irksome editorial rules

[calimac]

Another editor used to maintain a prohibition against the phrase died suddenly. “All deaths are sudden,” he’d declare solemnly. “One minute you’re alive and the next you’re not.” (Source)

You've never seen anyone dying in the hospital, have you?

Comments

[wild_patience]

I have always interpreted that as "died unexpectedly," as in a car crash or fatal heart attack. If someone's already in the hospital and gravely ill, it's not so sudden.

[voidampersand]

If one only has the power to enforce rules that make common sense and everyone agrees with, then they don't have real power. They are merely a weathervane pointing the direction the group was going anyway. Real power is when one can have a completely bonkers nonsensical rule and force others to comply with it.

I don't agree with the above statement. But a lot of the world operates that way.