Thursday, March 09, 2017

Punctuation inflation!

Punctuation inflation has infected the tabloids!

4 comments:

Deb said...

My Dad is an avid tabloid reader (perhaps because the format, subject matter, and lack of anything approaching journalistic veracity remind him of the British newspapers of his youth: the Mirror, the Sun, the Daily Mail), and I used to enjoy the occasional perusal of celebrity gossip (sad last days, best/worst beach bodies, the secret some recently-departed celebrity took to the grave, etc.). But now it's wall-to-wall Trump is the glorious leader, Obama is the devil, and Hillary's always on the verge of going to jail. Too depressing!

Jeff Meyerson said...

Haven't the tabloids always used a lot of exclamation marks? I know the Daily News (a big step up from the Daily Mail, not to mention the Enquirer) does.

I miss the good old days of the "hot sheets" Agent K was reading in MEN IN BLACK. We used to read the Enquirer in the '60s when it was babies in freezers and the like.

I still remember a great TV movie (SCANDAL SHEET, 1985) where Burt Lancaster ran an Enquirer/Globe-like tabloid out of Florida and hired "ethical" investigative reporter Pamela Reed, who was desperate for money. Once she went to work for him, of course, no reputable paper would hire her and he owned her body and soul. She ended up using a tiny camera to take a picture of a dead infant in its coffin. Chilling, but really well done.

Unknown said...

I like Donald Westlake's TRUST ME ON THIS. Great book about tabloids.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Deb, if you check the tabloids selling in the supermarket, the headlines are still "sad last days" (Kurt Russell was the most recent one I saw), Jennifer Aniston's pregnancies (one a month or so), divorce (it used to be W. and Laura Bush) or marriage, etc.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.