AAARRRRGH!
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Call me old fashioned but I believe that a person who uses the English language as a means of earning a living should be able to demonstrate a working knowledge of how that language is used.
This being February (not “Febuary” as I saw it spelled on the marquis in front of a local high school), we finally got our first real snow for the season. As happens every year at this time, the local TV station ran their pet article about how to avoid “busted pipes” in the cold weather. This is the third year in a row they’ve run a report on how to avoid “busted pipes”.
From the station’s website (emphasis added)
That cold weather has them preparing busted pipes that were connected to an exterior faucet, a faucet that was supposed to be “freeze proof.”
On their 6:00pm broadcast today the news anchor and the guy going the report quoted above managed to throw out the term “busted pipes” about six times between the two of them.
I got so annoyed with this last year or the year before that I emailed the station manager and explained that “bust” is not a verb. It is a noun meaning, among other things, the statue or sculpture of a person’s head and shoulders. I told him that the proper phrase is “broken pipes” or “burst pipes” or even “ruptured pipes” if you want it to sound drastic but anyone who passed high school English class should know that “busted pipes” is wrong.
He wrote back and politely explained that most of the newscasters were students of broadcasting and still attending Arkansas State University.
…and that means they no longer need to know proper English?
Sigh.
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