Is anywhere still safe from Dudespeak? – an editorial

Once in a while, out of curiosity, I take a hopeful glance at the web sites of institutions that may possibly be resisting, or at least avoiding, America’s decline into Dudespeak – the careless, vague, faddish, infantile diction of dudes and bimbos.

The other day, I read the web page for Harvard University’s Undergraduate Program in Applied Mathematics, a plausible place to expect serious grown-up diction.

Plausible but wrong, it turns out.

The person who wrote the page used the faddish impacts (n.) instead of effects.

He used interest (n.) and interests (n.), then apparently noticed that he had neglected to use the faddish passion, then quickly corrected this failure to conform.

At the end of the text, the writer inserted an “aw-shucks” disclaimer of elitism:

Graduates go on to careers in wide ranging fields, including business, law, medicine, academics, and well, just about anything.

I won’t bother to point out the grammar errors.

The Takeaway: If you want to be taken seriously and be perceived as a grown-up, you need to use grown-up diction. Avoid ingenuousness, coyness, silliness, faddishness and frivolousness – save them for parties.

See disclaimer.

The law – an editorial

As practiced in the United States, law is largely a filthy business, for which the practitioner needs a devious mind and strong stomach.

A recent, widely publicized letter from a lawyer demonstrates the point. The letter discusses an 18-year-old porn star, a professional poker player, a swimming pool and a broken foot.

You can read the background story and the lawyer’s letter here. Warning: risqué language.

The Takeaway: Don’t encourage your children to become lawyers.

See disclaimer.

The etiquette of jargon – an editorial

A few years ago, as I was making a bank deposit, I noticed a half sheet of paper posted inside the teller’s cage. On it was a list of rules for good customer service. I was delighted to see that Rule #1 was “Don’t use bank jargon.”

The managers of that bank had enough insight to recognize that, although employees know that rule, they often need to be reminded of it. That’s because employees speak jargon all day with their co-workers. It eventually stops feeling like jargon, because everybody understands it.

Everybody except the customer, that is.

It is good manners and good business for employees to remain aware of their jargon, so they won't forget and use jargon in front of customers.

For more on jargon, go here.

The Takeaway: We all forget occasionally; we use jargon when speaking or writing to someone who probably doesn’t understand our jargon. The main thing is not to make this error too frequently. As the American writer Elbert Hubbard said, “Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.”*

__________________
*Unfortunately, even five minutes of folly can be too much on some days, including the day in 1915 on which Elbert Hubbard booked an Atlantic crossing on RMS Lusitania, in spite of the German government’s recent warning that it would fire on British-flagged passenger liners in the war zone. When the German navy torpedoed and sank the Lusitania, Elbert Hubbard and 1,194 other passengers and crewmen died.

See disclaimer.

Grammar errors in the Times – an editorial

Only a few decades ago, The New York Times could produce a near-perfect newspaper every day. No longer, unfortunately. Let me illustrate with a brief personal anecdote:

During the mid-1970s, I supervised an editing staff at Honeywell. In our downtime, my editors and I often looked for grammar errors in the newspapers. Whenever one of us spotted an error in the Times, we stared at it in disbelief. Then I clipped it out and dropped the clip into a file folder labeled “Errors in NYT.”

Years later, when I was tidying up my office before leaving for a new job within Honeywell, I noticed that the “Errors in NYT” folder contained only four clips.

Nowadays, you could probably spot four errors every day. In fact, I recently spotted six errors in a single paragraph of a Times blog. Here’s the paragraph:

“Girls enter school with a lead on boys, and schools then fail to close the gaps. Instead, they increase. The behavioral advantage that girls have over boys in kindergarten, based on teachers’ assessments of their students, are even larger in fifth grade.” (Source)

Analysis

In the first sentence, the writer uses the noun lead; later in the same sentence he uses the noun gap for (presumably) the same thing. (Elegant variation.)

Also, he confusingly switches from a singular lead to a plural gaps.

In the second sentence, the pronoun they could plausibly have any of four antecedents: girls, lead, schools, or gaps.

Also in the second sentence, it is not completely clear whether the verb increase means that the gap between the average girl and the average boy has widened.

In the third sentence, the writer adds another elegant variation, advantage. Now we have, within one brief paragraph, three words for the same thing.

Also in the third sentence, the singular subject, advantage, is followed by a plural verb, are.

The Takeaway: The New York Times, once legendarily fastidious, has become careless. If you want to read the Times as a way to improve your knowledge of English (many students and foreigners do this), I suggest you read only articles published before 1970. However, that usually requires fees, so I prefer to check pre-1970 books out of my local library at no cost, or download them from Project Gutenberg at no cost.

