Category: commentary

WTF, OED?

In March, OED Online announced it would add LOL, FYI, OMG and — let me get this right — ♥ (that’s a heart symbol, for which read “love” as a verb). Many word snobs have decried these additions. Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post growls:

“I’m all for staying hip and relevant… The Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, is supposed to have dignity. It is supposed to enshrine the words that actually mean things. Just because people are using these words doesn’t mean that they deserve to be in the dictionary.”

She goes on, slicing wittily: “You are the Oxford English Dictionary. Do you know what that means? That means that you are never, ever going to be invited to the hip afterparties, no matter what you do or how many asinine “initialisms” you say are words. You are not going to get to hang with Miley. You are a dictionary, and you are supposed to be a watchdog of language, not the one handing ID’s to every silly neologism so they can slip past the bouncers. Stop trying to be cool and do your job.”

Now, normally I would hold my nose in the air, extend my pinky from my Château Haut-Brion and nod vigorously, but you know, this is the OED‘s job. Grade school teachers decry the use of ain’t. Should we excise it from the official lexicon? Is the chocolate ration still five grams?

English has become the world’s language, peppering speech in almost every nation and readily borrowing in kind. English succeeds because it grows and flows to fill the needs of its speakers — maybe because we don’t have a watchdog group like l’Académie française. Such arbiters of right and wrong tend to stifle innovation and exploration. I know, Lexicide derides what some of you call innovation (I call it ignorance — there’s a difference). But if you want proof that FYI needs a dictionary entry, read my article about folks who think it stands for “just in case.”

So carry on, OED. We ♥ you.

You know the type.

Fulsome

FULSOME: “1. Offensively flattering or insincere; 2. Offensive to the taste or sensibilities; 3. Usage Problem Copious or abundant.” —The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition

New York Times | March 5, 2011: Until Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s violent suppression of unrest in recent weeks, the United Nations Human Rights Council was kind in its judgment of Libya. In January, it produced a draft report on the country that reads like an international roll call of fulsome praise, when not delicately suggesting improvements.

Washington Post | March 6, 2011: President Obama needs to understand that we do not need the combination of fulsome praise and punitive policies that have been the trademark of Arne Duncan’s Department of Education. It may impress members of the media and politicians, but at the end of the day, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot claim to be all about honoring our profession and schools, and then support policies that are in danger of destroying them.

Now, you tell me which definition applies in the two passages above. Of course, they would’t be here in Lexicide if they were unambiguous. Context makes it clear that both writers intended fulsome to mean “copious, abundant.” Context is king.

But wait:

The Economist | March 3, 2011: Meanwhile UN Watch, a lobby group that counters UN criticism of Israel, has gleefully recalled the fulsome praise for Libya that many council members offered when that country was undergoing a review of its performance a few months ago. Iran had “noted with appreciation” the Libyan government’s new human-rights agency and its “enabling environment for NGOs”; Syria was impressed by Libya’s “democratic regime based on promoting the people’s authority”; and North Korea lauded Libya’s achievements “in the protection of human rights, especially…economic and social rights.”

Sounds like more of the same, except The Economist’s website makes sure to include a Javascript link on the word fulsome. Clicking on the link brings up a window with synonyms such as oily, smarmy and unctuous. Clearly the editors wanted to be sure you were channeling the correct definition.

I really didn’t want to tackle fulsome, as so many wordsmiths have done (in vain, of course). But it keeps coming up. Sure, the word’s classical definition is “full, abundant” (although why we need both full and fulsome as synonyms is beyond me). Somewhere in the 16th or 17th centuries, the word acquired its uglier meaning, mostly seen in the phrase fulsome praise, for which read “obnoxious brownnosing” or even “backhanded compliment.” Only in the 20th century did the older, more boring definition begin to reassert itself.

So what’s a writer to do? William Safire offers this sage advice: “Never use a word sure to sow confusion.” And that’s what The Guardian realized was happening when its Wintour and Watt blog proffered the headline “Fulsome apology and fluffed Labour response saves Caroline Spelman.” When I refreshed the page, it had changed to “Full apology and fluffed Labour response saves Caroline Spelman.”

To The Guardian, I offer my fulsome appreciation!

— Otto E. Mezzo

References:

“Libya’s Late, Great Rights Record,” The New York Times | March 5, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/weekinreview/06libya.html

“Obama’s odd embrace of Jeb Bush,” The Washington Post |March 6, 2011 http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/obama-right-and-wrong.html

“An Unlikely Unifier,” The Economist | March 3, 2011  http://www.economist.com/node/18277151?story_id=18277151&fsrc=rss

“On Language,” The New York Times | March 16, 2009  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/magazine/22wwln-safire-t.html

Wintour and Watt blog, The Guardian | February 17, 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2011/feb/17/caroline-spelman

aka, e.g., i.e., etc…

I really shouldn’t have to do this. I mean, it’s not my job. Hundreds of usage sources have policed the distinction between e.g. and i.e. But now the waters get muddier. Behold, I give you aka, which a colleague today used in lieu of i.e. Call it “aka aka i.e.”

