The emails I receive often contain the solecism The
media is ...
This error used to be pretty much confined
to right-thinkers, but even liberal publications like The
Washington Monthly have succumbed; a recent article was
headlined How the media helps the insurance industry
...
The word media
is the plural of the Latin word
medium,
just as strata
means more than one
layer of rock, which is a stratum.
In our language, Latin plurals often evolve into
singulars; you seldom hear anyone say the data are
inconsistent
or Last night's council meeting agenda
were confusing,
even though data is the plural of datum
and agenda is the plural of agendum.
Back to the media.
The editor of one of my
favorite small-town newspapers, Jonathan Thompson at the
Silverton Standard, observed recently that Just as ABC
is part of the media, so are the Silverton Standard and the
Dove Creek Press. Do you really think we all get together
and decide which direction to slant our coverage?
Some people apparently do believe there are such
meetings. In 30 years in this business, though, I've never
been invited to one. The media
include everything
from Democracy Now to Fox News, from the blog of the kid
down the street to the New York Times, from a club
newsletter to the Wall Street Journal.
Lumping them all together as some singular mass obscures the reality that even with all the corporate consolidations, there are more media and more public voices today than ever before.
Denver might have only two daily newspapers now, as
opposed to half a dozen a century ago. But back then, there
were no radio or television stations, no alternative
weeklies, no websites, no cable channels. This growth in
media variety is something we might want to celebrate,
rather than ignore by saying the media is ...
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