A shiver down the backbone of business

One of our news stories today included the following quote:

News of massive cuts in much-needed road and rail infrastructure projects will send a shiver down the spine of an industry that forms the backbone of business in the country

A shiver down the spine... the backbone of business... is this an extended metaphor or just a mixed one?

Kneeling, begging and turning

Spotted this in a BBC News story on the Detroit Auto Show:

The slump brought the "Big Three" to their knees, begging bowls in hand, as they turned to the government for help.

Not a mixed metaphor as such, but kneeling and turning together sounds like a difficult operation. Holding the begging bowl can't help either...

Photo special: our business is exploding

Seeing as it's a bank holiday today I thought I would run another 'photo special'.

This business card was pushed through my door recently:



I don't know about you, but if my business was exploding I would probably call the emergency services rather than seek help via the rather slower medium of the business card...

Tuesday tautology round-up

A few tautologies and otherwise interesting phrases that have snuck into our magazine engine room recently:

"continues to remain"
Um, just 'continues' will do. Or failing that, 'remains'.

"enquired verbally"
That would be 'asked'...

"closely scrutinise"
As opposed to what, casually scrutinise?

"the tunnel prevents vehicles having to retrace their steps"
Vehicles with feet – brilliant!

Triple mixed metaphor strikes back

I blogged a while back about a triple mixed metaphor from one of our senior writers.

The same writer has done it again!

Operators will be buried under a mountain of data, glued to their PCs trying to unravel the mysteries of their operation

It would be difficult to unravel anything while buried under a mountain and glued to a PC... And I wouldn't mind all these metaphors so much if they weren't such cliches.