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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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tabloid press
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Tabloid newspapers are those small enough to be sold with the entire front page visible, by contrast with the more weighty 'broadsheet' papers which have a horizontal fold. The term is usually applied to the bottom end of the market (particularly the *Sun and the *Star) and so 'tabloid journalism' has come to mean trivial stories of a titillating, sensational and often xenophobic nature. But the tabloid format is also used by the *Mail, the *Express and the *Mirror.
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The word itself (a combination of tablet and alkaloid) was invented and registered in 1884 by Henry *Wellcome as a trade name for a patent medicine in the form of a small compressed tablet. It was used figuratively 12 years later of the first popular newspaper, the Daily *Mail, referring not to its shape (it was then a broadsheet) but to its short and pithy paragraphs ('all the news in the smallest space').
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