Wednesday, March 8, 2006; Posted: 2:08 p.m. EST (19:08 GMT)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea reportedly fired two surface-to-air missiles near its border with China, a poignant reminder of the communist regime’s ability to foment instability in the region amid the ongoing standoff over its nuclear weapons program.*
C’mon, guys. You can come up with a better adjective than that. “Pungent”? “Pointed”? “Stark”? “Frightening”? “Sobering”?
Recently, I wrote a subhead for a story in which I described a group of homes as some of the area’s “most attractive.” Another editor who was working on the story changed it to “most unique.” I wrote a long note detailing why these homes cannot be described as “most unique” (short version: 1. something is either unique–meaning one-of-a-kind, or it isn’t. There are no degrees of uniquness, and the slow slip toward the devaluation of that word really gets my goat. see also: eclectic. 2. these houses were meant to be representative of different styles of houses–shotgun houses, mediterranian houses, etc. Therefore, they by definition are not unique, but are instead more accurately described as “typical”. 3 what’s wrong with “attractive”? that’s the reason the homes were photographed in the first place–because they’re good looking houses!)
When I finally saw the article in print, the caption said “most distinct.” This really pisses me off, because it has even LESS meaning than “unique” in this context, and because it’s in big letters at the top of the page with my name on it.
[Katherine Hepburn Voice]Ah, yes, the contrails, and the site of tanks running down the sunny avenue over the protesting citizens and the smell of pines in the underground bunkers . . . Norman, is that yoooouuuuuuu?[/khv]
What stands out to me in that story is not the use of the word “poignant” but rather crazy people with nuclear weapons shooting missiles designed to tweak the nose of another nuclear power.
