Avoiding redundancy (6)

Originally created

“Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.” (Source)

Something can be created only once; therefore, “originally created” is redundant.

Potential red flag

“Rising Inventories = Potential Red Flag” (Source)

A red flag is an “indicator of potential problems”; therefore, “Potential Red Flag” is redundant.

A snow event

“Parking During a Snow Event” (Source)

Snow (a form of precipitation) is an event; therefore, “Snow Event” is redundant.

Snow plowing events

“The City of Hudson has a specific ordinance that deals with snow plowing events that require all residents to remove their vehicles from all City streets, roadways and city-maintained alleys.” (Source)

Snow plowing is an event; therefore; therefore “snow plowing events” is redundant.

The Takeaway: Whether you are speaking or writing, be careful to avoid redundancy. If you use a lot of redundancies, your intelligent listeners or readers may conclude that you are ill-educated, stupid or careless.

See disclaimer.

Unintentional hedging (8)

Here are two more examples of people unintentionally hedging their statements.

A witness in the George Zimmerman trial:

“One guy on top in the black hoodie was pretty much just throwing down blows on the guy kind of MMA [mixed martial arts]-style.” (Boldface added.) (Source)

And a restaurant employee being interviewed by the press:

“They came into the restaurant itself and a lot of customers were kind of scared,” one restaurant employee told Fox 8 news in Cleveland. “They were threatening employees, they were threatening me and some customers.” (Boldface added.) (Source)

The Takeaway: If you intend to hedge, hedge: “I’ll be there about four o’clock.” Otherwise, don’t hedge. Say what you mean, and you will earn more respect.

See disclaimer.

Unintentional hedging (7)

Here’s a quick and easy way to write and speak more clearly: Don’t hedge unintentionally. For example, don’t unintentionally use kind of. Unintentional hedging diminishes, undermines or negates your message. Here are three quick examples:

Regarding Linda Ronstadt’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ms. Ronstadt’s producer said:

“When certain people got in, before Linda, I was kind of outraged.” (Source)

Unintentional hedging is not surprising on Tumblr:

“IT'S KIND OF UNBEARABLE” (Source)

But even the Washington Post, whose writers and editors presumably are grown up and literate, sometimes indulges in this nonsense:

“Everything today is kind of horrible, so here are some penguins dressed up as Santa Claus” (Source)

If you think something is horrible, say “It’s horrible,” not “It’s kind of horrible.” If you don’t think something is horrible, don’t use the word horrible at all; use a word that says what you really mean to say. Saying what you really mean to say will create the impression that you are literate, not semi-literate.

Many people use more than one kind of or like per minute. If you hedge that frequently, even obtuse listeners are going to wake up and notice it. When they do, they will receive this unintended message from you: “I’m not really saying anything. I’m just thinking out loud, and I’m not even sure of the thoughts. So, don’t listen to me.” When I hear a public speaker do that, I stand up and walk out. Life is too short to be wasted on reading or listening to semi-literate slobs.

The Takeaway: Say what you mean. If you intend to hedge, hedge: “I’ll be there about four o’clock.” Otherwise, don’t hedge. Say what you mean, and you will earn more respect.

Gobbledygook (7)

Pat Buchanan (pictured) is astute enough to spot gobbledygook, and combative enough to call people on it.

For example, in an article about high school admissions policy, Mr. Buchanan quotes Jeremy Shughart, admissions director at the merit-based Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (Fairfax County, Virginia):

“Says Shughart, ‘The committee is looking at a variety of admissions components and making recommendations for possible adjustments to future admissions cycles. … (We) will continue to work on increasing diversity at TJHSST and will continue to pursue outreach efforts to ensure talented underrepresented populations of students with a passion for math and science consider, apply to, and attend… Fairfax County Public Schools believes in the value of diversity.’ ”

Then Mr. Buchanan calls him on his gobbledygook:

“That is bureaucratic gobbledygook for saying they are going to start looking closer at the race and ethnicity of student applicants and begin using this criteria to bring in some — and to reject others.

“Race discrimination, against Asians, is coming to Fairfax County.”

