John McIntyre, whom James Wolcott called "the Dave Brubeck of the art and craft of copy editing," writes on language, editing, journalism, and random topics. Identifying his errors relieves him of the burden of omniscience. Write to jemcintyre@gmail.com, befriend at Facebook, or follow at Twitter: @johnemcintyre. His original "You Don't Say" blog at The Baltimore Sun ran from 2005 to 2021, and posts on it can sometimes be found at baltimoresun.com through Google searches.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Luke Skywalker, call your service
Hyperbole of the day, from The New York Times:
A fight of galactic proportions over health care looms.
that would indicate that, at the least, the Martians are debating the issue... or maybe that the writer doesn't have a clear grasp of just how big a galaxy is...
How would one put that into a recognizable metric scan? A/ fight of gal/ ac tic pro/ por /tions/o ver/ health care/ looms. Would anyone care to finish this?
Health care looms? Is that what we'd call a crash blossom?
ReplyDeletethat would indicate that, at the least, the Martians are debating the issue... or maybe that the writer doesn't have a clear grasp of just how big a galaxy is...
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to picture what you would weave with health care looms -- hospital blankets, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteJust what are health care looms?
ReplyDeleteGoogle returned 1,430,000 results for "galactic proportions". Is it officially a tired old cliché.
ReplyDeleteHow would one put that into a recognizable metric scan? A/ fight of gal/ ac tic pro/ por /tions/o ver/ health care/ looms. Would anyone care to finish this?
ReplyDeleteMaybe this has something to do with "universal" health care?
ReplyDeleteSo that's what it was. I thought it was the Perseids.
ReplyDelete