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(Pop) go the weasels

Heidi attests:

My biggest peeve: I get really annoyed when journalists use “(pop. 200)” (or 29, or 400, or whatever) to underscore a town’s smallness. It’s overused like crazy, and vaguely condescending.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 15th, 2005 at 5:59 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “(Pop) go the weasels”

  1. Jeff Says:
    January 25th, 2005 at 2:56 pm

    I also hate “sleepy” as an adjective. People in small towns get just as much sleep as anywhere else.

    I’d rather see the journalist give the population, though, than use some subjective identifier. A village or “small town” is something different to a Nebraskan than, say, to a New Yorker.

  2. REISER Says:
    September 16th, 2005 at 2:33 pm

    When the word “sleepy” is applied to a small town, it is used as a euphemism for the pitilessly accurate “sleep-inducing.”

  3. Jim Says:
    November 4th, 2005 at 5:15 pm

    Or maybe it’s because the town is still and quiet, as if asleep.

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