Monday, November 06, 2006

Get out the rote

The repeated use of "get out the vote" in campaign stories is giving me a headache. What ever happened to the simple "voter turnout"?

Example: Both parties fired up get-out-the-vote operations.

Is that any better than Both parties fired up voter turnout operations?

An occasional get-out-the-vote reference is fine for some flair. But we've gone beyond flair here. We're entering the realm of bureaucrat-speak, election-style.

3 Comments:

At 4:26 PM, November 06, 2006, Blogger Chris Cusack said...

Should "voter turnout" be hyphenated in the phrase "voter turnout operations"?

 
At 4:36 PM, November 06, 2006, Blogger Nicole said...

It would depend on your publication's style, I think. If it aggressively hyphenates, there's not reason not to include one here. If it tends to go without, I think this is the kind of phrase that can stand on its own.

Personally? I like hyphens, despite the fact that I didn't hyphenate the phrase in the post above. I say, it seldom hurts to use them. It often hurts not to.

 
At 3:13 AM, November 08, 2006, Blogger Rob Kennedy said...

Besides the vote, what else gets gotten out?

 

Post a Comment

<< Home