Whatever Happened to Coming Attractions?

Whatever happened to coming attractions?
When I was a boy, movie theaters used large banners in capital letters on their screens to announce “coming attractions,” which were always the “must see” movies to be shown in the days and weeks ahead. Church bulletins, school handouts, community billboards, even an occasional public official announced important events and entertainments as COMING ATTRACTIONS.

I suppose its part of the airy inflation of the language that the perfectly apt and serviceable “coming” has been replaced by the more lengthy “upcoming.” I am still annoyed and surprised at the addition. Up adds nothing to the meaning of the word, but it takes up more valuable and contested space in newspapers and magazines.
I would think that newspaper and magazine editors, and particularly headline writers, would fight vigorously and valiantly to protect the inoffensive and shorter “coming” against blowhards and bureaucrats whose mission is to swell their own importance and confuse the public by puffing up the common usage of fitting English language. One would also think that sign painters, poster makers and those responsible for putting announcements of coming events in lights would have come to the defense of the shorter adjective. After all, it takes more paint, ink, bulbs and time to add a meaningless “up” to an appropriate word. Alas, its natural defenders have all meekly watched and assented as the language villains stretched the innocent “coming” on a rack.

For that matter, whatever happened to persons? When I was in school and, later as a young reporter, knowledgeable teachers and wise editors taught that “people” was to be used only in describing a fairly large and unnumbered collection of humans, as in “the people will decide.” When numbers of humans was involved, particularly small numbers, “persons” was the only correct use. Thus, “five persons were killed in a car crash.” Now it’s “five people” killed in the same tragic crash announced over the air waves and reported in respectable newspapers as though the word “persons” doesn’t exist. Any day now, I expect to hear or read that one people was killed in an accident, fire or other disaster.

Then there’s the more recent torture of the language, the misleading “previously owned” in place of the understandable and much shorter and accurate “used.” No wonder that we people don’t trust used car salesmen. If a car has been previously owned by an individual or business and, for some unexplainable reason, is no longer owned by anybody, why not just ask for the keys and drive it off the lot?

Joseph P. Ritz has been a reporter on The Buffalo News, The Buffalo Courier-Express and several other daily newspapers. His new book, “I NEVER LOOKED FOR MY MOTHER and other Regrets of a Journalist” will be published later this year.