The Takeaway: If you want to win debates and persuade people, strictly avoid gobbledygook – unless all your readers and listeners are stupid. Astute readers and listeners may call you on your gobbledygook. Then you are worse off than before: (1) you’ve made a weak point, and (2) your resort to gobbledygook demonstrates that you knew it was weak – otherwise, you would have stated it clearly and boldly.

You probably noticed that “this criteria” is ungrammatical.

See disclaimer.

The power of specificity (3) – an unspecified disaster

In previous posts (here and here) on the power of specificity, I’ve shown you samples of specificity and samples of vagueness.

Today I point you to another example of vagueness. It is a 565-word comment on an article. The article is titled “Why do expats go home? Why do they seek new overseas ‘havens’? Interviews with departing and relocating expats reveal the reasons.”

The author of the comment explains that he moved to Argentina ten years ago, that he had difficulty fitting in, and that he overcame his difficulty by making friends with some “bi-lingual and bi-cultural Argentines” who helped him understand the local culture and politics.

All well and good. The reader now expects the author to recommend that everyone expatriating to Argentina likewise find and make such friends, so as to enjoy a more serene and comfortable life there. And perhaps the author will provide a few examples of situations in which the friends and the understanding were helpful, and how.

But instead of doing those reasonable things, the author suddenly darkens the picture. He claims:

• That it is “absolutely important” that the reader understand the local culture and government;

• That “not understanding the culture, the laws, or the politics, can be an absolute disaster.”

After using such an extreme adverb (absolutely) and adjective (absolute), the author owes the reader some specificity. However, he gives none.

The reader wonders: “Is the government really that bad, or is this fellow just a blowhard? Will the cops kidnap and kill me, or just shake me down for a bribe now and then?”

Meanwhile, the author frivolously concludes his essay with this advice: “Keep your eyes and ears open.” This ancient cliche offers no specificity.

The Takeaway: If your writing is vague, you won’t make it specific just by adding absolutely, one of the most overused and abused adverbs in the English language, or other histrionic words. It will only make the reader more aware of how vague your writing is. Instead, just say what you mean, in specific, non-histrionic language. And give examples.

Random thoughts (9)

Diction: annoying affectations

I’m sure you have your pet-peeve examples of annoying affected diction. Here are three of mine:

Using genius as an adjective: a genius idea.

Following because with only a noun and a period (or exclamation point): I’m late because YouTube.

Combining a carelessly used issues with a carelessly used around: “Someone phoned me earlier to ask me to do some media training ‘around issues around teenagers.’ ”

Be careful with spell-checking software!

A journalist meant to write “back in the black” (i.e., profitable again), but in the published article the phrase was “back in the African American.” (Source)

Am I the only reader in the world…

…who thinks Don Quixote is boring? Three times I’ve tried and failed to read the whole novel. I’m giving up on it; I’m 71 and I have many more classics to read than time to read them. All due respect to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. I’m sure the failure is mine.

Slippage: commercial photography

About 40 years ago, I learned that food photographers are paid more than glamour photographers, in part because food photographers have to work very fast. During photo shoots, cool salads can go limp. Hot soup can cool and congeal. Hot coffee and grilled steaks can stop giving off steam. For decades, I admired food photographers for shooting hot foods and drinks while they were still hot and cool ones while they were still cool.

However, somewhere during the 1970s or 1980s, photography began to degrade, along with almost every other profession and activity in America. (Stephen King calls the phenomenon “slippage.”) Nowadays, food photos rarely look right. Dunkin’ Donuts shows you mugs of obviously cold coffee. McDonald’s shamelessly displays a poster showing a cold, congealing burger patty above the caption “Fresh off our grill.” I am afraid to even think about the professions of civil engineering and surgery.

My favorite proverb

I have always loved the Chinese proverb “He who treads softly goes far.” In my thirties I belatedly recognized that it was an apt summary of my own temperament. I usually quote the proverb as “He who treads softly travels far,” which seems to have better meter.

Blocking the distractions as you write

I recently read that Marcel Proust wrote in a cork-lined bedroom while wearing ear plugs. Now there was a writer who valued his concentration! Also, I understand he wrote pretty fast.

The Takeaway: Be here now.

See disclaimer.

"Comprised of" – an editorial

Whenever he sees the phrase “comprised of,” Bryan Henderson corrects it. He has corrected it 47,000 times. Read the story here.

I call Mr. Henderson a hero.

