Overworked Phrases Along the Line
Who has not been afflicted with that fad of the meaningless phrase, “along the line,” “along the lines,” etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam? Just when we had determined to issue a “counterblast to” it, there came to our table the December number (1899) of Learning by Doing, which has done the work so well that all we need to do is merely to quote:— “Along the line,” “along these lines,” “on this line,” “upon those lines,” “along that line,” “in the line of,”—it seems to us that we have heard these phrases somewhere. In fact, they are beginning to form a cobweb across our mental vision, of lines upon lines—geometrical, hypothetical, hyperbolical; lines straight, lines crooked, lines criss-cross, superimposed, produced, projected, and proposed; bee lines, side lines, boundary lines, clotheslines. O brethren of the fountain pen, let us go to! Are there not other things than lines? Why not harness up the plane, or the angle, or the circle, or the parallelopipedon; and turn the poor “line” out to grass for a while? Won’t you please think of this suggestion “along these lines”?