A recent edition of Time Magazine did a fascinating diagram on the evolution of superlatives, “When Did Everything Become Epic?”
It was interesting to see that “stellar,” one of my favorites, was coined in 1883, a “capital” idea, crept its way into common usage in 1713, and “sweet,” which I hear all the time from my Gen X kids, is on the chart for 1924.
Then there are the all time favorites like “great,” in 1818, “smashing,” in 1911, and “cool” in 1933.
While some of the words harken back to the Roaring Twenties or the Beatnik era, others like “neat,” which we used a lot in our hippy days, came into popularity in 1806, which I found surprising.
The evolution of words has always fascinated me, and as a lover of language, my husband gave me “The Elements of Style,” by E.B. White at one of my milestone birthdays. It was our bible in English when I was at boarding school, and the rules of grammar and brevity were drilled into us.
Those who work for me find I am a ruthless editor, carving out unnecessary language, redundancy and extra clauses. This applies so well to news writing, which is essentially what we do as a boutique PR firm, since we are presenting the news about our hotel and luxury lifestyle clients in a way the press can just pick up and use.
So, when is it OK to use words to describe “remarkable,” or “stunning,” which we use often to describe the destinations and products we promote? The use of slang, which is essentially what these words are that appeared in the Time chart, can really only be used in a quote. (By the way, when you look at the chart, you will see those two adjectives don’t appear.)
Making a pithy and memorable quote is an art unto itself, and all too often clients will find that their name is only attributed in the article as such, despite the fact that the journalist may have spent significant time learning the subject.
But it pays to be a “super” source for journos: you will get payback – and by the way “super doesn’t appear in the diagram! Go figure.