I also point out that if US high schools still taught Latin, people would not confuse comprise and compose.

The Takeaway:  If you are a well-educated person, give something back to society: good English. Always use correct diction and grammar, and refuse to imitate the diction and grammar of semiliterates.

See disclaimer.

Inspiration from W. C. Heinz, sportswriter

W. C. Heinz (pictured), who died in 2008 at the age of 93, was an impressive and influential sportswriter. He is especially remembered for the column “Death of a Racehorse,” which he wrote on deadline, in “about an hour, one draft, on a manual typewriter, in the rain,” at the racetrack.

The Takeaway: If you are a budding writer, you will be inspired by “Death of a Racehorse.” It has been called the “Gettysburg Address of sportswriting.” Read the full text, plus commentary, here.

Thanks to Paul G. Henning for pointing me to this gem.

 See disclaimer.

The uninhabited clause (23)

Please note: This is a long post (859 words).

Our average is 355 words.

The Uninhabited Clause* is a clause that has a non-human subject: a thing or an idea as opposed to a person or group of persons. There is nothing inherently wrong with using uninhabited clauses, but when we use a lot of them, we imply that nothing much is happening. In doing so, we bore and exhaust our readers. They prefer reading about people doing things.

Example

For example, below (in green) are the first three paragraphs of a New York Times article about a rape. The reporters use a lot of uninhabited clauses; in addition, they deliberately weaken several of their inhabited clauses. I have interspersed my specific comments (in blue):

The crime was horrific

Uninhabited.

and the verdict stunningly swift.

Uninhabited.

Two former Vanderbilt University football players are facing the possibility of decades in prison

Inhabited. However, the subjects aren’t doing much; just sitting around waiting to go to prison, where they won’t be doing much either.

after it took a jury less than four hours to convict them

Uninhabited – deviously so. The reporters distort the sentence by using the infinitive mood (“to convict”) so as to evade using the more natural declarative mood (“a jury convicted them in less than four hours”). So even the jury didn’t do much; it didn’t convict – it just “took.” This weasely trick continues the “nobody’s doing much” tone.

for their roles in a 2013 sexual assault of an unconscious woman.

Another distortion; this one is worthy of a shyster lawyer: The reporters use “for their roles in… a sexual assault” to avoid saying “for sexually assaulting.” By doing this, the reporters insinuate that the football players didn’t do much during the assault – they just had “roles.”

Two more former football players await trial.

Inhabited. Again, although there are human beings in this sentence, they are not doing much of anything; they’re just sitting around.

At a time of widespread alarm and almost daily news reports about sexual assaults on college campuses, it is hard to imagine a case more likely than this one, captured on video by the assailants, to mobilize a campus.

Uninhabited.

As if to underscore how pervasive the concerns have become nationally, representatives from 76 Tennessee colleges and universities were holding a conference on the subject here, not far from the courthouse

Inhabited: The subject “representatives” refers to human beings, but the verb is weak: “were holding.” In other words, nobody’s doing much. Just sitting around and expelling hot air.

where Tuesday’s verdict played out.

Uninhabited.

But transformative moments are hard to come by

Uninhabited.

when a community’s population turns over every four years

Technically inhabited, because a community is made up of human beings. But it’s a weak subject of a weak verb. The reporters continue to insinuate that nobody’s doing much.

and its members have a deep investment in its reputation.

Inhabited, because members are human beings. However, notice what verb the reporters use here: to have. This verb and to be are the two weakest verbs in English.

So interviews Tuesday and Wednesday at Vanderbilt brought out horror

Uninhabited – and fiendishly clever. The word “horror” is the first strong word in the article. The reporters, writing about rape – a felony and a heinous crime – have finally, after 166 words, used a strong word. But watch how they immediately weaken it. They don’t quote anyone who says “I recoiled in horror” or “I was horrified.” They just say that “interviews… brought out horror.” The horror just floated around the campus like a fog.

at what had happened

Uninhabited.

and a distinct distance from it. Until the trial began more than two weeks ago, the episode seemed to elicit little sense of urgency

Uninhabited.

— in fact, the student newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler, found that

Uninhabited.

many students were not even aware of it.

Inhabited. However, the clause contains the weakest verb in English: to be. 

