Why I love the British Press

[JackintheGreen]

They may be just as sensationalistic as ours (I, for one, don't really care about dead dog fucking), but their control of the language is just so buggered charming. Note the excerpts below about "an exceptionally antisocial man" and his "unpleasant and costly behavior." So. Damn. Cute.

from today's Guardian at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1929486,00.h...

Transport police are hunting for an "exceptionally antisocial" man who has been defecating on trains across the country, causing tens of thousands of pounds-worth of damage.

British Transport Police today warned that the man's unpleasant and costly habit also posed a risk to public health, and released CCTV images of a man officers want to speak to in connection with the investigation.

[Fierce]

1. Their punctuation, too:

..."tens of thousands of pounds-worth."

Is that standard Queen's punctuation?

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. I think so. I can only think you're querying the hyphen, but maybe

it just looks a cumbersome turn of phrase to you.

[Fierce]

5. No, it was the hyphen that threw me.

Quaint!

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. I'd noticed hyphens don't figure much, if at all, in that syntax in

American texts - or as a kind of parenthesis, as I've just used it!

[Fierce]

7. I'm going to flag your flagrant abuse of the hyphen.

That use calls for the M-dash, thank you: --

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. That's not just fierce - it's vicious!

PS: What's an M-dash?

[Fierce]

10. Also known as a long dash,

also shown as two hyphens, thusly: --. As in, "I'm fierce -- not vicious."

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. Thanks.

[mr blur]

3. It's absolutely correct. (nt)

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. I thought it was going to be about El Caudillo estadounidense!

[Luna_C_06]

9. They are so damn cute.

I was reading a women's article (forgot where, but I think it was from the Guardian) where the columnist wrote about being embarrassed by "snogging on the telly".

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. I wish I knew what you and JackintheGreen were talking about.

What tickled you so much about those quotes. JITG's are just descriptions in a formal vein, and your one, just our colloquial parlance.

And yet, I can almost sense it, in that I have found that certain writers have a gift for saying things in a straight-laced way, clinical sort of way that I've relished. It can be the basis of the most hilarious wit imaginable, and in fact I think it is intentionally. Evelyn Waugh had a very crisp and clear way of writing, it seems to me, as did Somerset Maugham. But the Guardian thing just seems formal to me.

Well, isn't it great we tickle each other to death the way we speak and write. I've been hysterical for days about your expression, "He/she kicks ass and takes names". I mean to think of that "taking names" is pure genius. It takes a really discursive kind of imagination to hit upon something like that. I actually think that kind of genius may be an Anglo Saxon inheritance (even from the London area), also shared by the Aussies, some of whose expressions must be among the most hilarious.