See disclaimer.

“Dunning-Kruger effect” – an editorial

Somewhere in the mid-1970s, after having spent my first few years as an editor, I noticed an odd pattern: Some of the weakest writers I worked with thought they were strong writers, and some of the strongest writers thought they were just average writers.

Roughly 40 years later – a few weeks ago – I was surprised to learn that psychologists have a name for the pattern: “Dunning-Kruger effect.” In short, the effect is that some low-skilled people have a mental bias that blinds them to the inferiority of their skill; some high-skilled people, because their skill seems to come easily to them, assume (wrongly) that that skill comes easily to most people.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Dunning-Kruger effect.

The Takeaway: Of course, Messrs. Dunning and Kruger could be wrong. All I am saying here is that I have observed something like Dunning-Kruger effect in the world of writing. I am not a psychologist but I am a veteran editor and as such* I give you this advice: If you are (or would like to become) a professional writer, just keep in mind that you may be substantially overestimating or underestimating your skill. Seek the judgements of experienced writers and editors and take those judgements into consideration.

See disclaimer.

*I’m not showing off, but I just want to point out that this is an example of a correct use of the phrase as such. Most of the time you hear or read this phrase, the speaker or writer is using it incorrectly. For more information, go here.

Politically correct diction is dangerous – an editorial

In a recent editorial, I discussed a tragic story in which a politically correct euphemism led office workers to ignore a death threat against one of their co-workers. I pointed out that political correctness is inherently dangerous: it is a childish belief that the whole world is safe and comfy and cozy. When people use politically correct euphemisms, they are concealing danger – and thereby making the world more dangerous. Below are summaries of five other posts that illustrate the point.

Serial rapist escapes

A serial rapist (pictured) was serving a life sentence in a locked psychiatric ward. Even though the rapist had already escaped once and was therefore high risk, some nurse or doctor lowered the rapist’s risk level to “medium.” Apparently the nurse or doctor wanted to show “sensitivity” to the serial rapist, notwithstanding the rapist’s insensitivity to the women he raped.

When the rapist was being transferred to another location for medical treatment, the security people saw the word “medium” and didn’t bother to handcuff him. The rapist took advantage and escaped again. (Source)

Hospital will encourage more criminals to escape

After the rapist’s escape, hospital management published a report filled with politically correct euphemisms and weasel-words. The report slyly encouraged the staff to continue their “sensitive” behavior. (Source)

FAA spokeswoman muddles the safety of Boeing aircraft

A German reporter wrote an article for Spiegel Online about the reasons for the crash of Air France Flight 447, which killed all 228 people aboard. He interviewed a spokeswoman for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), who abused the word issues in order to muddle the ways in which Boeing parts could cause a crash. Politically correct people constantly use the handy, shifty word issue as a euphemism for problem, threat, risk, danger, difficulty, logic, reality, deception, lie, hypocrisy, and many other words that politically correct people (chiefly women) feel are too “icky” to be said out loud or written down. (Source)

“Health issue” means everything and nothing

And speaking of issue, if you type health issue into Google, Google will report more than 2 billion hits – that alone tells you something is wrong. What precisely is a “health issue”? Is it a disease, a condition, a syndrome, a disorder, or a malaise? A symptom or an indication? A pathogen or an allergen? An epidemic, a pandemic, or a lack of money to purchase medicines?

Or is it poor health in general, sickliness, inability to remember to take medicines as directed, or ignorance that a disease may be preventable? Or is it a localized shortage of doctors or nurses or medicines, or an error in prescribing a medicine? Or is it smoking, indolence, sexual promiscuity, addiction to heroin, or the use of dirty needles? Or something else? (Source)

NH puts positive spin on kids’ deaths
On the government highways in New Hampshire, large signs offer the following advice:

AIRBAGS SAVE LIVES

FOR SAFETY’S SAKE
PLACE CHILDREN IN REAR SEAT

What the government of New Hampshire meant, but was too politically correct to say honestly, is:

AIRBAGS KILL KIDS

FOR SAFETY’S SAKE
PLACE CHILDREN IN REAR SEAT

(Source)

The Takeaway: We hear and read so many politically correct euphemisms every day that we frequently imitate them unconsciously. Please, try to break this habit. Remember that these euphemisms are valid only inside the fantasy world of political correctness. In the real world, they are invalid and dangerous. Avoid using them when you are writing or saying anything that could have real consequences in the real world.