Summary

The reporters seem to be trying to say (and at the same time, trying to avoid saying) that something horrible happened on campus but the students reacted blandly if at all. But the reporters themselves are writing blandly. They can hardly bear to even type a strong word. In fact, they go out of their way – sometimes deviously so – to evade using any strong words.**

This is intellectually dishonest writing. The reporters sound like they are trying to get away with saying as little as they can, while still filling column inches to get paid. They and the editor who approved this piece should hang their heads in shame.

The Takeaway: Unless you are writing about abstract topics such as metaphysics or mathematics, you should strive to include persons in most of your clauses. Otherwise, you risk sounding academic and boring. You may even sound dishonest and therefore untrustworthy. Be aware that many reporters deliberately diminish what they write about. Imitate such writers only if you deliberately intend to diminish what you write about.
__________________

*My coinage, so far as I know.

**In contrast, look at the words and phrases I use: deviously, dishonest, distort, evade, felony, fiendishly, get away with, hang, heinous, insinuate, rape, shame, shyster, strive, untrustworthy, weasely.

See disclaimer.

More pet peeves from Montreal Gazette readers

As promised, the Montreal Gazette published more pet peeves from its readers. Like the last batch of pet peeves, this batch is worth reading.

I call special attention to reader Paul Nathanson, who pointed out that, by our promiscuous abuse of community, we are ruining the word.

The Takeaway: Enjoy the article.

See disclaimer.

Montreal Gazette publishes readers’ pet peeves

Denis Coderre, ill-served mayor of Montreal

If you enjoy reading peoples’ pet peeves about language, read this article in which the Montreal Gazette humbly and cheerfully publishes a couple of pet peeves from its readers.

The Takeaway: Enjoy the article.

See disclaimer.

How to make your writing more readable (1)

Rudolf Flesch

Many people have asked me how they can make their writing more readable; more like conversation; easier to follow. A good question and a good goal.

I’ll cover the most important tips in a moment. But first, read this extremely readable sample:

“Yes. Many of us are angry. Not all the time, not so we can’t manage daily life, not to the extent that we cannot love, not so much that we are on the verge of psychotic actions. But yes, there is cause for anger among today’s men.

“We are angry that our children are so easily taken from us, and so easily trained to believe that we abandoned them. We are angry that our sexuality and our anatomy are the butt of constant abusive jokes. We are angry that so few women take us seriously, because, well, they know they don’t have to. We are angry over being blamed for all the evil in the world, evil that harms us as much as anyone else. We are angry at being told for a lifetime that it is our fault that women cannot have everything they demand, and angry that it is never noticed how hard we try to help them with that.”

Those are the first 165 words of a 794-word essay. The rest of it is here.

On the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) scale, the sample scores a towering 75.2, which is easier to read than Reader’s Digest, which is specifically edited for readability. In short, writing aimed at grown-ups doesn’t get any more readable than this sample.

OK. How did the author achieve it?

Short words, on average: Flesch says the average word length in the sample is 3.9 characters. That’s very short.

A good mix of long and short words: There are lots of one- and two-syllable words, a few three-syllable  words (e.g., “psychotic”), a couple of four-syllable words (e.g., “anatomy”), and one five-syllable word (“sexuality”). Note that the four- and five-syllable words are familiar words.

Short sentences, on average: Flesch say the average sentence length in the sample is 18.0 words. That’s short to medium for English.

Good composition: In the third sentence, the author makes good use of the rhetorical device anaphora, using the word not four times. This device makes the longish (31-word) sentence easy to follow. He uses anaphora again in the second paragraph to guide the reader through:  “We are angry… We are angry… We are angry… We are angry… We are angry… ”

Good tone: The opening is stark, almost belligerent: “Yes. Many of us are angry.” That certainly gets the reader’s attention, but it may make him fear the author will go into a rage. So the author wisely softens the tone immediately with the four not’s and with the circumlocution “But yes, there is cause for anger among today’s men,” which (probably intentionally) does not have man or men as the subject of a verb. This deft early maneuvering assures the reader that the author is going to speak steadily and control himself.

And he does. Read the rest of the essay.

There is more to say about this little masterpiece, but I have covered the key points and I’m running long here.

