Posts Tagged: media

  • Some retro radios in a shop display

    World Radio Day

    Today is World Radio Day (13 February 2025). I did get a bit nostalgic and thought it worth a post as the radio was a strong connector to the communities I grew up in. Growing up in the 1970s in Scone, a rural town in Australia, in a time before the Internet, Youtube, podcasts, streaming […]

  • Peter "Duffer" Dutton has been almost universally accused of dog-whistling, a political form of doublespeak.

    Dog-whistle politics

    The word of this week’s Australian election campaign would have to be dog-whistle. Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton (previously nicknamed “Duffer”) has been accused of political dog-whistling by the media for a spectacularly inept tirade about migrants in an interview on Sky TV (here reported on ABC Radio) on 17 May 2016: “For many people, they […]

  • ABC website uses "gotten"

    Should you be using gotten?

    Over the last few years Australians have become more tolerant of the use of gotten. Gotten as the past participle of get, instead of got, is a direct borrow from American English. I am not so sure why after decades of exposure to Hollywood films and American sitcoms we have finally succumbed to gotten (October […]

  • Tony Abbott with a speech bubble saying "... the suppository of all knowledge" with a group of incredulous journalists in an image bubble looking at a suppository

    Mr Abbott becomes Mr Malaprop

    In one of my previous posts, Improving your vocabulary using malapropisms, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek passage using as many common malapropisms as I could squeeze into the post. A malapropism is an incorrect word that sounds like the word that should have been used. The post was about choosing your words carefully and I described […]

  • A segue joins the pieces of a narrative together

    Let us segue

    In writing and public speaking, a segue is a method of seamlessly moving from one topic to another. A segue takes the reader to the next topic smoothly and without an uncomfortable or illogical jump. A good segue makes the subject change seem like a natural extension of the discussion. There are lots of ways […]

  • Cartoon showing Hilary Clintion at a dais saying "we were under fire in Bosnia" with a thought bubble saying "oops misspoe" and a second bubble showing her drinking wine with Bill and two others

    Ms Clinton “misspoke”

    Last week (23 March 2008) news reports showed that Hillary Clinton’s account of her exposure to sniper fire in a trip to Bosnia in 1996 was at the very least, an exaggeration of the danger—and her spokesperson admitted she may have “misspoke”. In contrast, an entertainer, on the same trip, said the scariest part for […]