{"id":973,"date":"2010-12-19T21:56:25","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T21:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/?p=973"},"modified":"2010-12-19T21:56:25","modified_gmt":"2010-12-19T21:56:25","slug":"misery-and-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/19\/misery-and-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Misery and chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s something Britons have become too familiar this winter – headlines screaming \u201ctransport chaos\u201d and \u201ctravel misery\u201d. Why are chaos<\/em> and misery<\/em> so popular with the nation\u2019s journalists?<\/p>\n

The Independent\u2019s Errors and Omissions page<\/a> may have the answer:<\/p>\n

The trouble is that “chaos” is a short word, and short words tend to elbow their way into headlines. So “chaos” has become a mere code for difficulties on the roads. One odd thing is that “chaos” happens only on the roads. Disruption of rail and air travel produces not “chaos” but “misery”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suppose we see this a lot in newspapers – a bold and short statement makes for an eye-catching headline after all. It seems to be straying into cliche now though, so congratulations to the reporter who wrote a story in the Independent that omitted both chaos<\/em> and misery<\/em>. Impressive.<\/p>\n

Here is his opening sentence: “Britain is gritting its teeth and its roads today in anticipation of the return of Arctic conditions, with heavy snow and ice-storms likely to bring wide-scale disruption.” He has made up his own word-play on “gritting”. He knows what “anticipation” means \u2013 not expecting something, but taking action about it. And he has called disruption disruption, not chaos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s something Britons have become too familiar this winter – headlines screaming \u201ctransport chaos\u201d and \u201ctravel misery\u201d. Why are chaos and misery so popular with the nation\u2019s journalists? The Independent\u2019s Errors and Omissions page may have the answer: The trouble is that “chaos” is a short word, and short words tend to elbow their way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,44],"tags":[527,44],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-words","tag-english-words","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":976,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}