A good hour into a motorway journey. There's something suitably chilled on the CD player. It's early on a sun-warmed, yawn-sleepy Autumnal morning. The M1 is looking as good as the M1 can ever look: the grain store we pass is blushing in the dawning light, looking absurdly like an Art Deco palace somewhere in a riviera. We're zooming happily past lorries, and I'm smiling as I remember my (disturbingly precocious) 3-year-old niece's habit of pointing at them, telling me that they're called 'camions' in French, and then asking me what they are in Welsh. (I resist the urge to say 'llorry').
My partner is driving. Which is a good thing, as I suddenly wake from my drowsy state to become a spitting, snarling, incoherently gibbering cat-beast. He swerves, slightly, and wants to know what's wrong. I point a trembling, raging, finger at a Sainsbury's van that we're passing. 'THAT!!' I finally manage to spit out, somehow managing to force down the backwash of bile that should accompany the word.
The Sainsbury's van says 'Why not order online, we can deliver next day'.
Which should explain things somewhat.
However, earlier that day, we'd seen a 'Natures best' slogan on another van – one for a local veg box scheme – and that only warranted a slight, disdainful harrumph. So why my headaching, hate-filled, expostulating, expectorating rage at this? I suspect I was feeling rather betrayed by Sainsbury's, a brand that I feel quite warmly towards, even if it is one of the evil supermarket companies. I think I was also horrified that the slogan in question must have passed so many people on its journey from Illustrator file to van livery (which probably didn't happen for the veg box van). And not one of them regarded it quizzically for a second, re-read it, and asked, 'Should that not be...?' Perhaps the violence of my reaction was in fact the accumulated horror I felt on behalf of (or about) all those signers-off, all those quality checkers, all those brand and voice and design guardians, all those people who SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
My poor partner puts up with a lot. Many long journeys are punctuated by irritated harrumphs, guffaws and other crossness. It's difficult for him, because as a designer he doesn't quite get why I greet these grammatical insults with an agonised expression and a lip-quivering 'but it's just wrong'. There isn't a grammar of design (discuss – we have, many times, at length). He will make a judgement about whether something is well-designed or not. But he's unlikely to bust seams when something is poorly designed: just shake his head, witheringly.
It's not like I'm a grammatical luddite. I am happy – celebratory, in fact – about the idea of language as an evolving being. When my linguistics tutor likened people who sigh about the decline and fall of the language to people who can't bear to see a damp teaspoon in the sugar, I nodded brightly. In spoken language, in drama, in film, in art, in lyrics, in literature, in poetry – I love a bit of wordplay, me. Heck knows I muck about with grammar enough. I can be frivolous with a full stop when I fancy. I just can't deal when it's so obviously a mistake, so brazenly a balls-up, so glaringly a huge, careless whoopsie. When it's on the side of a van.
The van in question, by the way, was being towed by a breakdown truck. I am finding some comfort from believing that the engine expired in protest.
Sunday 7 October 2007
Tuesday 2 October 2007
Hype and hyphenation
So farewell then, brave hyphen. There have been numerous articles published recently lamenting the loss of the hyphen from our punctation armoury. This flourish of obituaries (not sure what the collective noun should be for obituaries: garland? Threnody? Chrysanthemum-cushion?) has been prompted by the latest revision of the OED, which removes hyphens from terms such as figleaf and leapfrog. See this Guardian article (one of many). (Seriously, how often do they revise the thing? Five-yearly, the article claims. I'm sure I see these stories every fortnight.)
Personally, I'm hoping that reports of the hyphen's demise have been exaggerated. Not least because my surname sports one - or at least it does when companies' processes can support it and the customer service rep understands what I mean when I spell my name. In common with other hyphenated friends, I've had apostrophes, slashes and question marks before now.
But my fears for the beleaguered hyphen's future go beyond my personal connection. I'm afraid that I have become a hyphen stickler. To be fair, hyphens have only recently joined my list of Things To Fume About When Spotted On Tube Posters. And they're not particularly high on that list. (Comma splices and inappropriate apostrophes in its jostle for the top spot.) I'm not so worried about fig-leaf vs figleaf; I think either is perfectly acceptable, and the same goes for most other composite nouns. But I have become someone who can write 'we need the up-to-date file from you so that we can check all corrections are up to date' with a calm smile. In other words, my urge to hyphenate (most) pre-positive compound adjectives will easily pummel my urge for consistency into the floor.
