I’ve written before about Boston Globe sportswriter Christopher L. Gasper’s penchant for mixed metaphors, as a way to illustrate how metaphor overload can interrupt the reader’s trance that makes great writing work. But things here in New England pro football have gotten desperate. The New England Patriots, not to put too fine a point on…
I’ve seen so much weirdly terrible writing in print that I’m jaded. But even so, every once in a while, I see a passage that leaves me unexpectedly dizzy and nauseated. Here are the headline and lede of a Boston Globe story by Alex Speier on the state of the Red Sox pitchers: Once again,…
Concoda writes about finance for 7,700 followers in Substack and Medium. While writing about bubbles piled high, this author piles metaphors even higher. Here’s a tip: if your prose makes people goggle and giggle, you may be undermining your points. Today’s topic is “The Mother Of All Economic Bubbles Is About to Get a Lot…
I noticed these headlines while perusing the Boston Globe app this morning. Do they seem a bit off to you? I’m an editor. My internal grammar checker is like an oenophile’s nose. And something here stinks. Does Senate candidate Joe Kennedy actually have a head inside of himself? Weird. Did he swallow it or did…
Editors deal in meaning. Metaphors are great for meaning — until they get out of hand. What do you tell an author whose relationship with metaphors has become promiscuous? Today’s example, like yesterday’s, comes from a book I was editing. The author had great ideas and an engaging writing style, but occasionally got carried away….
Picking metaphors and similes is like picking vegetables — the fresh ones have the most flavor. A good metaphor isn’t as old and hackneyed as the presidential horse race, nor is it as bewildering as a new version of Windows on the first day. Learn from the masters of metaphor, like Matt Taibbi. Metaphors should be clever, but not…
Infosys is the second-largest systems integrator in India, the epicenter of outsourcing. One of their analyst relations people recently sent a friend of mine an entertainingly baroque email. Systems integrators are huge companies that have trouble articulating their differentiation. They have various technical strengths and will build what you ask them to build. Differentiating is…