bad reporter, no biscuit

[mamajoan]

Taken from an AP story: A landslide in Laguna Beach destroyed 17 multimillion-dollar houses and damaged nearly 11 others yesterday.
What the hell is "damaged nearly 11 others"???? Did it damage ten others? Then say ten others! "Nearly 11"?? What the hell does that even mean?

Ugh, sorry. The use of "nearly" and "over" and similar with small numbers like this is a big peeve of mine. I think there should be a rule that they mayn't be used with numbers under, say, a hundred.

*grump*

Comments

[bodacia.livejournal.com]

That is a rather annoying misuse of the language. What peeves me WAY more, however, is the constant and ubiquitous usage of words such as "data" and "media" as singular (e.g., "the data shows..." "the media is...")

I cannot tell you how much this makes my blood boil! Argh!!!!!!!!!!!

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

I complained at work about the use of "data" in the singular but they thought that I had just made "datum" up. Strangely, it was in common usage before computers.

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

I fear that my thesis makes overly much use of the word "some" simply to avoid the arbitrary rule about not starting sentences with a number...

[girliejones.livejournal.com]

They *just* don't make journalists like they used to - its a worldwide frustration.