May I have a word about… the excessive use of ‘eye-watering’ | Jonathan Bouquet

The sense of alarm and outrage across the nation – and in our headlines – is bordering on the hysterical

When, exactly, did we become such a nation of cissies, scaredy-cats and milksops? Consider the following recent headlines: “Students to be hit with another ‘eye-watering’ interest rate rise on tuition fee repayments”; “Labour reveals eye-watering pay hike for fatcat bosses of water firms”; “Aberdeen council spin doctor given ‘eye-watering’ £63,000 pay-off”; “To throw Away Unopened review: Viv Albertine’s eye-watering honesty”.

At least some of these had the decency to put eye-watering in quotation marks, but even so, the sense of alarm and outrage is bordering on the hysterical. Its usage is also becoming annoyingly ubiquitous and I call on my fellow headline writers to desist forthwith.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2JEsjPT