Tetris edit
v.— «Like my editor, you have probably already grasped that Tetris editing involves moving a chunk of story—a quote, a tip, an anecdote, even just a well-turned phrase—further and further down the length of the piece, trying it out in various spots in the narrative, until you finally find a place it fits. Just like in the game. If you get to the bottom of the story and haven’t really found a spot for it, it’s probably one of those darlings you need to slaughter.» —“In Which A Phrase Is Coined” by Magazine Man Somewhere on the masthead Jan. 19, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Jim in Columbia, South Carolina, has noticed sportscasters’ use of the phrase on the season with reference to a period of time. This construction shows up in the sports pages as early as the 1880s, first referring to a team’s revenue and...