See disclaimer.

“Political correctness gone suicidal” – an editorial

This is a tragic story in which the inadvertent use of a politically correct euphemism led office workers to ignore a death threat against one of their co-workers:

“In early April this year [2007] a man walked into an office of the University of Washington and killed his ex-girlfriend and then shot himself. She had been stalked by the guy for over a year. She filed one report to the police for a restraining order which was useless because nobody could find him. She wrote an email to her office coworkers, ‘I have a stalking issue,’ she wrote. A stalking issue? The young woman could only describe in the gentlest terms that she was probably going to be murdered. This is political correctness gone suicidal. What prevented her from writing, ‘Dear Coworkers, some guy is trying to kill me, and I won’t let him and you’re going to help me because I don’t want to die.’ We know the reason. The same one that made people tip-toe around the killer at Virginia Tech. Everything must remain normal until the slaughter.” (Source)

In a later article:

“Later that year, the State Department of Labor and Industries issued the University of Washington a $2,100 fine, saying employees at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning were put in danger due to the university’s failure to follow its own workplace safety rules.” (Source)

The Takeaway: If you ever need to ask for help to protect or defend yourself, do not use any politically correct words or phrases. People are likely to interpret them as meaningless filler, fail to understand that you really need help, and fail to help you. Political correctness is a childish fantasy that the whole world is safe and comfy and cozy. Taken at face value, this fantasy can get you raped, maimed or killed. Please be careful: When you really need help, say what you mean.

See disclaimer.

How NOT to apologize – an editorial

You’ve probably heard or read about the deceptive telephone call that trespassed the privacy of a hospital patient, whose nurse apparently killed herself for having been deceived by the call.

And you’ve probably seen the video in which the two trespassers (pictured above) apologize for the trespass. Their atrocious apology is a perfect example of how not to apologize.

The male trespasser calls the nurse’s death “the situation.”

Both trespassers insist that the trespass was not a trespass or, if it was a trespass, it was not actually wrong or, if it was wrong, they were just following orders.

The female trespasser gives a conditional apology: “If we played any involvement in her [the nurse’s] death, then we’re very sorry for that.”

The male trespasser says, “...we’re shattered. We’re people, too,” grotesquely implying that he and his accomplice are suffering as much as the dead nurse’s family and friends.

The trespassers did not offer to pay any damages.

This apology is uncouth, narcissistic and infantile.

The Takeaway: How to apologize: Don’t say anything to deny or diminish the injury. Don’t rationalize, make excuses, or try to shift the blame. Don’t make your apology conditional. Don’t imply that you are suffering as much as the persons you injured. Offer to pay damages. If you believe you are not responsible, do not apologize at all.

See disclaimer.

Credit-card companies, women, men, and language -- an editorial

Have you ever noticed this? When you call credit-card companies to report problems, the companies assign women to handle some kinds of problems and men to handle other kinds. (Is that employment discrimination?) And the women and men speak differently. For example:

On many occasions over the last two decades, I have telephoned one or another credit-card company to dispute a charge for a faulty product or to report that I had been charged twice for a purchase. In other words, my money was at stake. In all these cases,

1. A woman answered my call and handled the problem.
2. The woman was a Valley-girl imitator, using adolescent speech affectations such as uptalk, baby voice, and vocal fry.

On other occasions, I have called to report that a stranger had used my account number to purchase something (fraud). In other words, the credit-card company’s money was at stake. In all these cases,

1. A woman answered my call but immediately forwarded it to a man.
2. The man sounded mature and serious. He used no speech affectations.

The Takeaway: When it is merely your money that is at stake, the credit-card company assigns a woman who talks like a child. But when it is the company’s money that is at stake, the company assigns a man who talks like a grown-up. That is what I have observed (of course, that does not constitute a scientific survey). I leave the interpretation to you; what, if anything, do you think my observations suggest about credit-card companies’ attitudes toward women, men, and language? Please comment.

See disclaimer.

Smart people know grammar is important – an editorial

Kyle Wiens (pictured) is a businessman who knows grammar is important. He’s the CEO of iFixit, an online repair community, and founder of Dozuki, a software documentation company. He has made good grammar a policy at both companies.

Everyone who applies for a job at either company must take a grammar test, and those who flunk the grammar test do not get hired. Mr. Wiens wrote an article about this policy; the article was published by Harvard Business Review. Here’s an excerpt:

Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence...

Good grammar makes good business sense – and not just when it comes to hiring writers. Writing isn’t in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers.