It's fair to say I have a love-hate relationship with hyphens. It's interesting that even the mighty Fowler's is ambivalent about the tricksy little blighters. In the latest edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, there's a lengthy quotation from an inconsistently hyphenated (not inconsistently-hyphenated) newsletter, followed by a bignomous exposition on the subject. At the end, there's a haughty mutter: 'hyphening should not become burdensome'. But then there's the Fowlerian equivalent of Mutley's sassenfrassen: 'But that newsletter… should have been tidied up, nevertheless'.
Fowler's recommends considering a rewrite (eg rewriting early-nineteenth-century poets to poets of the early nineteenth century), which seems eminently sensible, and backs up my own personal rule about difficult grammar and punctuation: if in doubt, cheat. If a sentence causes your brain to rotate screech-rusty cogs in its comprehension engine, it's likely to have the same effect on your readers.
I find hyphenation very difficult to explain to clients. On more than one occasion I've been instructed to remove all hyphens, regardless of their syntactical worth. In one case, this one-out-all-out rule has swept en dashes away too (which I could easily rant about for another two days. I'd blame Lynne Truss, but it's not really her fault). It's a growing phenomenon: lists of verboten terms and punctuation marks are burgeoning – mandates that go well beyond traditional style guides. I look forward to being banned from using semicolons soon – or commas, perhaps.
A quick PS: there's a nice discussion of the issues here. It includes an example of the problems hyphen-removal can cause from Monty Python, which I'd forgotten: the difference between a man eating blancmange and a man-eating blancmange. Perfect.
Personally, I'm hoping that reports of the hyphen's demise have been exaggerated. Not least because my surname sports one - or at least it does when companies' processes can support it and the customer service rep understands what I mean when I spell my name. In common with other hyphenated friends, I've had apostrophes, slashes and question marks before now.
But my fears for the beleaguered hyphen's future go beyond my personal connection. I'm afraid that I have become a hyphen stickler. To be fair, hyphens have only recently joined my list of Things To Fume About When Spotted On Tube Posters. And they're not particularly high on that list. (Comma splices and inappropriate apostrophes in its jostle for the top spot.) I'm not so worried about fig-leaf vs figleaf; I think either is perfectly acceptable, and the same goes for most other composite nouns. But I have become someone who can write 'we need the up-to-date file from you so that we can check all corrections are up to date' with a calm smile. In other words, my urge to hyphenate (most) pre-positive compound adjectives will easily pummel my urge for consistency into the floor.
It's fair to say I have a love-hate relationship with hyphens. It's interesting that even the mighty Fowler's is ambivalent about the tricksy little blighters. In the latest edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, there's a lengthy quotation from an inconsistently hyphenated (not inconsistently-hyphenated) newsletter, followed by a bignomous exposition on the subject. At the end, there's a haughty mutter: 'hyphening should not become burdensome'. But then there's the Fowlerian equivalent of Mutley's sassenfrassen: 'But that newsletter… should have been tidied up, nevertheless'.
Fowler's recommends considering a rewrite (eg rewriting early-nineteenth-century poets to poets of the early nineteenth century), which seems eminently sensible, and backs up my own personal rule about difficult grammar and punctuation: if in doubt, cheat. If a sentence causes your brain to rotate screech-rusty cogs in its comprehension engine, it's likely to have the same effect on your readers.
I find hyphenation very difficult to explain to clients. On more than one occasion I've been instructed to remove all hyphens, regardless of their syntactical worth. In one case, this one-out-all-out rule has swept en dashes away too (which I could easily rant about for another two days. I'd blame Lynne Truss, but it's not really her fault). It's a growing phenomenon: lists of verboten terms and punctuation marks are burgeoning – mandates that go well beyond traditional style guides. I look forward to being banned from using semicolons soon – or commas, perhaps.
