Using “soar” vs. “rose” as verbs in business news stories

Robert MacMillan, an editor at Reuters, has an interesting blog post on Monday about the increasing use of “soar” as a verb in business news copy when a simple but effective “rose” would do.

MacMillan writes, “In the past few years, I’ve read increasing use of the words ‘surge’ and ‘soar.’ Often, they characterize stock movement or the results of operations at various companies.”

Later, he adds, “Some words don’t get old. Rather than overuse ‘soared’ and ‘surged’ like they are going out of style (which I fear they aren’t), try ‘rose.’ It always works. It never gets old. It’s as close to literal as you can get when describing the price of a stock, something that you can’t see and by nearly all rights is artificial anyway. It’s the  same with ‘said.’ It always beats ‘averred’ and 16 million other editorially loaded words.

“Using the less flashy words might set off less of a spark, but they are words that will remain useful forever. ‘Soared’ and ‘surged’ have their place, every once in a while, just like ‘key parties’ are fun in a retro sense, but you don’t want to live your life by them. Retire them for now. One day you’ll put them on again and laugh.”

Read more here.