Aka (or AKA or a.k.a.) stands for also known as, but not for words or concepts. As every law enforcement officer and criminal attorney knows, aka introduces a person’s alias — e.g., Lester Gills aka Baby Face Nelson. And since I just used it, e.g. stands for exempli gratia, Latin for “for the sake of an example.” On the other hand, i.e. stands for id est, Latin for “that is.” So use aka for aliases, e.g. for examples and i.e. for clarification. For the sake of examples:

This estimate includes all technical services (e.g., web development, server hosting).
In this case, web development and server hosting are examples of technical services. This implies there are other technical services not listed here.

This estimate also includes certain non-technical services (i.e., project management and billing).
In this case, the words “project management and billing” clarify “non-technical services.” They are not meant as mere examples, so the implication is they are the only non-technical services referred to in the estimate.

Your account manager will be Will Sakituya aka Slappy the Sales Guy.
I’m not sure an explanation is needed here.

One other sighting deserves mention. A common convention in my company is to end a list of examples with etc. This is incorrect as any list of examples is by definition incomplete. I also observe following etc with an ellipsis (…) — e.g.; Marketing will undertake a number of initiatives (e.g., inventing weasel words, obfuscating language, etc…). I really don’t get this. It’s as if the writer is paranoid readers will assume the list of examples is all-inclusive and wants to emphasize “NO! There’s more!” That’s not an unreasonable assumption, given that many in the business world (e.g., graduates of marketing programs) exhibit questionable reading skills (i.e., take everything too literally) and insist on stretching out closing sentences, incorporating the headline words, rambling on and on, etc…

— Otto E. Mezzo aka Robert Pen Warring

Sorry if I deleted your comment (or: Something People Are Missing)

I had to step away from Lexicide for a bit, and when I returned I had more than 2,000 comments in my inbox, 100% spam from the looks of it. So I just tagged everything as spam and deleted it. If you submitted a comment in the past two months, please resend it — and accept my apologies for equating you with reconstituted lunch meat. I’m sure you meant to send me a Treet® instead of Spam®.

— Otto E. Mezzo

lexicide

Bad Writing: the movie

I came across an interesting movie trailer, about a failed poet who gets schooled in his, um, abilities, by the George Saunders, Margaret Atwood and David Sedaris.

In a related article in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about the “sheer terror of confronting yourself on the page,” and that “the process by which writing goes from bad to good” fascinates him.

We at Lexicide are slightly more fascinated with the reverse.

Two seconds to a better sentence

James Joyce, who spent years writing "stream of consciousness," unlike most corporate writers.
James Joyce, who spent years writing "stream of consciousness," unlike most corporate writers.

Here’s a little-known fact: our great authors spend a lot of time editing “stream-of-consciousness” literature. James Joyce began Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man prior to 1905. It was published in 1914. His masterwork Ulysses required eight years of refinement. Thomas Pynchon toiled on-and-off for 22 years to bring Mason & Dixon to the page.

I bring up this fact because writers today — especially corporate writers — seem to believe that writing is like tickling the back of your throat — a good way to get everything inside you to spill out. The results are often as pleasant. Here are some recent examples from inside my company:

All work we perform on behalf of our clients from webdesign, digital imaging, packaging and product testing is produced in a manner that is in strict compliance to brand standards.

Companies as large as Ace, Acme and industry leader ABC have partnered with Apogee and we have created numerous custom online applications such as live event experiences that have provided the client and their target audience with a special experience which promotes and extends their brand.

The technology we developed that is embedded in the system securely controls brand standards yet allows our clients’ employees, channel partners, affiliates, business units, etc. to have autonomy in ordering.

If these passages represent the authors’ streams of consciousness, is it any wonder meetings take so long?

Go ahead. Count the prepositions in the passages above. The longest one contains nine! Now count the predicate verbs. Here, let me do it:

All work we perform on behalf of our clients from webdesign, digital imaging, packaging and product testing is produced in a manner that is in strict compliance to brand standards.

Companies as large as Ace, Acme and industry leader ABC have partnered with Apogee and we have created numerous custom online applications such as live event experiences that have provided the client and their target audience with a special experience which promotes and extends their brand.

The technology we developed that is embedded in the system securely controls brand standards yet allows our clients’ employees, channel partners, affiliates, business units, etc. to have autonomy in ordering.

In 106 words there are five predicate verbs consisting of seven words. Wow.

