Waging war on the icon crisis
By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Aug 13th, 2007 • Category: Journalism, LanguageDavid Marsh, editor of the Guardian style guide, can, I have decided after a few minutes thought, be described as an iconoclast — in the nicest possible way. He sets about the overuse of the word icon to describe everything from Jordan to record covers and Vodemort with all the zeal of William Dowsing who defaced churches in the 17th century.
The excesses of his colleagues are enjoyable debunked by Marsh who concludes with an email from a reader in Canada, saying:
I suggest you reserve anything to do with icons to the Virgin Mary, Elvis Presley and a very limited number of people whose faces are recognised and revered, maybe also little figures on computer screens. Otherwise it becomes devalued and is just a trendy way of saying famous or memorable.
Readers do care about these things. Last month I linked to a post on the BBC Editors Blog by Alistair Burnett, of the World Tonight, on the overuse of “crisis”. The number of hits on Wordblog coming from the BBC as a result has convinced me of the success of the Editors blog.
Dare I call the way some words are over used as a disaster?
Andrew Grant-Adamson is Andrew Grant-Adamson is a journalist who now teaches a new generation of writers, subs and editors at the University of Westminster.
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Posted 3 hours ago Waging war on the icon crisis David Marsh, editor of the Guardian style guide, can, I have decided after a few minutes thought, be described as an iconoclast — in the nicest possible way. He sets about the overuse of the word i…