A quick PS: there's a nice discussion of the issues here. It includes an example of the problems hyphen-removal can cause from Monty Python, which I'd forgotten: the difference between a man eating blancmange and a man-eating blancmange. Perfect.
Tuesday 18 September 2007
I'm sorning this morning
So having declared that you can make pretty much any noun work as a verb, I discovered a fairly extreme case in point in this morning's post.
If you declare that your car is off the road, you make a Statutory Off Road Notification, or SORN. The DVLA has very happily turned this - or at least the abbreviation - into a verb. So you can now walk into your friendly local post office and ask to sorn your car. The notice you receive from DVLA suggests that you 'Relicense [and thank you for spelling this correctly] or SORN online or by phone'. It's interesting that they keep the capitals.
Anyway, it has led me to suggest a small modification to my own rule. If you were to spell the abbreviation out in full, DVLA would be suggesting that you Statutory Off Road Notification online. And obviously that nominalisation there, already having been catapulted from the land of verb to the kingdom of noun, ain't going to be too happy to make a return trip. So perhaps nominalisations should be excused games, having once performed grammatical backflips.
If you declare that your car is off the road, you make a Statutory Off Road Notification, or SORN. The DVLA has very happily turned this - or at least the abbreviation - into a verb. So you can now walk into your friendly local post office and ask to sorn your car. The notice you receive from DVLA suggests that you 'Relicense [and thank you for spelling this correctly] or SORN online or by phone'. It's interesting that they keep the capitals.
Anyway, it has led me to suggest a small modification to my own rule. If you were to spell the abbreviation out in full, DVLA would be suggesting that you Statutory Off Road Notification online. And obviously that nominalisation there, already having been catapulted from the land of verb to the kingdom of noun, ain't going to be too happy to make a return trip. So perhaps nominalisations should be excused games, having once performed grammatical backflips.
Monday 3 September 2007
More reasons to love The Onion
As if we needed more reason to love them.
1 - Gratuitous mentions of monsters. Monsters are pretty much my favourite thing. I'm particularly fond of using the word as a verb, which is more grist to my theory that you can use pretty much any noun in English as a verb and people will know what you mean – eg 'can I window your diary'? It's only a matter of time before that catches on.
2 - Naming of hurricanes. I was talking to someone just the other day about hurricane names and how we wouldn't be too alarmed if Hurricane Tim was threatening our shores - and dang it if they haven't written a whole essay on the subject.
3 - Anyone who sells t-shirts with the slogan 'I Appreciate The Muppets On A Much Deeper Level Than You' deserves plentiful oodles of love and devotion. I'll even forgive them their capitalisation.
1 - Gratuitous mentions of monsters. Monsters are pretty much my favourite thing. I'm particularly fond of using the word as a verb, which is more grist to my theory that you can use pretty much any noun in English as a verb and people will know what you mean – eg 'can I window your diary'? It's only a matter of time before that catches on.
2 - Naming of hurricanes. I was talking to someone just the other day about hurricane names and how we wouldn't be too alarmed if Hurricane Tim was threatening our shores - and dang it if they haven't written a whole essay on the subject.
3 - Anyone who sells t-shirts with the slogan 'I Appreciate The Muppets On A Much Deeper Level Than You' deserves plentiful oodles of love and devotion. I'll even forgive them their capitalisation.
Monday 23 July 2007
Just not necessary
"Call us with your bank details and don't worry – we'll update your Direct Debit for you. All you need to do is relax."
Well, I'm afraid I've decided not to relax. I've decided to have a little rant.
Of course you'll update my Direct Debit. It's your (company's) job. And as far as I can see, it ain't hard. You're not doing me a massive favour. I'm not about to put my feet up with a cup of chamomile and fondly imagine that you're diligently writing a lengthy missive in finest copperplate and/or A negative, and delivering it to my home branch on windswept horseback, perhaps following an extended chase scene with impending wolves and yetis. I don't think the world's a better place because you're in it.
I'm really not impressed. It's 14 characters on an online form.