There’s no need to harp again on the modern hatred of verbs. Many others have also written on the effect of emails, texting and the Fast Company culture on corporate communications, where speed is more important than the ability to express our thoughts effectively and powerfully. But none of this explains why our first efforts are so unreadable. My suspicion is that stream of consciousness has nothing to do with it. Rather, it’s our stream of unconscious slavery to weasel words and the “standards” of corporate writing that make our writing seem like so much wretched vomit.

These examples (and many others) prompt the question: why don’t people edit their writing? Just this morning, a colleague submitted this phrase to me:

As a way to illustrate through example our commitment to environmental efforts, we…

With less than a second’s worth of thought, I reworked it to:

As an example of our commitment to environmental efforts, we…

Another second of work produced:

One example of our commitment to the environment is…

Two seconds was all it took me, an average writer, to edit a clumsy clause into a clear if inelegant one. For every email, memo or proposal, you can surely spare that. After all, you’re not William Faulkner. And if you claim you are, please remember the last time you curled up with As I Lay Dying. Yeah, I thought so.

— Otto E. Mezzo

Repetitious and Redundant

CNN.com | July 21, 2010: “One man’s duplication is another man’s competitive analysis,” Clapper said of the newspaper’s assertion that there are excessive redundancies within the nation’s intelligence agencies.

CNN.com | July 19, 2010: We work constantly to reduce inefficiencies and redundancies, while preserving a degree of intentional overlap among agencies to strengthen analysis, challenge conventional thinking, and eliminate single points of failure.

CNN.com | June 25, 2010: The film spends so long running around in ever-increasing circles, it seems to forget where it wanted to go with these characters, and the third act forfeits on its promise of reversals, settling instead for repetition and redundancy.

CNN.com | June 20, 2010: At the same time, Gates has led an administration effort to refocus Pentagon spending by cutting what he considers to be redundant or unnecessary projects and programs.

And that’s in just a 30-day period on one major news website. Our appetite for verbiage truly is insatiable. Now, which is worse: repetitious redundancy or using redundancy as a synonym for useless?

— Otto E. Mezzo

References: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/20/senate.clapper.hearing/index.html?iref=allsearch
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/19/report-u-s-intelligence-community-inefficient-unmanageable-2/?iref=allsearch
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/24/knight.day.review/index.html?iref=allsearch
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/20/gates-spending-issue-could-cause-veto-of-dadt-bill/?iref=allsearch&fbid=JXQd5jZq3jE

Help! My train is burning and I can’t egress!

And The Award For Convoluted Legalese Goes To… (heard on NPR)

“A new award recognizes the worst in ‘official’ writing — and attempts to shame governments and companies into communicating better. The Center for Plain Language hopes the award will encourage clear and useful writing.” (read the story at NPR.org)

A whole institution devoted to clarity in communication! After the exhaustion of Glitterary Week, this is a ray of sunshine. Let’s all strive for “ClearMark” awards!

Reference: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126224371

—Ation Nation

As we sift through the stacks of emails, Facebook comments and tweets, we at Lexicide find ourselves filled with a warm glow. And it’s all because of you. Yes, we are the few, the literate few. But it’s nice to know you exist, gritting your teeth at the abuse of our language. That makes us a band of brothers and sisters, and it’s comforting to have allies in this unhappy war.

Lexicide began with a specific mission, which is to hold the line against meaning drift. Meaning drift isn’t always bad, but it’s dismaying these days because we’re losing so many handy words (such as leverage, delta and unique) to duplicate meanings — all due to ignorance and pomposity.

A day doesn’t go by when I don’t read an email, memo or webpage without a ridiculous lexicide. However, what really plagues me are “weasel” words — verbal padding. We must truly be an insecure society if we don’t feel we can say what we mean (nicely, of course). Having worked in marketing, PR and human resources, I’m well aware that American businesspeople walk on pins and needles every day, wary of offending colleagues, customers and bosses. But there must be a better solution than making sentences unintelligible.

Which brings me back to our Glitterary Week user submissions. The majority of them were not lexicides as much as unnecessary puffery, following the axiom that if a five-letter word tells the story, then eight is better and sixteen wins the Pulitzer. Here are some of the weasely constructions Lexicide fans submitted:

conceptualization instead of concept
incentivization instead of incentive
motivation instead of motive
medication instead of medicine

You know you’ve used some of these. You’ve probably also written some of these bad back-formations:

administrate instead of administer
orientate instead of orient
conference instead of confer
conceptualize instead of conceive
commentate instead of comment

There are some differences in nuance — motive seems to have gained a sinister tinge, no doubt propelled by the justice system and the phrase ulterior motive. And medication often refers to a protocol where medicine speaks in the singular voice. But if you can tell me why incentivization trumps incentive, I will give you a gold-plated Underwood.

So thank you again, friends, for taking arms against a sea of troubling corporate-speaking hacks. For they hold their corner offices cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us on Lexicide.com.

— Otto E. Mezzo