Touchy

A columnist for the Orlando Sentinel has written a piece about bloggers in which he states:

For the uninformed, a blog is any thought posted on a Web site that is not good enough to be printed in a newspaper.

Here is an example: "President Bush has totally and utterly failed the American people. Almost every day we are presented with further proof why he should not be our president."

This is from "Bulldog Manifesto."

Note that you would never see the words "utterly" and "totally" in the same newspaper sentence because they are redundant terms.

Well! As Florida News Blog points out,

Of course, both of those words are intensifiers: "a modifier that has little meaning except to intensify the meaning it modifies." Because of the goal of intensifiers, it is not uncommon to be repetitive when using them. Had the writer said that Bush "both" totally and utterly failed, then there would be reason to believe he was being redundant. In this case, however, it is clear the writer simply intended to give more weight to the word "failed."

I would add that sometimes I'm repetitive for the sake of the rhythm of a line. But really, "any thought posted on a Web site that is not good enough to be printed in a newspaper?"

That's all you got?