Can I suggest a New Year resolution for all broadcast writers: be bolder with language?
To write words that please the ear and are not entirely predictable?
I love the deliberate choice of an unexpected (by which I do not mean an unfamiliar) word: it makes me sit up and pay attention.
Over the holiday, I caught up with a favourite nine-year-old whose use of language is always imaginative. As we walked in the cold on New Year's Day, she exclaimed: "Gorgeous!" to describe a large icy puddle (which of course had to be jumped in).
Maybe we could all do with rediscovering that child's joy in the power of language?
It's sad that one of our best wordsmiths, Matt Frei, isn't often on the UK news, as he now presents World News America. But I caught his Review of the Noughties decade in the US.
I especially like "from distrust to disgust" - it sounds great and it sums up the shift in mood over the banking crisis in just four words.
Hear some more gorgeous examples of bold language in Alan Johnston's review of From Our Own Correspondent 2009.
