wsj: slang usage sucks

Watch your language

A markets column contained a passage in early editions quoting the CEO of a home builder predicting that 2007 was “going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year.”

Between editions, the language was mercifully cleaned up. Dictionaries call the verb suck used this way either slang or vulgar slang. We shouldn’t stoop to such usage just because almost everyone else does. If it is uttered in a direct quote by somebody major, the president or the pope, say, that’s another matter. If the source is an ordinary CEO, we might consider including it, but only if a page editor or deputy managing editor approves.

(courtesy of the wall street journal's style and substance)