From our overstocked archives
Sam
Smith, 2010 - Of all the
losing battles in which I have taken part, one of the most annoying, because I
am reminded of it daily, is the struggle to preserve the English language or -
as my high school math teacher put it - to speaka United States.
Like so many things falling in our culture, the decline of language is not
primarily due to less educated Americans. In fact, rappers and hip hop artists
are among the few who still care about how words sound, the value of metaphor,
and saying something different for a change. The damage has been primarily done
by the business world, lawyers, media, advertising agencies and academics who
have an insidious affection for cliches, abstractions and obfuscation.
The war on language has a direct and negative effect on what they claim to be
talking about. For example, if someone speaks of infrastructure you
significantly reduce the number of people who understand what is being
described. Normal people call them bridges, roads and public works. Thus, if
you're trying to build a constituency for more spending on such matters,
calling it infrastructure doesn't help at all.
The same can be said of the widespread use of TANF, SNAP and similar acronyms.
Most important bills coming out of Congress these days have such an acronym and
the result is that most outside the system don't know what the hell is being
discussed. When the actual topics are welfare and food stamps, this is more
than a minor offense.
When someone talks about SNAP, it is likely that only a minority of people know
that the topic is food stamps. Keeps it all nicely in the club. Even its
awkward real name, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, at least
gives a better clue.
For journalists, the tendency is just to go with the flow (or JGWTF). Even the
Review does so much of the time although we routinely exorcise initials
following the name of an organization or piece of legislation. This is an ugly
habit picked up from that least literate of professions - lawyers - and should
be avoided at all costs.
As an editor I struggle as best I can, but I admit, for example, to letting
many corporate capitals remain in the middle of words simply because their
prevalence wears me out.
Still, for the benefit of any who still would like to treat our language with
at least as much respect as we do other endangered creatures, here are a few
suggestions:
- Capital letters belong to things that you can find on a globe, on an office
door, or in a telephone book. They do not belong on words just because you like
them or think them important.
- Capitals belong only at the beginning of words or in a string of initials.
And your third grade teacher was correct: words do have spaces between them.
- As a wise teacher once said, one is allowed only three exclamation points in
one's life. Use them with care.
- Do not put the initials of something in parentheses after you have written
its full name. This slows down, and perhaps insults, the reader. Consider you
and your readers to be brighter than the attorneys who came up with this awful
idea.
- Just because you're mentioning a corporation, you do not have to put LLC or
Inc after its name. Among other things, these trailers have the odd effect of
making a business' legal status seem more important that what it does.
- To describe itself, each ethnic group gets just one word of its own choosing
and no hyphens.
- Avoid any words created at the Harvard Business School or similar
institutions.
- Avoid any words used in by a bar association but not in the local bar.
- Being opaque is not intellectual. In fact, if you're going to bother to write
something at all, it's a kind of dumb way to go about it.
- Cliches don't inspire. They are the literary equivalent of airport security
announcements. When you hear them, you just wish they'd be over.
- Avoid vague words - like transparency or accountability - that are overused
and under-defined.
- Read everything you write aloud. If you stumble or bore yourself, write
something different.
No comments:
Post a Comment