Culture

Testing for deadly words

April 03, 2008
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Inspired by my colleague Susha's recent linking, I've been conducting a few investigations of my own into what the New York Times has labelled the "seven deadly words" of book reviewing—the ones that should be avoided at all costs. They are, in all their poisonous pusillanimousness: poignant, intriguing, compelling, craft, eschew, muse and lyrical. How often, I wondered, are such horrors perpetrated by responsible journalists? And how do Prospect, and the NYT, measure up?

Prospect has now existed for 145 issues, which makes our PICCEML index (as I've dubbed this new measurement; pronounced "piecemeal") a simple calculation: the total number of occurrences divided by total number of issues, which works out as 3.3 in our case. Measuring the New York Times is a little more complicated. To calculate fairly the PICCEML index of such a massive publication, I've only counted the books and arts sections in my survey, and have included every issue since 1st January 1981—a grand total of 9,955. Work it all out, and you get 4.7—largely due to NYT critics' incorrigible fondness for lyrical and compelling works.

At Prospect, in contrast, we prefer things to be compelling and intriguing, and have little patience with musing. Despite being more PICCEML than us, however, the NYT does almost entirely eschew "eschew," a verb we have perpetrated no less than 21 times in our history—a statistic that, I'm sorry to say, includes my own compelling musings on another's intriguingly lyrical style.

But what's a good, or a representative, PICCEML? Since 1st January 2001, the Guardian and Observer have averaged a combined score of no less than 11.7, while the good old Sun achieved a commendably minute 0.8—and has only printed the word "eschew" three times in its history. It has also never, ever, referred to anything as "postmodern" (which must be worth at least -0.5 bonus points): something the Guardian did no less than 1,727 times over the last decade. The PICCEML is, it seems, best deployed as an index of highbrow decadence. Any suggestions for telling measures of quality at the other end of the scale?