It's not because you're making an everest out of the everyday. It's not even because the last time I updated my Direct Debit details, you continued to debit the wrong account for six months. It's because you've added that text for the sake of it. You're bigging up something that's inherently unbigupable. Someone, somewhere (and I don't think it was anyone I know) suggested that your tone of voice was friendly and chatty, and so you're clutching at every conceivable opportunity to add some fluffiness.
It goes along with "we'd be delighted to help in any way we can". (No you won't be delighted. You'll be moderately cheery at best.) Or "we're happy to tell you we'll be sending your vouchers soon!" (Well, I'm glad you're happy, but I signed up to this card to get the vouchers, so they're not exactly coming as a great big birthday-cake-shaped surprise).
It's pointless. It's making me unnecessarily testy on a fine July afternoon. I had to tut twice, and I'm using more italic than I normally do in a year. The fact that you're claiming you can correctly fill in a form on-screen is not, not, not building my brand loyalty. The company that sent me a nastily type-set, terse, but factually correct letter within a day confirming my details, and then correctly switched my bank account without a murmur – you know what? They got my vote.
I'm currently visualising you as an unpleasantly over-familiar uncle. Probably one who's about to reverse into my car while gurning clammily out of the window.
I bet that wasn't in your brand guidelines.
Well, I'm afraid I've decided not to relax. I've decided to have a little rant.
Of course you'll update my Direct Debit. It's your (company's) job. And as far as I can see, it ain't hard. You're not doing me a massive favour. I'm not about to put my feet up with a cup of chamomile and fondly imagine that you're diligently writing a lengthy missive in finest copperplate and/or A negative, and delivering it to my home branch on windswept horseback, perhaps following an extended chase scene with impending wolves and yetis. I don't think the world's a better place because you're in it.
I'm really not impressed. It's 14 characters on an online form.
It's not because you're making an everest out of the everyday. It's not even because the last time I updated my Direct Debit details, you continued to debit the wrong account for six months. It's because you've added that text for the sake of it. You're bigging up something that's inherently unbigupable. Someone, somewhere (and I don't think it was anyone I know) suggested that your tone of voice was friendly and chatty, and so you're clutching at every conceivable opportunity to add some fluffiness.
It goes along with "we'd be delighted to help in any way we can". (No you won't be delighted. You'll be moderately cheery at best.) Or "we're happy to tell you we'll be sending your vouchers soon!" (Well, I'm glad you're happy, but I signed up to this card to get the vouchers, so they're not exactly coming as a great big birthday-cake-shaped surprise).
It's pointless. It's making me unnecessarily testy on a fine July afternoon. I had to tut twice, and I'm using more italic than I normally do in a year. The fact that you're claiming you can correctly fill in a form on-screen is not, not, not building my brand loyalty. The company that sent me a nastily type-set, terse, but factually correct letter within a day confirming my details, and then correctly switched my bank account without a murmur – you know what? They got my vote.
I'm currently visualising you as an unpleasantly over-familiar uncle. Probably one who's about to reverse into my car while gurning clammily out of the window.
I bet that wasn't in your brand guidelines.
Wednesday 28 March 2007
Having the time to be brief
"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." – Blaise Pascal.
It's probably the most relevant quote I've ever found for what I do. I'm constantly asked to shorten, shorten, shorten. It drives me crazy.
Often it's for my own good. It's all too easy to have pen haemorrhage. I blame the 'hump' you need to struggle over when you are writing difficult text. You struggle in knee-trembling first gear up the steep learning curve, crest the hill of your topic, and... WHEEEEEE...... you could write for ages with the metaphorical wind in your hair. You accelerate; bring in the quirky sentence fragments, the rising cadences, the thought-catching oxymoron. Don't even need to pedal.
And then a client - who is often glancing at twenty pages in a half-hour meeting - thinks it looks too wordy. Don't they get the pretty wordplay? Don't they see how the word 'scout' in paragraph 47 cleverly references the notion of 'being prepared' in paragraph 8? Don't they appreciate the gentle, careful build-build of verbs from rational to emotive nuances?
No.
Time to hit the delete key. A lot. It's a bloodbath of darlings as they submit to Word's dinky scissor icon.
