Jalopnik Rant

"If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent" (essextee)
04/22/2019 at 22:15 • Filed to: grammarlopnik

Where the hell are the editors when these NPoCP posts get published? I almost have a stroke every time I try to read one. They can be so poorly written sometimes. A few nit picks:

Seemingly paragraph-long, clumsily worded run-on sentences:

That’s too bad because not only are they are really interesting as cars and as a bit of automotive history, but they’re also pretty fun to drive. [27 words]

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

The ratio of length to height is more wagon-like than any of its direct competition and that’s a bonus for those of us who prefer to hunker down on the road rather than tip around corners like we’re driving a bar stool. [42 words!]

“Thesaurus” function seems to have been used at least once in every sentence to find the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! alternative:

...tactic of taking a family car and imbuing it with higher performance bonafides has long been a tradition in the automotive industry. It’s given us such venerable names as...

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

We often parrot the sage apophthegm [sic] that its always better to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow (note: the word is apothegm , and nobody has heard of that either!)

Often about half (up to 300 words!) of each article is spent talking about the last NPoCP before the current contestant is even mentioned. Too much! Yesterday’s car had its time in the spotlight already. Cut that down to 100 words.

The segues between current and previous contenders are always incredibly clunky and forced. You don’t have to find a link between the two cars every time!

Hella padding. It’s like the author is paid by word count. You get entire irrelevant paragraphs just to set up one sentence. It’s disappointing to have all this buildup and then the author’s train of thought just dead-ends:

Rant over. Feel free to pick apart my grammar and writing skills because that’s just inevitable when commenting on others’.

DISCUSSION (23)

ttyymmnn > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/22/2019 at 22:28

I tend not to read those posts, but I can tell you, as somebody who has written tens upon tens of thousands of words in my aviation history posts, that I definitely follow a formula . I would imagine that the NP OCP articles have a formula as well. And I would also wager that they are written very quickly, and obviously not rigorously proofed (I don’t think anybody uses a proof reader at any of the Kinja sites).

...tactic of taking a family car and imbuing it with higher performance bonafides has long been a tradition in the automotive industry. It’s given us such venerable names as...

Honestly, I find nothing wrong with this passage. I would challenge you to write it using different words than the ones you italicized. Ultimately , I see it as a matter of style. And if different writers are trying to copy a certain style, that can get very clunky.

Chariotoflove > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/22/2019 at 22:28

That’s just the way graverobber, I mean Emslie, has always written these . I just get used to scanning for the important bits and scrolling down.

I don’t find any fault with recapping the result from the previous day. It sometimes does read a little non-sequitur though, I’ll allow .

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > ttyymmnn
04/22/2019 at 22:31

“Making a hot version of a family car is a long-standing automotive tradition” That’s a 44 percent reduction in words (23 to 13) while keeping the meaning perfectly intact.

Like I said, it’s as if the author is paid by word count.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Chariotoflove
04/22/2019 at 22:36

Oh I had no clue it was graverobber. At any rate, yesterday’s results should be a footnote or maybe come after the current car. They get written about in the recap as if it’s the first time, which for daily readers is redundant because they’ve already read about it. Just a link to yesterday’s article would suffice.

ttyymmnn > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/22/2019 at 22:37

But that doesn’t match the style they are after. Are these still written by Grave Robber?

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > ttyymmnn
04/22/2019 at 22:40

Is the style “flowery Elizabethan prose”? Because that’s what I’m getting. Excessive word count reduces readability. It’s hard to read an article when you lose track of what the sentence subject is halfway through it.

There’s nothing wrong with having a writing style, but the author needs to find his own rather than trying to ape whatever this is.

Just Jeepin' > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/22/2019 at 22:54

note: the word is apothegm

Actually he got it right, or at least not wrong: apophthegm is the British spelling.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Just Jeepin'
04/22/2019 at 22:57

I am offended that that combination of consonants is allowed to exist. And I’m Polish.

phenotyp > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/22/2019 at 23:08

Eh, he writes them for fun, to be fun. I’ve always found pretty much any automotive journalism to be overly flowery, going back to the days of print. If anything, I’d say he’s just following that tradition of awkward verbosity.

Although I’ll concede that he upped the thesaurus abuse when he started using his real name.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > phenotyp
04/22/2019 at 23:13

That poor thesaurus is chained up and gagged in his basement and receives regular whippings.

Chariotoflove > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/22/2019 at 23:54

All the authors on Jalopnik were forced to give up handles for their real names a couple ( few?) years ago.

Svart Smart, traded in his Smart > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/23/2019 at 01:26

I just hate it when a writer uses a semicolon to introduce an apposition or a dependent clause.

BigBlock440 > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/23/2019 at 10:01

There’s nothing wrong with having a writing style, but the author needs to find his own rather than trying to ape whatever this is.

That...that is his own, that’s how he’s been writing them for ten years....

HammerheadFistpunch > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/23/2019 at 11:37

As an automotive journalist to some degree I think my biggest failings are by far length and brevity. That being said there is way to much fluff in the stories these days. Balaban’ s 4runner review could summed up as

first half - The 4runner exists

next quarter - this is a 4runner

last quarter - this is the actual review.

There’s very little meat in these gym mats stories .