I wrote a letter (email) of complaint yesterday. It’s not something I do often, despite a fondness for complaining, but I had finally had enough.

What grevious fault had I finally had enough of? The BBC sports journalists’ use of the phrase “crashing out”, and variations thereof, to describe competitors exiting a competition at an unexpected stage. In the previous few days they’d described England as having “crashed out” of the world cup, one of the Williams sisters as having “crashed out” of Wimbledon and Mark Webber as having “crashed out” of the European Grand Prix, although in Webber’s case he literally did crash out – cartwheeling his car and everything! This sort of hyperbole just makes the phrase lose all meaning. Are BBC writers so devoid of ideas that they can’t think of any other ways of stating that someone left a competition?

Then it struck me that it’s not only the BBC who is responsible for this sort of online exaggeration. Regular Joe Hacks do it on a frighteningly frequent basis. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve encountered a website heading stating that some mind-numbing video clip is “amazing” or that a photo of a cat is “awesome”. Really? Does a picture of a cat poking its head out of a hole in the ceiling REALLY fill you with awe? If that’s the case you lead an astoundingly sheltered life.