"Steve Mulhollan" smulhollat@yahoodotcom wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:32:21 GMT, "Ivan Vegvary"
wrote:

Again our news media (AP story) mentions that the Palestinians broke down
the barrier(s) to Egypt using a blowtorch (on the metal fences). Do they
really mean an oxy/acetylene cutting torch? Did the phrase blow torch
ever
mean anything other than the little hand held jobbies that holds what we
used to call "white gas" and was used for heating metal objects?

Ivan Vegvary


It is, no doubt, the only torch term they know so they use it
constantly. Any torch is a blow torch just like any rifle is an AK47.
Just goes to show you what kind of "journalists" our public education
system is turning out.

Blowtorch has become a generic term that is meaningful enough for people who
don't care what fuel or oxidizer is used; they only care that it was a
torch, and they get enough British reporting these days that you'd better
prefix it with "blow" if you don't want them to think flashlight. As for
your annoyance, they really don't give a ****. Neither does 99.9% of their
audience. It's a torch, it produces a flame, it somehow destroys metal
fences, and that's damned well enough to know about a story that really
concerns Palestinians defying the Israeli military to seek food and
essential goods in Egypt.

You really have to separate meaningful information from the trivial if
you're going to report on a wide range of subjects to a general audience.
The key is to know where to focus attention and detail. If you get into the
details of the type of torch used you give the impression, in a
general-interest article, that the fact is somehow important and deserves
the technical detail. It does not, and you will distract from the key facts
of the story if you give the detail or if you use technically correct but
generally obscure terms that beg the question of why you have created the
distraction. If someone has to look the term up, you've screwed up.

It strikes me that we've discussed this subject here before. Let me
re-emphasize a point: If what I have said above isn't glaringly obvious to
you, then journalism, or any kind of general-audience communication, is not
for you. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress (proud to have been a journalist, of both the general-interest
and the technical types, for half of a lengthy career)