The New Newspeak

A recent article, “The New Newspeak,” discusses how some politicians “twist English for political gain.” It gives seven examples of twisted terms:

“at risk”

“barriers”

“community”

“under-represented”

“under-served”

“homeless”

“downtrodden”

The author says, “There is far more here than wooly thinking. Each term arrives with ample, almost invisible baggage that infiltrates the brain and ultimately shapes behavior.”

The author appears to have an anti-Left bias. Take that bias into account when reading him, but also try to judge his points on their own merits.

The Takeaway: We writers should always be especially alert readers. For example, we should be aware of the “baggage” that some terms carry, and avoid delivering that baggage unintentionally. As Oscar Wilde said in a different context, “A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.”

See disclaimer.

Microsoft CEO is a heavy user of cliches

Satya Nadella (pictured), CEO of Microsoft Corporation, writes badly. For example, his July 10, 2014, public memo to all employees, which journalists have described as “disquieting,” “plodding” and  “coma-inducing,” is filled with cliches:

Core

Drive

Embrace

Enable

Experience

First and foremost

Focus

Footprint

Fundamental

Global

Impact

Nimble

Off the table

Passion

Planet

Reinvent

Seamlessly

Share

Solution

Stuff

Transform

Truly

Unique

And more. In a single memo, Mr. Nadella seems to have used most of the cliches on the big-business checklist of cliches.

CEOs are paid to provide clear direction. When a CEO writes in cliches, he reveals timidity, evasiveness, or vague thinking. Employees, partners, customers and investors tend to be discouraged by this kind of writing. (For example, look at the faces in the picture above.)

The Takeaway: A few CEOs (for example, John Mackey and T. J. Rodgers) are good writers, but most are not. What you read in the press from most CEOs is bad writing. Bland, boring, effete, evasive writing. Try to avoid becoming infected: (1) If you are not required to read such writing, do not read it; (2) if you are required to read it, pause at every paragraph break and say (silently or aloud) “This is dreck.” Your subconscious will get the message; as a result, you will be less likely to imitate the dreck.

See disclaimer.

The dehumanizing language of medicine

Last week I discussed an example of the dehumanizing language of medicine. Here are three more examples of dehumanizing language* and how you can help cure it:

“How are we doing?” Many doctors replace the pronoun you with the pronoun we, as in the condescending greeting, “How are we doing?” When I hear this, I help retrain them by responding, “So far as I have observed, you and your staff are doing fine, but I’ve only been here for a few minutes.” (If you try this, make sure to do it with a straight face.)  

“Gender.” On office forms, many doctors ask whether the patient’s “gender” is male or female. When I see this, I check the box for “male,” cross out “gender,” insert the correct word, “sex,” and write this note in the margin: “The word gender is a grammatical term – as in masculine, feminine and neuter. The biological term is sex. I am embarrassed to have to explain this to a medical doctor, but there it is.”

“Medication,” as opposed to the traditional term “medicine.” Medication connotes that a doctor (a medicator) puts substances onto or into the body of a patient (a medicatee), or orders the patient to do so. It also connotes that a patient (who, being only a medicatee and not a medicator) should not decide whether to put anything onto or into his body (self-medicate). When I hear “medication,” I politely insist, “Please speak plainly: Say ‘medicine.’ ”

The Takeaway: Let us take a lesson from the linguistic offenses of doctors: Communication consists not only of what we say, but also of how we say it. People judge us by both, so we must always try to remain consciously aware of both.

*I am generalizing; I am of course aware that not all doctors talk like this.

See disclaimer.

People judge you by your diction

As you have noticed, many people in the professions talk and write like children. By doing so, they detract from their professional credibility, even when they apparently are trying to bolster it. Here’s a good example:

In an interview with Elle magazine, a professor of psychology argues that professional psychologists are better at giving advice than are the authors of self-help books. But she fails in her delivery, by using awkward, juvenile diction:

Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, who studies happiness at the University of California, Riverside, says, “We [psychologists] just sort of ignore that whole [self-help] section of the bookstore... We set it as so different from what we do, like, ‘Well, we do science, and those people are just spouting off their ideas.’ ” (Highlighting added.)

I do not know Professor Lyubomirsky. I haven’t read her books or papers. I’ve never heard her give a speech. For all I know, she may be the most brilliant and knowledgeable professor of psychology in the world. But that quotation makes her sound like a teenager.

The Takeaway: If you want to be respected as a professional, always talk and write like a professional. People judge you by your diction – even people who insist they would never do such a thing.

See disclaimer.