The Takeaway: It is possible to make your writing more readable. Much more. If you keep reading good writers and keep Flesch-testing the readability of your own writing, you will steadily improve. You will probably surprise yourself at how far you go. If you are serious about readability, I suggest you start your course of improvement by reading all my posts about readability (scroll down to the LABELS and click on “READABILITY”). Then start getting into the habit of using Flesch every day. You can do it!

See disclaimer.

Random thoughts (8)

The downside of freedom of expression

The columnist Theodore Dalrymple,* a retired psychiatrist, on freedom of expression: “When my patients used to complain to me of their f…..g headache, I used to ask them to explain to me the difference between a headache and a f…..g headache. They couldn’t; and in fact, complete freedom of expression has led to an impoverishment of expression, because one doesn’t need to think of alternatives to the first expletive that comes into one’s mind – or is it one’s f…..g mind?” (Source)

Nouns as adjectives

Using nouns as adjectives is useful, but sometimes it’s confusing. For example, “freedom fighters” (presumably) fight for freedom. But “crime fighters” (presumably) fight against crime.

Terms that writers should not use flippantly, but do

“Good intentions.” When a writer assumes a person had good intentions, the writer never specifies (1) what he assumes the intentions were; or (2) why he assumed those intentions; or (3) under which moral philosophy the intentions would be considered good; or (4) why they would be considered good. If a writer is not willing to state (or even hint at) all of this, he is flimflamming the reader.**

“The equation.” (Examples here.) Writers who like to refer to “the equation” (and they are legion) never specify what the equation is. To me, this practice usually sounds like insinuation or evasion; that is to say, the writer is trying to get away with something.

“Sustainability” and “Diversity.” Writers usually refer to these states as if they were self-evidently desirable. However, their desirability is bitterly disputed. Moreover, neither word even has a tidy, universally agreed-upon definition; for example, the Wikipedia definition of sustainability, which valiantly attempts (but fails) to include all the disagreements, is a whopping 755 words long. On cultural diversity alone (one of several kinds of diversity), Wiki spends nearly 4,000 words. On the related concept of multiculturalism, Wiki spends more than 7,000.

Life parodies itself

I just learned – but can hardly believe – that the current White House Press Secretary is a fellow named Josh Earnest. The name sounds like someone made it up after hearing the old gag by George Burns: “Sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” By the way, I see that Mr. Earnest succeeded a Mr. Carney. If a writer used these names in the manuscript of a satirical novel, his editor would probably rule them too heavy-handed and corny.

Is this too much to ask?

For about 15 years, I’ve been looking for a software application that can directly convert an internet article into a Microsoft Word document. Just the body copy: no photos, drawings, graphs, captions, pull quotes, ads or sidebars. Just so I can easily read the article. Can anyone help me? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

___________________
*Among his many distinctions as a writer, Mr. Dalrymple remembers that the past participle of the verb to lead is led not lead. (Look it up here.)

**And I’m sure you’ve noticed that writers invoke “good intentions” only when the person’s action or lack of actions caused a disaster or failed to prevent a disaster. And only when the writer has the same political leanings as the person. In other words, it is prejudice.

The Takeaway: Be here now.

See disclaimer.

Concise advice to writers (1) – Thomas Woods

The historian and prolific author Thomas Woods (pictured) recorded a 20-minute podcast titled “On Becoming a Better Writer” and published it December 23.

You will never hear better advice.

Mr. Woods offers bluntly stated encouragement: if you keep reading good writers, keep writing diligently, and keep comparing your work to the work of good writers, you will become a better writer. But along the way, the comparisons will embarrass you.

Mr. Woods has, besides his bluntness, two other traits that I like: he is sincerely, charmingly self-deprecating and he is an admirer of Thomas Sowell, my favorite columnist.

The Takeaway: Listen to Mr. Woods’ podcast. If you are serious, it will encourage you – maybe even thrill you. But if you have romanticized and trivialized the craft of writing, his podcast may offend and discourage you. If you want to try a sample, start listening at 3:58.

See disclaimer.

Don’t undermine yourself (2)

Writers sometimes undermine themselves in their titles and introductions. Let me give you a quick example:

While surfing for information on measuring the value of public relations, I saw an article with this title:

“My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys… err… PR Measurement Pros.”

