You Don't Say

John McIntyre, whom James Wolcott calls "the Dave Brubeck of the art and craft of copy editing," writes on language, editing, journalism, and other manifestations of human frailty. Comments welcome. Identifying his errors relieves him of the burden of omniscience. Write to jemcintyre@gmail.com, befriend at Facebook, or follow at Twitter: @johnemcintyre. Back 2009-2012 at the original site, http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/ and now at www.baltimoresun.com/news/language-blog/.

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.
Posted by at

8 comments:

  1. Health care looms? Is that what we'd call a crash blossom?

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  2. 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...

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  3. I'm trying to picture what you would weave with health care looms -- hospital blankets, perhaps?

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  4. Just what are health care looms?

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  5. Google returned 1,430,000 results for "galactic proportions". Is it officially a tired old cliché.

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  6. 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?

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  7. Maybe this has something to do with "universal" health care?

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  8. So that's what it was. I thought it was the Perseids.

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