Flicking through the Sydney Morning Herald today I was sure I'd spotted another example of the decline in sub-editing to publish here under the 'war on error' tag but in turns out that swingeing really is a word.
And, more interestingly for word nerds like me, it's an archaic word that appears to be coming back into contemporary use. In fact The Economist predicted "swingeing will appear in at least one news headline a week for the rest of the year" more than a year ago but that probably shows how behind Australia is in the latest trends or maybe even how little I read.
For a while now I've thought we are living in an age of declining literacy, even going so far as to write that literacy is dead. It's more appropriate to acknowledge that the nature of literacy is changing to reflect the digital age.
So now I propose we celebrate the continued employment of verbose sub-editors, the longevity of literacy and the opportunity to learn a new word!
