{"id":942,"date":"2014-06-16T10:15:21","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T09:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=942"},"modified":"2014-06-13T10:18:12","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T09:18:12","slug":"if-somethings-famous-you-dont-need-to-tell-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=942","title":{"rendered":"If something’s famous, you don’t need to tell people"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If something\u2019s famous, you don\u2019t need to tell people; if you need to tell people something\u2019s famous, it isn\u2019t<\/h1>\n
I am, famously, trying to discourage people from using this meaningless, annoying and downright misleading cliche<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Theresa
Theresa May in her famous, or otherwise, T-shirt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Theresa May, the home secretary, was \u201conce famously photographed in one of the Fawcett Society\u2019s \u2018This is what a feminist looks like\u2019 T-shirts\u201d, according to the Guardian earlier this week. And for those of us who have no recollection of this incident, \u201cfamous\u201d or otherwise, there was a photograph to prove it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a national newspaper journalist who works on the big news stories every day of my working life. I\u2019m really interested in politics and, at least in the days when she acknowledged that the Tories were the \u201cnasty party\u201d, quite liked May. So if I don\u2019t remember her wearing that T-shirt (the kitten heels are quite a different matter), I suspect there must be quite a few other people who don\u2019t either. So what, exactly, is \u201cfamously\u201d doing in that sentence?<\/p>\n

I think that when writers use this word they usually mean one of two things.<\/p>\n

I know everyone knows this, but I can\u2019t think of an original way to start so I am going to say it anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

An example from this newspaper:<\/p>\n

\u201cHarold Macmillan, asked what the biggest challenge is for any leader, famously replied: \u2018Events, my dear boy, events.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

If we all already know this, why tell us he \u201cfamously\u201d said it?<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t know this? I do. That shows I am clever and know lots of stuff you don\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n

Another Guardian example:<\/p>\n

\u201cReich famously declined to continue in academia, preferring to support himself via a series of blue-collar jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is even worse, calculated to annoy the reader, if not to make them feel inferior to the writer.<\/p>\n

Journalists love \u201cfamously\u201d. It makes around 500 appearances a year in Britain\u2019s national newspapers, often, though not always, in stories about Wayne Rooney. Here\u2019s a selection, all from yesterday\u2019s papers (my italics):<\/p>\n

\u201cBobby Charlton, 76,\u00a0famously<\/em>\u00a0lost 10lb (4.6kg) in weight in just an hour of England\u2019s game with Pele\u2019s Brazil at the Mexico 1970 World Cup.\u201d (Daily Star)<\/p>\n

\u201cBobby Charlton\u00a0famously<\/em>\u00a0lost over 10lb in weight in just an hour of England\u2019s classic encounter with Pele\u2019s Brazil at the Mexico 1970 World Cup.\u201d (Daily Express)<\/p>\n

\u201cEriksson\u00a0famously<\/em>\u00a0urged England fans and media at his farewell press conference in 2006 not to \u2018kill\u2019 Rooney because the country needed him.\u201d (Daily Mail)<\/p>\n

\u201cKeira Knightley\u00a0famously<\/em>\u00a0once declared \u2018I don\u2019t have t**s\u2019 \u2026 (Daily Mail)<\/p>\n

(Not that famously, perhaps, if we aren\u2019t deemed grownup enough to be told what she actually said.)<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid Moyes\u00a0famously<\/em>\u00a0told him [Rooney] at the start of last season that he had lost his aggressive edge.\u201d (Independent)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Netherlands midfielder [Wesley Sneijder] was part of the side that lost 1-0 to Spain in a\u00a0famously<\/em>\u00a0ill-tempered World Cup final in South Africa in 2010.\u201d (Mirror)<\/p>\n

\u201cBut yesterday the court was told the actor [Leroy Harris], who\u00a0famously<\/em>featured in the cat-killing scene in the hit RTE crime series \u2026 \u201d (Mirror)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fishmonger who\u00a0famously<\/em>\u00a0joked with Queen Elizabeth revealed yesterday he is \u20ac85,000 in the red and carped: \u2018Tourists don\u2019t buy fish.\u2019 \u201d (The Sun)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve [Algeria] qualified for the World Cup four times \u2013 and in 1982famously<\/em>\u00a0beat eventual winners West Germany 2-1.\u201d (The Sun)<\/p>\n

\u201cFamously<\/em>, Newell\u2019s, Messi\u2019s senior club in Rosario, eventually rejected paying for the expensive corrective treatment.\u201d (Daily Telegraph)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s quite enough fame for one day.<\/p>\n

My view is that as \u201cfamously\u201d serves no useful purpose, it\u2019s best to leave it out. (Or, for those of us whose job involves editing other people\u2019s copy, remove it.)<\/p>\n

The same applies to \u201cfamous\u201d. If something or someone is famous, we already know, thank you. And if they aren\u2019t famous, well, they aren\u2019t famous, so why would you say they are?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If something\u2019s famous, you don\u2019t need to tell people; if you need to tell people something\u2019s famous, it isn\u2019t I am, famously, trying to discourage people from using this meaningless, annoying and downright misleading cliche<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,13,57],"tags":[123,87,42],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}