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communicate, or are we writing just to show off?
A couple of years ago The Associated Press moved a story that began, “Many medical groups on Monday assailed the federal government’s attempt to list. . The headline over the story read, “Medical groups excoriate administration’s AIDS guidelines.”
A reader in Florida sent me the clipping. She underlined “excoriate,” and she appended a caustic note: “Ex-CUSE me! How many readers know that word? I had to look it up.”
As a matter of fact, the medical groups hadn’t exactly “excoriated” the government. “Excoriate” is a verb that goes a couple of furlongs beyond “assail.” It is what The New York Times did to George Bush when he pardoned Caspar Weinberger. The Times excoriated him. In its place, “excoriate” is a splendid verb, but was it right for readers of the Northwest Florida News?
I don’t know. These things are judgment calls. Are we writing for peasants, dropouts, high school seniors, college graduates? A writer has to think in terms of vocabularies. But, folks, we ought not to lay on a colloquial style like a coat of stucco. Most of the time it just don’t work good.
© 1993, UNIVERSAL PRESS
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