West Penn Today - The back Line

[brathke at juno.com]

And I have a similar pet peeve, although it relates to pomposity of the
spoken, rather than the written, word.

Broadcast journalism has always taught that the the emphasis in station
identification should be on the STATION, not the verb, yet I continue to
hear - especially on public radio - "This IS station XYZ", rather than
the proper "THIS is station XYZ."

Enough on that, back to trolleys...

Bob 7/10

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On Mon, 10 Jul 2000 11:30:08 -0400 "Edward H. Lybarger"
<twg at pulsenet.com> writes:
> I have a major pet peeve.  It involves the continued use of the 
> highly
> pompous and insulting "THE West Penn," "THE This," "THE That" that 
> railfans
> like to use to assert their familiarity with subjects.  Yes, some of 
> the
> companies promoted themselves like this, West Penn included, in the 
> early
> years.  It was a promotional tactic employed to intimidate the 
> public into
> believing a company was more important and/or more powerful than was
> actually the case. But West Penn had the good taste to cease it at 
> an early
> date and call themselves the West Penn System or the West Penn 
> Railways
> Company, as appropriate, which frankly sound more prosperous that 
> the phony
> appellation.  Besides, the other is bad English.
> 
> OK, nothing personal, but it needed to be said.

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