If you make no other gesture this day toward clarity and economy in prose, deleting ongoing will store up treasure for you in Heaven.
It has been a while--think of the late John Bremner forty-plus years ago--since anyone has denounced ongoing as a faddish and disagreeable substitute for continuing. It has sunk its roots deep into the journalistic vocabulary, where it continues to flower.
The irksome thing about the word is that it is in almost every instance unnecessary, a mere gesture from the writer that "I am au courant."
Look at the instances where you find it, places where you can be sure that your reader is already aware that things are going on: the public's ongoing concern over rising gasoline prices, the ongoing disputes over legislative redistricting, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Ask yourself, is your reader so preternaturally dim as to be unaware that there is conflict today in the Middle East? And having framed that question for yourself, you know the inevitable answer: strike it out.