It will be worth it in the end. The client was right; no-one would have read it. But for ever after, you won't be able to read that text without the ghosts of your creativity wraithing before your eyes.
Blogs are ace.
No clients.
It's probably the most relevant quote I've ever found for what I do. I'm constantly asked to shorten, shorten, shorten. It drives me crazy.
Often it's for my own good. It's all too easy to have pen haemorrhage. I blame the 'hump' you need to struggle over when you are writing difficult text. You struggle in knee-trembling first gear up the steep learning curve, crest the hill of your topic, and... WHEEEEEE...... you could write for ages with the metaphorical wind in your hair. You accelerate; bring in the quirky sentence fragments, the rising cadences, the thought-catching oxymoron. Don't even need to pedal.
And then a client - who is often glancing at twenty pages in a half-hour meeting - thinks it looks too wordy. Don't they get the pretty wordplay? Don't they see how the word 'scout' in paragraph 47 cleverly references the notion of 'being prepared' in paragraph 8? Don't they appreciate the gentle, careful build-build of verbs from rational to emotive nuances?
No.
Time to hit the delete key. A lot. It's a bloodbath of darlings as they submit to Word's dinky scissor icon.
It will be worth it in the end. The client was right; no-one would have read it. But for ever after, you won't be able to read that text without the ghosts of your creativity wraithing before your eyes.
Blogs are ace.
No clients.
Wednesday 28 February 2007
Addressing the company
As part of becoming self-employed, you fill in a lot of forms. Insurance, banking, website registration: a lot of white DL envelopes have sat on the mantlepiece over the last few weeks.
Most are addressed like this:
X company
1 Big Street
Anytown
AA1 1AA
or:
X company
PO Box 000
Anytown
AA1 1AA
They say something, these addresses. We're a big company: everyone knows where we are. We have sophisticated mechanisms to make sure that your envelope ends up in the right pigeon hole. We know what we're doing.
Until I got to my National Insurance contributions form, which has to go to my old friends HM Revenue & Customs. Here's the address (and here's how I read it):
Customer Accounts Section (We're very busy and important you know: we have an awful lot of sections)
Inland Revenue (Although we're not yet too sure what we're called...)
National Insurance Contributions Office (NICO: big, terribly important; we think we're a bit like the Home Office)
Self Employment Services (We're not too good at redirecting post internally though, and we certainly don't believe in PO Boxes)
Processing Centre (Because you will be processed)
Benton Park View (I may be taking a liberty here, but I'm guessing that the 'View' of 'Benton Park' may not be quite as pastoral as this sounds...)
Newcastle upon Tyne (So presumably where the call centre is)
NE98 1ZZ
I've worked with plenty of bignormous companies that boil complex directions like this down to a set of post codes or PO boxes.
At 8 lines, I can barely squeeze it on the envelope (don't be silly - of course they didn't send me one). I feel thoroughly processed. Mind you, I guess I should be grateful that it reached me at all, given it's addressed to the wrong name, and the rather abrupt person at the 'helpline' obviously entered my town as 'Hounslow' in Milton Keynes, rather than 'Hanslope'...
Most are addressed like this:
X company
1 Big Street
Anytown
AA1 1AA
or:
X company
PO Box 000
Anytown
AA1 1AA
They say something, these addresses. We're a big company: everyone knows where we are. We have sophisticated mechanisms to make sure that your envelope ends up in the right pigeon hole. We know what we're doing.
Until I got to my National Insurance contributions form, which has to go to my old friends HM Revenue & Customs. Here's the address (and here's how I read it):
Customer Accounts Section (We're very busy and important you know: we have an awful lot of sections)
Inland Revenue (Although we're not yet too sure what we're called...)
National Insurance Contributions Office (NICO: big, terribly important; we think we're a bit like the Home Office)
Self Employment Services (We're not too good at redirecting post internally though, and we certainly don't believe in PO Boxes)
Processing Centre (Because you will be processed)
Benton Park View (I may be taking a liberty here, but I'm guessing that the 'View' of 'Benton Park' may not be quite as pastoral as this sounds...)
