Mancky

‘Sounds like a cross between…’

The use of this phrase can only be justified in an acute descriptive emergency. Or when it’s part of a joke.

There should be very little need to use it when writing on the multi-media internet.

Globe-trotting DJs

Club DJs are only useful if they are DJing in a club near me, which I can afford to go to.

Lists of DJs’ recent international commitments are annoying, irrelevant, often untrue and don’t mean that a DJ is any good at DJing.

Over-use and mis-use of the word ‘swagger’ to describe Manchester and Mancunians.

A common journalists’ cliche; unwanted images of Liam Gallagher spring to mind, even though he moved away years ago.

Over-use and mis-use of the words ‘legend’ and ‘legendary’.

‘Legendary’ is now used whenever the phrase ‘once mildly famous but now largely over-looked’ would be much more appropriate.

The paradox:
If he/she/it were really a legend, then you wouldn’t have to tell me they were a legend because I would already know about them.

So what does ‘legend/legendary’ really mean?

It means:
You should know this; if you don’t, you’re not well informed;
You need to buy this; if you don’t, you’re missing out.

‘Legend/legendary’ is being used as a selling-tool to ‘add value’ to artists and their products.

‘Legend/legendary’ is also being used as an elitest signal, to imply a wider peer-group knowledge of a subject which may be unknown to the reader.

The over-use of ‘legend/legendary’ is not just lazy and inaccurate, it’s also a form of brow-beating or intellectual bullying.

Most irritatingly, the word can be used without anyone raising an objection because people who haven’t previously heard of the person/artist being described as ‘legendary’ assume they are not qualified to comment.