Sir, – I can’t pinpoint when the “tributes have been paid” cliché first started creeping in but its use has overwhelmed all other ways of announcing someone’s death in both print and other media.
Was it an editorial decision? Surely journalists cannot en masse all be choosing to use the same hackneyed euphemism to announce everyone’s demise, famous or not? – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’DONOVAN,
Dublin 2.