better yet/worse yet // slaughter(s)
1.
"Sometimes, a reporter will chatter for a while about celebrity gossip, but then it's back to death and horror, with lots of pictures of crying relatives, or better yet, bloody victims in the hospital."
→Is the phrase of "better yet" used correctly and properly in this sentence? I think it should be "worse yet", not "better yet". Am I right?

2.
"The news anchorman constantly reports stories of slaughters in the streets, accidents, fires, suicides, and crimes, followed by interviews with weeping widows or stunned children about to be sent to an orphanage."
→According to the Oxford dictionary, the word "slaughter" is an uncountable noun. But here it takes a plural form. Is it wrong?

Thanks!

Question

better yet/worse yet // slaughter(s)
1.
"Sometimes, a reporter will chatter for a while about celebrity gossip, but then it's back to death and horror, with lots of pictures of crying relatives, or better yet, bloody victims in the hospital."
→Is the phrase of "better yet" used correctly and properly in this sentence? I think it should be "worse yet", not "better yet". Am I right?

2.
"The news anchorman constantly reports stories of slaughters in the streets, accidents, fires, suicides, and crimes, followed by interviews with weeping widows or stunned children about to be sent to an orphanage."
→According to the Oxford dictionary, the word "slaughter" is an uncountable noun. But here it takes a plural form. Is it wrong?

Thanks!

Answer

1. Yes, from any reasonable human point of view, it's worse yet, but I think the author is projecting onto the point of view of a sensation-hungry newspaper or TV station, for which it is all valued content.
2. No, it's not wrong, as these are individual events. But you could -- and I probably would myself -- use the singular there just as well. The plural has more of a connotation that the incidents are unrelated.