I thought:

He sounds foolish, but I’ll give him one paragraph before I decide whether to quit.

His introductory paragraph:

“Not too long ago, PR News Online published a fun piece about PR superheroes. I loved this story because I’ve always wanted to be a superhero. It made me believe that one day, if I try hard enough and excel in my career, I might be able to gain PR superhero recognition and be invited to join the Justice League… OK, OK, never mind; my kids have me grounded enough to know this is highly unlikely. Though I may never gain superhero status, I have devoted some time to searching for a few real life PR superheroes.” (Links in original omitted here.)

I thought:

His use of fun as an adjective makes him sound childish.

In “I’ve always wanted be a superhero,” he uses present perfect tense, which implies that he, a putative adult, still wants to be a superhero.

He incongruously inserts contrived dialog (“OK, OK, never mind”). Apparently he is unaware how blasted annoying this device is, or how fatuous it makes him sound.

His statement “my kids have me grounded enough” sounds like he’s trying to abase himself. How embarrassing.

I turned to another article, by another writer, on the same topic.

The Takeaway: Remember, intelligent readers judge you by your diction and composition. They do it to avoid wasting time. If they notice that your title or introduction makes you sound immature, ill-educated or neurotic, they (correctly or incorrectly) conclude that the rest of your piece will be silly, incoherent, long-winded, tangential and confusing. Therefore they conclude that you are not a credible source of information and they stop reading right there. So give yourself a chance; build your credibility by using good diction and composition, especially in your title and introduction.

See disclaimer.

Gobbledygook (6)

Here’s an informative but also entertaining article titled “12 Horrible Gobbledygook Words We Reluctantly Accepted.” It appeared in mental_floss, a great online source of intelligent humor.

An excerpt:

“In 1883, a journalist named Godfrey Turner went on an awesome rampage against purist, writing, ‘What a word! We have here positively the only instance of an attempt to make a noun, by this clumsy inflection, direct out of a raw adjective.’ He wasn’t done with it yet though, going on to write in another publication, ‘whoever first committed to the legibility of black and white that vicious noun-substantive has, it may be hoped, lived to repent a deed that offends forever against verbal purity … among all blundering conceits of modern phraseology, [it] stands distinguished from its misshapen fellows by an unapproachable singularity of malformation.’ ” (Italic and boldface added.)

The Takeaway: Have a great day.

See disclaimer.

A surprising cluster of circumlocutions

Circumlocution is “the use of many words to say something that could be said more clearly and directly by using fewer words.” Academics, politicians, shyster lawyers, and politicians who are shyster lawyers love circumlocution.

You can imagine my surprise when, glancing for the first time at a punchy online magazine called Spiked (the magazine’s owners spell it “sp!ked”), I immediately spotted three circumlocutions in a single sentence.

It was the last sentence of the first paragraph of an article titled “What private schools teach state schools,” by education editor Joanna Williams.

Here’s the paragraph:

As headmaster of the exclusive Wellington College (fees for boarders: £32,940 per year), Anthony Seldon is remarkably coy about championing the privileges of private education. His report for the Social Market Foundation, Schools United: Ending the Divide Between Independent and State, published this week, is his latest attempt to talk himself out of a job through either abolishing fee-paying schools altogether, or eroding any distinction between the state and independent sectors. Seldon’s defensiveness is driven by the fact that private-school pupils are more likely than their state-educated peers to get better exam results, go to the most selective universities, secure jobs in the elite professions and earn more money. (Boldface added.)

Analysis

First circumlocution:

Sheldon’s defensiveness

An alternative:

Sheldon cowers

Second circumlocution:

is driven by

An alternative:

because

Third circumlocution:

the fact that

An alternative:

(Omit these three words entirely.)

And so,

Seldon’s defensiveness is driven by the fact that

becomes

Sheldon cowers because

The magazine’s name and layout are so aggressive that a reader might expect to read Spiked for a year without spotting a single circumlocution, insinuation, euphemism, equivocation or evasion. This reader isn’t going to read any further; life is too short.

The Takeaway: Wake up! Be direct!

See disclaimer.