Newcastle upon Tyne (So presumably where the call centre is)
NE98 1ZZ
I've worked with plenty of bignormous companies that boil complex directions like this down to a set of post codes or PO boxes.
At 8 lines, I can barely squeeze it on the envelope (don't be silly - of course they didn't send me one). I feel thoroughly processed. Mind you, I guess I should be grateful that it reached me at all, given it's addressed to the wrong name, and the rather abrupt person at the 'helpline' obviously entered my town as 'Hounslow' in Milton Keynes, rather than 'Hanslope'...
Wednesday 21 February 2007
Verb agreement in graffiti
Spotted on the road this morning: a lorry with the usual graffiti scratched into the dirt on the back. It was a Tesco lorry, and someone had added 'is sh*te!' underneath the logo. However, the 'is' had been scratched out by a later, more pedantic fingertip and replaced with 'are'.
A graffiti artist who had read Tesco's style guide?
A graffiti artist who had read Tesco's style guide?
Monday 19 February 2007
The iTunes corpus
I can't live without music. More importantly, I can't write without it. It feeds me. An iPod is a thousand muses in your pocket. When working on a vibrant, energetic tone of voice, I have a specific playlist full of bouncy, hollertastic toons that leave me wanting to headbut things, drive too fast and scribble like a weasel. It's difficult to write upbeat with downbeat accompaniment.
While working on my last blog (about how some formal terms may be widely understood), I remembered that Substitute (one of those terms) by The Who is on my kneebouncing inyerface playlist. And some dedicated iPod stroking reveals more difficult-but-familiar terms. A quick trawl throws up Substitute for love by Madonna too. Another five minutes brings up delusions, apologies (quick! change it to sorry!), severance, sensuality, frustrations, crystalline, consequence, distractions, evolution, inertia, constellation, indigenous and lucidity.
The word formation is phenomenal. Beetlebum, anyone? Bodyrock? Cloudbusting? Hyperballad? Karmacoma? Sinsuality? Wearchest? Hooverphonic? There are Greek affixes in there, for goodness' sake. There are references to scentific theory (My selfish gene), sideways swipes at Shakespeare (Midsummer night's dreamin') and even - whisper who dares - Latin (Deus ibi est by Isobel Campbell, even if she does have a strange way of pronouncing 'est').
Juicy juxtapositions form a rich seam. Moonlight and mescaline, Morphine and chocolate, Goldfish and paracetamol, Coffee and TV.... perhaps I should rank them by active ingredient. I haven't even touched on the close-snipped poetry of some titles - Deep honey, Crawling with idiot, Indigenous syringes. And these are just the titles.*
I've chosen popular-ish artists from a middlebrow collection - I'm sure it would be easy to create a far more esoteric list. But I don't think I've ever seen an article exclaiming at the complexity of song titles or the literacy issues inherent in visiting HMV. Admittedly iTunes and Amazon - bless their hearts - help us out with a typo-spotting 'Did you really mean 'Argtyk Mynkkies'?' feature, which suggests that enough mis-spellings occur to warrant attention. And I know that you don't have to understand where Bohemia is or what a Rhapsody might be to appreciate the song. But it does show that our 'language environment' is liberally peppered with these complex terms and enigmatic metaphors. iTunes is only one example; every day we may use a 'percolator', make a 'connection', pay a 'congestion' charge or pick up a 'prescription' without breaking a Latin-phobic sweat.
I'm hardly suggesting trying out terms in iTunes before replacing them with simpler versions. Only that our (my) gut instinct to plain English any polysyllabically miscreant word can be tempered sometimes. Maybe. Carefully. A bit. But don't quote me.
*An honourable mention, by the way, when discussing song (and band) titles, has to go to 'If I had £1 for every stale song title I'd be 30 short of getting out of this mess' by Get cape. Wear cape. Fly.
While working on my last blog (about how some formal terms may be widely understood), I remembered that Substitute (one of those terms) by The Who is on my kneebouncing inyerface playlist. And some dedicated iPod stroking reveals more difficult-but-familiar terms. A quick trawl throws up Substitute for love by Madonna too. Another five minutes brings up delusions, apologies (quick! change it to sorry!), severance, sensuality, frustrations, crystalline, consequence, distractions, evolution, inertia, constellation, indigenous and lucidity.
