cereal test
n.— «Editors apply what is generically referred to in the newsroom as the “cereal test.” Photos that might upset a reader over breakfast are screened very carefully, and are used only if the subject matter or news value warrants it.» —“Demi Moore cover photo had people talking” by Mike Foley St. Petersurg Times (Florida) July 21, 1991. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A caller who grew up in Wisconsin says his spouse, who’s from Florida, teases him for such things as pronouncing bagel like “BEG-el” and dagger as “DEG-ger.” They’re just products of his isolect, the regional variants from his particular dialect of...