{"id":397,"date":"2012-10-15T14:03:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T14:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=397"},"modified":"2013-10-22T07:26:50","modified_gmt":"2013-10-22T07:26:50","slug":"put-icons-back-in-church-where-they-belong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=397","title":{"rendered":"Put icons back in church where they belong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time the only place one would see anything “iconic” was in a Greek Orthodox<\/a> or Russian Orthodox Church<\/a>. A gilded frame, copious amounts of gold leaf and a halo or haloes were usually involved.<\/p>\n

However nowadays – much to my dismay – something just has to exist to be regarded as an icon: no veneration is necessary and the word has become hackneyed and synonymous with lazy journalism, as in this piece from today’s Bristol Post<\/a>, where the undeserving victim is traditional British fish and chips.<\/p>\n

Let’s see what the Guardian Style Guide<\/a> says about iconic:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nIn danger of losing all meaning after an average three appearances a day in the Guardian and Observer, employed to describe anything vaguely memorable or well-known \u2013 from hairdressers, storm drains in Los Angeles and the Ferrero Rocher TV ads to Weetabix, the red kite and the cut above the eye David Beckham sustained after being hit by a flying boot kicked by Sir Alex Ferguson. Our advice, even if our own writers rarely follow it, is to show a little more thought, and restraint, in using this term.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Turning to icon<\/strong>, the Style Guide lists the following objects which were described in the Guardian as “iconic” in a single fortnight in 2010:<\/p>\n

\nArchaeopteryx
\nbluefin tuna
\nCastro’s cigar
\nDavid Beckham wearing an anti-Glazer scarf
\nGrace Kelly in casual wear
\nImperial War Museum North
\nLiberty prints
\nlimestone stacks in Thailand
\nNigel Slater
\nMad Men
\nVariety
\nthe John Hughes films Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science
\npostboxes
\nprints of the Che Guevara image
\nStephen Fairey’s Obama Hope design
\nthe parliamentary constituency of Hove
\nthe Brandenburg Gate
\nBach’s St Matthew Passion
\na community-owned wind turbine
\nKraft cheese slices
\nsalmon farming
\nthe blue and white stripes of Cornishware pottery
\nPenarth Pavilion, Cardiff
\nthe Norwegian church and Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay
\na multimillion-pound arena in Leeds
\na “rock-built engine house at Bottalack near St Just”
\nthe Royal Albert Hall
\nwind turbines (“iconic renewable energy technology”)
\nWembley Arena
\nthe video for Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This abuse of language has gone on far too long. Let’s put icons back where they belong: in an Orthodox church, in a gilt frame and covered in gold leaf; is that too much to ask?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time the only place one would see anything “iconic” was in a Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox Church. A gilded frame, copious amounts of gold leaf and a halo or haloes were usually involved. However nowadays – much to my dismay – something just has to exist to be regarded as an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3,32],"tags":[16,10,22,33,8],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-media","tag-english-usage","tag-facepalm","tag-language","tag-media-2","tag-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2927,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/2927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}