newspapers

It might help the sale of newspapers if they employed people who can speak a bit of english. Every day we hear reporters talking about an "oil spill" in the Gulf of Mexico. You might expect a PR guy for BP to call it a "spill" but this is ridiculous coming from independent reporters.

A spill is losing a small amount of something from a container. You spill a bit of rice from a rice container, or you spill some gasoline from a jerry-can. An oil tanker can have a spill from a collision or a grounding that causes a leak.

Toll people got a good belly laugh at the Chicago Tribune recently with their headline that referred to TransCore as a "troubled" company. "Tollway sticks with troubled customer-service firm" ran the headline Dec 17.