The word formation is phenomenal. Beetlebum, anyone? Bodyrock? Cloudbusting? Hyperballad? Karmacoma? Sinsuality? Wearchest? Hooverphonic? There are Greek affixes in there, for goodness' sake. There are references to scentific theory (My selfish gene), sideways swipes at Shakespeare (Midsummer night's dreamin') and even - whisper who dares - Latin (Deus ibi est by Isobel Campbell, even if she does have a strange way of pronouncing 'est').
Juicy juxtapositions form a rich seam. Moonlight and mescaline, Morphine and chocolate, Goldfish and paracetamol, Coffee and TV.... perhaps I should rank them by active ingredient. I haven't even touched on the close-snipped poetry of some titles - Deep honey, Crawling with idiot, Indigenous syringes. And these are just the titles.*
I've chosen popular-ish artists from a middlebrow collection - I'm sure it would be easy to create a far more esoteric list. But I don't think I've ever seen an article exclaiming at the complexity of song titles or the literacy issues inherent in visiting HMV. Admittedly iTunes and Amazon - bless their hearts - help us out with a typo-spotting 'Did you really mean 'Argtyk Mynkkies'?' feature, which suggests that enough mis-spellings occur to warrant attention. And I know that you don't have to understand where Bohemia is or what a Rhapsody might be to appreciate the song. But it does show that our 'language environment' is liberally peppered with these complex terms and enigmatic metaphors. iTunes is only one example; every day we may use a 'percolator', make a 'connection', pay a 'congestion' charge or pick up a 'prescription' without breaking a Latin-phobic sweat.
I'm hardly suggesting trying out terms in iTunes before replacing them with simpler versions. Only that our (my) gut instinct to plain English any polysyllabically miscreant word can be tempered sometimes. Maybe. Carefully. A bit. But don't quote me.
*An honourable mention, by the way, when discussing song (and band) titles, has to go to 'If I had £1 for every stale song title I'd be 30 short of getting out of this mess' by Get cape. Wear cape. Fly.
The seasoning of latinate words
A quick thought, engendered as I finished making dinner a few nights ago. I found a George Orwell quote a while ago, which likened formal, Latinate words to a 'soft snow'... "A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. ". Rob Waller mentioned it on his blog at http://www.robwaller.org/blog/2006/12/soft-snow-of-latin-words_21.html
My idle thought as I polished up my pasta: are formalisms always there to blur? Aren't they sometimes a soft snow of Parmesan? A little seasoning, overwhelming in great quantity, and capable of ruining the entire experience, but also critical? As a delicate embellishment, they add a little savour to a plain dish. And we all know that readers will take more effort with text they find interesting. Do our mouthfilling syllables sometimes make texty text more tasty, a heartier dish?
I've spent many oodles of time removing Latinate words from texts, as all good plain Englishers should. But now that I'm a freelancer rather than a paid stooge, perhaps I can question some of the abiding commandments of plain English. So I can come clean: I've spent many hours trying to decode fiddly formalisms while thinking simmeringly that we're causing more problems by removing a familiar word or concept. Take 'substitution'. Nasty pointless Latinism, my instincts say, and a nominalisation to boot. I change it to 'change' with the barest thought. But is it really so hard? It turns up in every soccer game on every Saturday. It's a familiar concept, if not a familiar wordshape. It's not hard.
I've fought with clients to strip out 'deduction' while knowing that the people I'm writing to will (unfortunately) have seen plenty of them. I've battled with 'making an application' when the document we're working on is an application. And yes, it would be simpler as 'apply'. But sometimes, when you've danced around 'the form that came with this pack', you know - you absolutely know - that anyone who has a problem with understanding 'the enclosed form' is probably going to have more problems with the whole form-filling task than just finding the form.
Anathema and heresy. And yes I will have these battles for simplicity with clients again, and fight just as strongly to remove the -ations and -utions. Because it's hard enough convincing people that removing formalisms is worthwhile without diluting the message with exceptions. But sometimes, just sometimes, perhaps a sprinkling of Parmesan doesn't do that much harm.
