Journalism operates on conventions (write one obituary or one police story, and you can write a thousand), and the pressure of time leads reporters to reach for prefabricated phrases. The best writers try to break free of formula. Here's a hint.
Nearly every day I see an account that some event has occurred or circumstance developed in the wake of another event or circumstance. This is, first, a dead or at least moribund metaphor, like free rein. Unless the reader is a sailor, it's unlikely that the expression conveys an image of the disturbance in water from the passage of a ship.
Apart from the loss of the visual image, the expression has lost much of its original sense. When a large vessel moves through the water, its wake has the potential to endanger smaller craft. But in most contexts in newspapers, in the wake of does not mean "complicates" or "makes more difficult." It often means that one event is a consequence of another, or even simply came after another.
Change in the wake of to following, and the reader will readily understand your meaning. And you will have omitted three words you can well do without.
Following, commonly used in print and broadcast news, doesn’t make sense to me — except when describing people literally, politically, religiously or aurally following. Prefer after, always
ReplyDeleteTemporal and spatial relationships routine share vocabulary. "Before" meant physically in advance before (*ahem*) it meant at an earlier time.
DeleteIndeed, spatial *before* (unlike spatial *behind*) is no longer current: I can be standing behind my house, but hardly before it.
ReplyDeleteTwo things: 1) Amid. This was first universally adopted by journalists for "amid the coronavirus pandemic." Then it was "amid the coronavirus." Now it means that anything else is happening: "amid a shopping spree, a person bought shampoo."
ReplyDelete2) Shuttered. Means closed, stopped, or ceased. Whenever I run across this in a wikipedia article I change it to the appropriate word and leave a note that I am terminating this usage WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.
There was a third word, but I forgot it amid the baseball game, in which the the Phillies are so far shuttered. At least sports announcers don't use these locutions.