Wednesday woundup: Apgar, backronyms, U2

This morning, the weather presenter on BBC1's Breakfast said a particular weather front would be moving towards London "during the course of the overnight period".

Um, shouldn't that be "during the night" – or possibly just "overnight"?

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Neil has pointed me in the direction of an interesting article on the backronym 'Apgar'.

A backronym is a pre-existing word that has been "turned into an acronym by the choice of appropriate words to fit each of its letters"; you'll have to read the article to find out what 'Apgar' means.

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I know I've tweeted this already, but it's too good to miss: a letter from the Daily Mail concerning U2. "Genuine, or a spoof that snuck in? Don't know, don't care," says @mattkirschen, who uploaded a scan of the letter.

Iron Man uses moderate language

We recently received the following email from Neil:

The Iron Man film trailer – which seems to give away WAY too much plot and is too long – says at the end in usual disclaimer-fashion: "Contains moderate violence and moderate language.”

All I have is visions of the so-called Iron Man talking in moderate English language like a Conservative politician: “Sorry to blow you up old chap”, “Get me out of this bloody suit!” etc...

Neil, the warning I saw actually read: "Contains moderate violence and one use of moderate language". So I am assuming that, apart from that one use, all of the dialogue in Iron Man is thoroughly immoderate...