A plague of literal-mindedness

The tendency to take words at face value is more widespread than ever before.

In his autobiography, the novelist Compton Mackenzie mentions one of his more curious pastimes. He enjoyed scouring newspapers for various examples of where the term “literally” had been misused. In 1928, he wrote a letter to the Evening Standard in which he noted some of his favourites, including the journalist who had claimed that a criminal “as a mat…