Michelle Malkin points out that whenever an accident involves an SUV, it is the SUV, not the driver who is responsible.
I also watched ER the other night and they said that they no longer referred to car wrecks as Motor Vehicle Accidents, but Motor Vehicle Incidents.
It just proves that changing the name of something doesn't change what it is. If wrech was too negative, change it to Accident. Soon the word accident gets a bad connotation, so now its "incident". What happens when people realize that an "incident" is still a wreck?
The verb is the most important part of the sentence. A verb asserts something about the subject of the sentence (in this case the driver) and expresses action, events or states of being.
If more journalists actually studied the English language, this might pop up on their radar.
And there's the bias thing too. But the fact that most journalism majors don't study English like English majors do, more journalists end up with a prefabricated sense of the language.
Posted by: Noelle at January 31, 2005 02:35 PMJust like Xeroxing something instead of copying it. I guess Mamma Cass didn't choke on the ham sandwich, she was choked BY the ham sandwich.
