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Tom Dodds on transport matters »Journalists have many bad habits, but the one in particular that often makes me cringe is our use of an odd language that no-one else in the world can speak.
We mostly write in English, of course, but occassionally reporters lapse into a strange lingo that I can only call "journalese", a strange collection of words that only ever appear in newspapers.
Who, for example, ever uses the word "slam" to mean criticism, except for journalists? (As in "A council was slammed for xxxxxx" or "A distraught mother last night slammed social services for xxxxxx")
A lot of these words start getting used because they're snappy and they fit in headlines, but it seems to me that they're nonsense.
The one that particular irks me is "tot". Tabloid newspapers are very keen on the word - which seems to describe any child of pre-school age - but I've never heard anyone in real life say: "Oh, what a nice tot you have", or "How is your tot these days?"
Over 2008, I thought I'd compile the first ever English-journalese dictionary so if you see any examples of it in the press, please let me know.
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