A large fruit drink supplier

I noticed that one of our recent stories made reference to a "large fruit drink supplier". Obviously that's a large supplier of fruit drinks, but wouldn't it be nice if the company only supplied large fruit drinks, or drinks made from large fruit? I'm thinking of something like this:

Photo from Flickr

Using the word 'major' rather than 'large' would have been advisable - suppliers and fruit can both be 'large', but fruit is very rarely described as 'major'. And a hyphen between 'fruit' and 'drink' would have ruled out the 'large fruit' interpretation.

Vote for us in 'Top 100 Language Blogs 2009'

Please consider voting for The Engine Room in the 'Top 100 Language Blogs 2009' competition, which is run by bab.la and the Lexiophiles blog. We've been nominated in the 'Language Professionals' category, which is a little ironic given my previous post - but never mind.

All you have to do is click on the following icon, choose 'The Engine Room', and click 'vote':

Even if you don't vote for The Engine Room (and I won't be offended!), you may want to check out some of the other bogs nominated for the category.

Oh, and here are the links to all the other categories.

The future is not guaranteed

Today was quite a big day for me: my last press day, at least for the foreseeable. After working on a weekly magazine for 180 issues or so, I'm about to start a new role as web production editor.

For the past six months my time has been fairly evenly divided between print and web, so it will be good to focus on just one of them for a change. But I'll no longer be a sub, and I'll no longer be subbing much copy, so should I still be running a subbing blog?

Perhaps it's time for The Engine Room to change its focus a little. Or perhaps it's time for me to start a new blog, where my posts about interactive maps, feed management and search engines will fit in better. I'd love to know what you think. Especially you, Apus, if you're reading this!

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?

Simile: 'Oozing charm like a runny sore'

Here's a short extract from the novel No Time For Goodbye, by Linwood Barclay:

Paula Malloy was there and she greeted Cynthia like an old friend, oozing charm like a runny sore.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the second simile works. After all, a runny sore doesn't ooze charm. Something along the lines of 'oozing charm like a sore oozes pus' might have been better.

Trivia: Google PageRank

A bit of Saturday morning trivia: Google's PageRank algorithm, which scores web pages on their importance from zero to 10, is actually named after the chap who developed it: Larry Page.

It's a good job he wasn't called Larry Bottomley, as I'm not sure the name 'BottomleyRank' would have worked quite as well.

• Here's a handy PageRank checker.

• And here's some info about Google's PigeonRank.

Denise 'White Van' Outen

At work, we often use stock photography from online image libraries. Recently I was searching one of these libraries for a picture to illustrate a news story about the 'white van man' stereotype.

What did the image library give me when I entered the search term 'white van'? Dozens of photos of TV presenter Denise Van Outen, dressed in white.

Tube 'too hot for cattle'

According to today's Evening Standard, the London Underground is currently "too hot for cattle":



That's a shame, because cows love travelling on the Tube.

Incidentally, a couple of the broadsheets ran a similar story back in 2002. At least The Guardian took the unusual approach of putting commuters in a cattle truck.

I'd still rather see cows on the Tube, though.

Old story about tea is one of BBC's 'most popular'

Here's the BBC News website's 'most popular stories now' widget from the start of the week:


What's interesting is that story eight, "Tea 'healthier' drink than water", actually dates from August 2006:



For it to resurface as one of the Beeb's most popular stories three years after it was written shows the longevity that web content can have.

The story has been flying around on Twitter quite a lot recently, so I wonder if the micro-blogging site is responsible?