Saturday, 11 February 2012

Slipping Standards.

The language used in UK government documents used to be always formal, usually pedantic, and often didactic. But it was, at least, correct. I picked this up on one of their web pages:

‘...very cold weather is when the temperature is...recorded as an average of zero degrees Celsius or below over seven consecutive days in a row.’

Seven consecutive days in a row...

It would appear that the writer is given either to tautology or the need to manufacture spurious rhymes.

And I’m probably being pompous in pointing it out.

4 comments:

Anthropomorphica said...

I'm going for spurious rhyme :)

JJ said...

I'm going for poor writing skills. Modern times.

Maria Sondule said...

Sometimes I do things like that without realizing it and then edit them later. If the person was just posting to a blog I bet it would be easier to type and immediately publish, and after that there's less incentive to go back and change it.

JJ said...

So do I, but the official website of HM Government is hardly a blog. You'd expect it to be stringently edited.