Elsewhere in the article, Mr. Wiens says “people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing – like stocking shelves or labeling parts.”

He also says “programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code.”

The Takeaway: Grammar is important. Intelligent people judge you by your grammar. They know that if you are careful about grammar, you are probably careful about everything you do. In other words, your grammar reveals your character. But grammar and character have become politicized, and most CEOs are now afraid to talk honestly about them. That’s why I admire the courage of Kyle Wiens and of the Harvard Business Review.

See disclaimer.

In speech and in writing, be yourself

People who hear what you say or read what you write can’t help judging you by your diction and grammar. That’s because people usually assume that you have deliberately chosen your diction and grammar. So, if you unconsciously or unintentionally imitate a sociolect, your listeners or readers will assume that you are a member of the group that speaks that sociolect.

For example, poseurs speak and write gobbledygook. They do it in an effort to appear knowledgeable. But intelligent listeners and readers perceive that the gobbledygook is gobbledygook and therefore that the poseurs are poseurs.

Unfortunately, gobbledygook has become fashionable, and a lot of knowledgeable people are imitating the poseurs. Intelligent listeners and readers assume that these people are poseurs, too. So, if you are knowledgeable, don’t imitate poseurs.

Here are three more warnings:

If you are intelligent, don’t imitate bimbos.

If you are honest, don’t imitate shysters.

If you are straightforward, don’t imitate politicians.

The Takeaway: If you wish to be taken seriously, don’t imitate the sociolects of poseurs, bimbos, shysters or politicians. Be yourself. Talk like yourself. Write like yourself. You know you have the courage to do it. Do it.

See disclaimer.

Insist on clarity! – an editorial

Author Dan Pallotta (pictured) believes we should insist on clarity. He has written a powerful blog post about our misguided toleration of others’ deliberately unclear diction. Read the post here.

The Takeaway: I agree with Mr. Pallotta. I often insist on clarity and I recommend that you do likewise. If you’re not yet accustomed to being assertive, start out with easy encounters. For example: While you are shopping, a clerk approaches you and asks, “All set?” You respond, “To do what?” Nine times out of ten, the clerk will quickly correct his question to “Can I help you find something?” You have gently but successfully shamed an indolent clerk into using the clear, polite, grown-up diction that his job requires. His quick correction proves that (1) he knows darn well that his job requires grown-up diction; (2) he knows how to use such diction; and (3) he avoids using it only out of indolence. If enough of us keep reminding these slackers to speak adult English, they may decide to make it a habit.

See disclaimer.

Why I show you so much unclear writing – an editorial

To help writers learn to write more clearly, the writing teacher or coach must not only show and analyze examples of clear writing; he must also show and analyze examples of unclear writing.

Showing and analyzing unclear writing is especially important in times of cultural decadence; in such times, many people deliberately choose to be unclear, because it’s trendy.

The writing teacher Quintilian, who taught in Rome during the late first century A.D. (a time as decadent as our own), put it this way:

“Nor is it without advantage, indeed, that inelegant and faulty speeches, yet such as many, from depravity of taste, would admire, should be read before boys [pupils], and that it should be shown how many expressions in them are inappropriate, obscure, tumid, low, mean, affected, or effeminate; expressions which, however, are not only extolled by many readers, but, what is worse, are extolled for the very reason that they are vicious….”

The Takeaway: If you wish to write clearly, you must work diligently to avoid imitating the average man. The average man is too ignorant and stupid to speak or write clearly and too corrupted to try to learn how. He mindlessly imitates the diction of celebrities, many of whom are only semi-literate. To remind myself of these truths, I occasionally glance at a picture of celebutard Paris Hilton (shown above). Ms. Hilton has inspired millions of Americans to debase their speech and themselves.


See disclaimer.

Diction and the entrepreneur – an editorial

Many people believe that a businessman doesn’t need good diction in order to succeed. This belief ignores an important fact: most people judge you by your diction. Fairly or unfairly, they assume that if you are indolent in your diction you are indolent in everything.

For example, a journalist asked a venture capitalist what kind of speech or behavior marks an entrepreneur as an amateur. The venture capitalist answered, “Entrepreneurs shouldn’t overly use buzzwords to describe the business. ‘We have a cloud-enabled, big data, social graph platform...’ ”

Keep in mind, the man who gave that answer can make or break an entrepreneur who comes to him seeking funds. And yet, as his answer suggests, many of these seekers do not bother to present themselves as diligent grown-ups.

The Takeaway: People judge you by your diction. They don’t just judge your diction; they also judge your character. Need I say more?

See disclaimer.