The perils of daytime TV

Apus here. As a retired wordsmith I'm no longer dealing with solecisms in an engine room. But having spent so many years looking out for them I find it hard not to spoil Mrs Apus's enjoyment of her favourite house-hunting TV programme by repeatedly pointing out that the presenters deserve prosecution for language crimes.

The following ARGHHHH-inducers were noted in no more than five minutes, at which point Mrs A took my pencil away and sent me out for a walk to calm me down:

  • "peaceful and tranquil"
  • "they have lengthy criteria"
  • "it's a place full of local shops"
  • "future plans"
  • "unexpected windfall"

The walk helped.

4 comments:

Apus said...

...and I only just noticed that the blog already identifies who wrote each post. Eeeeeee... isn't this technology wonderful?

Anonymous said...

Maybe I'm being dumb, but I don't see what's wrong with "lengthy criteria" (surely you can have a short list of criteria?) or "a place full of local shops". What am I missing here?

JD (The Engine Room) said...

Ah, but it's the list of criteria that is lengthy, not the criteria themselves. After all, you probably wouldn't refer to 'short criteria'.

'Place full of local shops' I'm less sure of: is it because every shop is local to the people who live locally to it? You couldn't easily have a place full of non-local shops... an out-of-town shopping centre, perhaps?

I think what the scriptwriter meant was 'place full of independent shops' or just 'place full of shops'. May be wrong, though.

Anonymous said...

Just remember: They're local shops, for local people... We'll have no trouble here... And its nice to see you back Mr. A!