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There's a rule in radio scripting that repetition is wrong.

Sometimes in written speech repetition can be emphatic. But there seems to be something in the echoing of spoken speech, especially on radio, that makes use of the same word or phrase within a couple of minutes sound awkward.

So we don't say "President George W. Bush" more than once in the space of a paragraph or more. We change it to "Mr. Bush" or "the President" and so on.

Which is why the search for synonyms is part of the art. I once downloaded a programme to my Palm organiser to help me find synonyms quickly - I think it was after I struggled for days to report stories about the Iranian earthquake that didn't use the word "earthquake". Print journalism can use "quake" or even "trembler" but that is too much like slang for us.

I didn't use the software much - probably because the only usable alternative it came up with was "tremor" and that sounds a bit weak when tens of thousands lose their lives - and I'm not sure where it is now. So I guess I'm just about winning the battle on my own.

I was reminded of this challenge when I came across this review of .

It's funny, but a bit cruel because I imagine what the users of PAWs were mostly trying to do was avoid saying the same thing twice.

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