Sent east

Surely the commonly used word 'oriented' means sent to the east? My guess is that most people who use it really mean 'orientated' - a clear case of where an extra syllable is not verbal diarrhoea.

Head up

I often read articles informing me that someone "heads up" a company or organisation.

What's wrong with simply "heads"?

Is the "up" supposed to make them sound more elevated? If so that's daft, because by definition they are already the top person.

Following where?

I'm all too frequently being told, by weather forecasters and one racing commentator in particular, that some feature or horse is "following on behind". Where else?

Daft drumming

This is hardly a verbal diarrhoea rant, so my apologies.

However, I am increasingly bewildered by TV programme producers' apparent insistence on using background drumming. There are, nowadays, hardly any programmes devoid of this superfluous and maddening racket.

Often the din is loud enough to make it hard to hear what is being said! At other times it just seems that there is 'interference on sound' and that I am listening to two channels simultaneously.

I am unable to get any sensible replies to my complaints, the BBC's response being that what it chooses to call "background music" is something many viewers say they enjoy as it "enhances the viewing experience". This misses the point entirely, in my view. Monotonous and irritating computer-generated 'drumming' hardly qualifies as music!

The strange thing is that most radio programmes (at least those on BBC Four, my main listening source), where you might imagine that a bit of 'hyping' drumming might be justified to offset the lack of pictures, seem to manage perfectly well without it. However, I have noticed that even there the trailers for forthcoming programmes increasingly have this pointless noise running in the background.

Also it's apparently obligatory during road traffic announcements from whatever source.

Is it not time to start a campaign to drum it out of programming altogether?

Goes

At what point should I, as a journalist, replace the word 'says' with 'goes'? It strikes me that most people under the age of 20 consider it obligatory - like!