We now interrupt your regularly scheduled program...
Did you hear that more U.S. troops were killed in Iraq today? I just read the headline here and was amazed. Five troops? That's horrendous! Which troop was it? How many soldiers were in those troops? The somber music will have to loop that many more times on "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos...
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Because while the staff writers referred to the deaths as "four U.S. soldiers and one marine," the headline writer blew everything out of proportion by misusing the plural. And I know it's not uncommon for headlines to list "troops" in place of "soldiers," but is this just an honest mistake? Perhaps the parlance of our times has changed and "troop" is no longer plural (though you may want to tell the dictionary writers that). Or maybe, and this is my cynical side speaking, maybe the media has been using the plural in place of the singular in order to make a point: that the death of 5 soldiers should bear the same gravity and importance as the death of 5 troops, and that Americans in general have become too desensitized to the consequences of this war.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Because while the staff writers referred to the deaths as "four U.S. soldiers and one marine," the headline writer blew everything out of proportion by misusing the plural. And I know it's not uncommon for headlines to list "troops" in place of "soldiers," but is this just an honest mistake? Perhaps the parlance of our times has changed and "troop" is no longer plural (though you may want to tell the dictionary writers that). Or maybe, and this is my cynical side speaking, maybe the media has been using the plural in place of the singular in order to make a point: that the death of 5 soldiers should bear the same gravity and importance as the death of 5 troops, and that Americans in general have become too desensitized to the consequences of this war.