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09 December 2014

A nose for language: the difference between dung and crap, and one important similarity


Yesterday, my dear friend Andy Wightman published an angry article on his blog with this headline:
BLOG A Dung Heap of Unadulterated, Fabricated Crap
http://www.andywightman.com/?p=3987
This morning, I commented as follows:
You can't "fabricate" crap, any more than you can "assemble" a turd. They do not have components, only materials. And a dung heap is composed of dung, not crap which, I think most people would consider a different substance as crap is produced by humans and dung by vegetarian animals. Meant-eating animals produce "excrement".
May I suggest a better, though less pungent, headline: "Extremely inaccurate article by extremely ill-informed journalist on extremely important subject"?

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