PressEthic

Here is the first paragraph of a story by Vikas Bajaj titled "Oil and Gas Prices Rise Again as Rita Approached Texas Coast":

Houston, the nation’s energy epicenter, emptied of people as businesses from large oil refineries to small stores shut down in anticipation of Hurricane Rita.

Here’s where the nerdy part comes in…

Last night I was reading chapter 4 of the book “Reporting for the Media” for my writing & reporting class. Allow me to take a paragraph from page 92 and bring it to your attention:

Sloppy use of words can creep into anyone’s writing. The word “epicenter,” for example, means the point on the earth’s surface directly above the source of an earthquake. “Epicenter” is often misused, however, as a synonym for “center”.

So unless Houston is located under the earth’s crust, embedded into the mantle (I took a geology class in undergrad) the use of the word “epicenter” is wrong.

Everybody makes mistakes; we are human after all. At least this one didn’t put someone in solitary confinement or ruin a presidency.