My idle thought as I polished up my pasta: are formalisms always there to blur? Aren't they sometimes a soft snow of Parmesan? A little seasoning, overwhelming in great quantity, and capable of ruining the entire experience, but also critical? As a delicate embellishment, they add a little savour to a plain dish. And we all know that readers will take more effort with text they find interesting. Do our mouthfilling syllables sometimes make texty text more tasty, a heartier dish?
I've spent many oodles of time removing Latinate words from texts, as all good plain Englishers should. But now that I'm a freelancer rather than a paid stooge, perhaps I can question some of the abiding commandments of plain English. So I can come clean: I've spent many hours trying to decode fiddly formalisms while thinking simmeringly that we're causing more problems by removing a familiar word or concept. Take 'substitution'. Nasty pointless Latinism, my instincts say, and a nominalisation to boot. I change it to 'change' with the barest thought. But is it really so hard? It turns up in every soccer game on every Saturday. It's a familiar concept, if not a familiar wordshape. It's not hard.
I've fought with clients to strip out 'deduction' while knowing that the people I'm writing to will (unfortunately) have seen plenty of them. I've battled with 'making an application' when the document we're working on is an application. And yes, it would be simpler as 'apply'. But sometimes, when you've danced around 'the form that came with this pack', you know - you absolutely know - that anyone who has a problem with understanding 'the enclosed form' is probably going to have more problems with the whole form-filling task than just finding the form.
Anathema and heresy. And yes I will have these battles for simplicity with clients again, and fight just as strongly to remove the -ations and -utions. Because it's hard enough convincing people that removing formalisms is worthwhile without diluting the message with exceptions. But sometimes, just sometimes, perhaps a sprinkling of Parmesan doesn't do that much harm.
Friday 9 February 2007
Muffling in monochrome
Our brains like patterns, we're told. I spend a great deal of time, when training people in clear design, showing people how their brains like patterns. I show them optical illusions that encourage their eyes to fill in absent details - mess with their heads, essentially, to show them how we all spot patterns when there are none there.
The pattern of land when we return home from a journey brings a warm pink gladness to our cheeks. We glance eagerly from window to window of our car or train. Landfall; we are home.
So why, when the world is suddenly cuddled and cosied and woollied in snow, do we giggle with excitement at the lack of pattern, at the lack of familiarity? Is that the kerb? Where did the path go? There's a tree, a plantpot, a car under there somewhere...
Perhaps it's because Winter in monochrome, in straggled snaggly twigs and snow-flumped plumpness, is more pleasing than its muted full-colour variety. Bare trees and dead grass begin to make sense. It is appropriate, somehow. It goes.
And perhaps it's because this muffled blur is not so unfamiliar after all. The kerb is there; a couple of scuffs, a slight hollow, and we have it, with a thrill of sudden sense. The whole world has become a magic-eye puzzle for our magic brains to fathom. We fill in the absent details.
Tomorrow, in a muddled puddle of meltwater, its contours will emerge, become bland again. And the world will be dis-illusioned, will be self-explanatory once more.
The pattern of land when we return home from a journey brings a warm pink gladness to our cheeks. We glance eagerly from window to window of our car or train. Landfall; we are home.
So why, when the world is suddenly cuddled and cosied and woollied in snow, do we giggle with excitement at the lack of pattern, at the lack of familiarity? Is that the kerb? Where did the path go? There's a tree, a plantpot, a car under there somewhere...
Perhaps it's because Winter in monochrome, in straggled snaggly twigs and snow-flumped plumpness, is more pleasing than its muted full-colour variety. Bare trees and dead grass begin to make sense. It is appropriate, somehow. It goes.
And perhaps it's because this muffled blur is not so unfamiliar after all. The kerb is there; a couple of scuffs, a slight hollow, and we have it, with a thrill of sudden sense. The whole world has become a magic-eye puzzle for our magic brains to fathom. We fill in the absent details.
Tomorrow, in a muddled puddle of meltwater, its contours will emerge, become bland again. And the world will be dis-illusioned, will be self-explanatory once more.
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