Nouns into verbs

If you love words, you will enjoy author, speaker and teacher Ralph Keyes (pictured). He is the language columnist for The American Scholar, where he writes a column titled “Back Talk.” He has a light touch; he is entertaining, not tedious. In a recent column he discussed the making of nouns into verbs, including those “tortured coinages that end in ‘ize.’ ”

The Takeaway: Best wishes to my fellow wordies.

See disclaimer.

Thanks to Paul G. Henning for introducing me to “Back Talk.”

Happy Birthday to Joan Didion

80 on December 5

"And the Fair Land"

In 1961, Vermont Royster (pictured), then editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, wrote a Thanksgiving editorial titled “And the Fair Land.” The Journal has run this editorial annually ever since.

The prose is elevated but not pompous; it is stirring but not sentimental. It is clear and straightforward. It is masculine.

He begins:

Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful.

This is indeed a big country, a rich country. . .

And continues:

And a traveler cannot but be struck on his journey by the thought that this country, one day, can be even greater. . . .

So the visitor returns thankful for much of what he has seen, and, in spite of everything, an optimist about what his country might be. . . .

And ends:

But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere – in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness.

We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth.

And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land.

The Takeaway: I wish my fellow Americans a happy Thanksgiving.

See disclaimer.

Beyond narcissism

In the last post, I showed you three examples of narcissistic writing and explained how narcissism can make a writer or public speaker look foolish.

In this post, I show you an article that goes beyond narcissism and into solipsism. It may or may not be a parody; nowadays, it’s hard to tell.

The first thing the typical reader notices is that the author, while writing about providing consulting services to businesses, sounds like a giddy child. She sounds bedazzled by the world of business, and she seems to have only a superficial awareness of how businesspeople think, speak and act.

The second thing the reader notices is that the author doesn’t realize that her typical reader would be familiar with common business expressions such “word of mouth” and “referrals,” and would know that these are long-established expressions* as opposed to hip new fads that they need to be introduced to. The author did not need to say:

… what people call “word of mouth” and “referrals.”

Nor did she need to say:

…what we call inbound marketing.**

By this point, the typical reader suspects that, metaphorically, the author just fell off the turnip truck. She seems to be new to business. There’s nothing wrong with that; we were all novices once. What is cringeworthy is the author’s lack of empathy; she seems to assume that her readers are as callow as she is.

In the next three paragraphs, she keeps the reader cringing:

In this process of speaking with startups and established companies over the past year and 8 months I have come to realize that there should be a profession that is specific to startup consulting. Why not call it what it really is. 

Startup consulting helps startups understand what they need to do to grow: Startups have problems. Startups have ideas. Startups need to define their market positioning. Startups need help.

Myself and all the other Inbound Marketing Specialists at HubSpot should really call themselves Startup Consultants. Every company was once a startup. Aspects of even established companies have startupy parts of them. (Boldface and italics in original.)

The author seems to think she has created startup consulting. To avoid embarrassing herself, all she need have done is take five seconds to Google the phrase “startup consulting.” (I just tried it and got 24,600,000 hits.)

In fact, I know several people who, for 30 years or more, have been consultants to startups. (By the way, I would be shocked if any of those consultants used the word “startupy,” or any other such puerile word – except ironically.)

In general, the author’s logic is unsound; e.g., she speaks of “aspects” that “have parts” and says “Talk with the company about their vision for what they want to solve for.” Her grammar, diction, punctuation and capitalization are careless. However, this post is already long, so I don’t have the space to provide more detail here.

The Takeaway: The author sounds like she has acquired astronomically too much self-esteem. She seems to be completely unaware how childish her writing sounds. If you are a novice and want to avoid a similar fate, do this: Before you write for publication, or speak in public, or become a consultant, first fill in any large gaps in your logic, grammar, diction, punctuation and capitalization. It won’t take more than 300 hours; i.e., it will take a lot less time than the average American adult spends watching television in 12 weeks.*** But it does demand attention, humility and empathy. Do this and you will look and sound a lot more experienced.
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*For example, “word of mouth” has been in use since 1553.

**If the author had simply glanced at her employer’s home page, she would have seen the phrase “Inbound Marketing & Sales Software” and could have gathered that her employer assumes that visitors to its website already know what inbound marketing is.

***The average is more than 33 hours per week (source). My math: 33 hours per week times 12 weeks = 396 hours.

See disclaimer.