The value of logic – an editorial

In 2002, Steven Yates, a former professor of logic, wrote an interesting article (“Can Logic Be Taught on Campus?”) on the place of logic courses in college curricula. He wondered whether logic was “at odds with the major campus tendencies.” For example:

Once we take [logic] seriously, we have to throw out a lot of what passes for scholarship today – and very possibly, a lot of teaching as well, to the extent that it has come to express the teacher’s feelings or attempt to elicit feelings from students instead of address facts of reality. (Italics in original.)

And from the conclusion of the article:

Carried out properly, a course in logic can greatly improve a college student’s ability to think independently, as an individual and not simply a herd-member, and not be taken to the cleaners by every fashion to come along. It can be used to show that many beliefs currently held dear on campuses simply don’t make any sense when held up to the light of close, logical scrutiny. It is thus a highly politically incorrect subject. It probably belongs in the core of any good college or university curriculum, but definitely doesn’t fit into an arena where emotions reign, where intimidation is the preferred method of enforcing conformity, or where “truth” and “right” are determined by the collective will (or sexual fetishes) of agitators-in-training – which is why the pronouncements of the latter offer such a gold mine of examples of horrid reasoning.

The Takeaway: Especially if you have never studied logic, I recommend you read the article. It will introduce you to powerful ideas that can help you think and write more clearly. You may be inspired to read a book on logic or take a course in logic. At the college I attended, logic was a required course. It was difficult for me, but it has paid off year after year, over my four-decade writing career. Have a go at logic.

See disclaimer.

“A Tsunami of B.S.”

Of all the faults that prevent clear writing and clear speaking, bullshit (nonsense) is among the most common.

Every one of us employs B.S. occasionally; we differ only in frequency. That’s why I am recommending you read the essay “A Tsunami of B.S.” by the American entrepreneur and bestselling author Robert Ringer (pictured).

Here’s an excerpt:

So, the question is, what can you do to protect yourself from drowning in the tsunami of B.S. that relentlessly comes at you each day?
 
First and foremost is to make a sincere and ongoing effort to curb your own B.S.  Knowingly or unknowingly, we’re all guilty of slinging a bit of B.S. at times, but that doesn’t mean we have to make a religion out of it.

Second, always do your best to steer clear of those who demonstrate they have mastered the art of B.S.  And to accomplish that, you have to pay more attention to what people do and less attention to what they say.

That advice gets easier and easier to follow as you rack up experience. After more than 40 years as a professional writer and editor, I notice that I often quickly see through B.S. (my own and others’) that I would have fallen for when I was a younger man. One of the compensations of aging, I suppose.

The Takeaway: I recommend you read Mr. Ringer’s essay in full. It is good advice, clearly stated. If you would like to read a philosophical essay on B.S., I recommend On Bullshit by the American philosopher Harry Gordon Frankfurt.

See disclaimer.

The five most popular posts

This week is the blog’s fifth anniversary (founded April 20, 2008). I thought I would show you the five all-time most-visited posts. Yes, that’s an obvious thing to do on an anniversary – however, because this is an educational blog, I pay close attention to which topics are attracting readers the most.

Here are the five posts:

“Having said that.” Most writers who use this fad expression confuse and irritate their readers. (October 1, 2008)

The danger of euphemism. How a nurse used a politically correct euphemism in order to increase the self-esteem of an incarcerated serial rapist; the euphemism allowed the rapist to escape. (November 21, 2008)

Empathetic and persuasive writing. Dale Carnegie analyzes a sales letter by telling us – line by line – how he reacts as a reader of the letter. Do this kind of analysis yourself and make your letters (emails, ads, web site) more empathetic and persuasive. (August 30, 2010)

A common fallacy. We writers should diligently strive to avoid using fallacies. One of the more common fallacies is “cherry picking.” (February 7, 2011)

Mixed metaphors. Thomas L. Friedman is a heavy user of mixed metaphors. He appears to be genuinely unaware of how clownish his writing sounds. But with three Pulitzers on his resume, Mr. Friedman can get away with such carelessness. Unfortunately, you and I cannot. (February 25, 2013)

The Takeaway: Thank you for your attention – today and over the years. I welcome your suggestions on topics to cover; please email me at joeroy(at)joeroy(dot)com. Best to you.

See disclaimer.

Quotations on thinking, speaking and writing (19)

In my occasional posts of writers’ quotations, I have not attempted to have a theme for each post. Today I do have a theme: the propagation of stupidity in Western culture.

“Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.”
~Albert Camus (pictured)

“We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture.... For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.”
~Carl Bernstein

“In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.”
~Herman Melville, in Moby Dick

“We should ponder here the state of modern American journalism: endowed with intelligent and able people who are quite willing to suppress what they know to be valid opinions in order not to endure hostility from their stupider and less able colleagues.”
~Dominic Lawson, on political correctness

“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.”
~Thomas Sowell

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”
~Noam Chomsky

“The thought came upon me, as it has done quite a lot this past few years, that I shall likely end up in a labor camp. I can’t keep my mouth shut; I can’t clap along with the Kumbaya; and I can’t pretend assent to propositions that seem to me to be false. In the world we are fast heading into, that makes me camp fodder for sure.”
~John Derbyshire

“You may turn into an archangel, a fool, or a criminal – no one will see it. But when a button is missing – everyone sees that.”
~Erich Maria Remarque, in Arch of Triumph

“I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without [any printed matter] to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”
~Newton Minow, in a famous 1961 speech to television broadcasters

“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
~Henry David Thoreau

The Takeaway: Let us avoid participating in the propagation of stupidity.

See disclaimer.

Thanks to Paul G. Henning for pointing out the Carl Bernstein quotation.

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.

Fred Reed on language

The quirky, outspoken American journalist Fred Reed (pictured), who calls himself “an equal-opportunity irritant,” recently published a politically incorrect essay on why English has deteriorated so much since the 19th century. If you care about this topic, you may find the essay worth reading.

Excerpts

The cultivated men of the times before 1900, and for that matter the women, wrote well indeed. Read the memoirs of Ulysses Grant, George Armstrong Custer, [and] John Singleton Mosby... Their prose is strong, polished without ostentation, always clear and devoid of grammatical slips. Yet these were not scholars but soldiers of the Civil War.

...

Why are things that once were the common property of the cultivated now regarded as fossils predating the trilobites? One reason I think is the weakening of the barriers of class. The educated cannot maintain standards of excellence when constantly bathed by television in mangled grammar and illiterate usage.... the vulgar have discovered that it is easier to reject higher standards than to meet them. By sheer numbers they prevail.

...

In 1850 those deficient in schooling knew their deficiencies, and wanted to learn. Today there is an actual preference for ignorance, which is regarded as authentic or democratic and morally superior to knowing anything, which would be elitist.

The Takeaway: You are likely to disagree with some points in Mr. Reed’s essay (I did, too) but agree with the main point. In any event, I welcome your comments.

See disclaimer.

Vague words making a vague point about a vague topic

If you want a brief but intensive lesson in how not to write, read this web page published by the University of Minnesota. It is full of vague words that make a vague point about a vague topic. The concentration of so much vagueness leads the intelligent reader to suspect either fatuousness or flimflam.

You and I never want our readers to think that way about our writing. So, let’s analyze the web page to see what makes it so vague.

A vague topic

The topic of the page is sustainability. This is an unsettled, confusing and controversial topic. The Wikipedia definition, which attempts (but fails) to include all the disagreements, is a whopping 755 words long.

Nor are all the disagreements trivial; far from it. For example, Jeffrey Tucker, speaking for many free-market scholars, defines sustainability as “rolling back the advances of civilization by force.”

A vague point

So much for the topic of the university’s web page about sustainability. Now let’s consider the point of the page: how the university teaches sustainability.

Apparently the university does not have a department of sustainability and does not offer a major in sustainability. It does offer a minor – not in sustainability but in “Sustainability Studies.” The minor is a kind of scavenger hunt through all the colleges of the university. The university says it offers, via the minor and other programs, “a spectrum of opportunities for students to engage in the challenges of sustainability.”

I would think that prospective students’ first “challenge of sustainability” would be to persuade the university’s sustainability teachers to publish a concise, clear and widely accepted definition of the word sustainability. Failing that, the teachers’ consensus definition. Failing that, each teacher’s definition.

The prospective students’ second challenge would be to convince their parents that spending a year with the teachers who wrote that web page could somehow be worth $24,718, and that the teachers’ atrocious writing habits would not rub off on the students.

A lot of vague words

What about the text of the page? Well, it consists mostly of phrases like this:

•    sustainability studies
•    courses on the core issues of sustainability that effect [sic] all disciplines
•    undergraduate opportunities in sustainability education
•    undergraduate sustainability education offerings
•    graduate sustainability education opportunities
•    issues of sustainability
•    contributions of multiple disciplines and professions
•    sustainability education network
•    opportunities to advance sustainability education

So what was the University of Minnesota trying to achieve with that web page? My guess is that when sustainability became a mania word* the university wanted to publicly declare its infatuation with the word, to avoid looking out of step.

The Takeaway: Read the whole web page. It is a good example of pathological vagueness. Print it out and keep it in your writing reference file. If you ever catch yourself thinking vague language is always harmless, pull out the copy and read it again as a deterrent.

Thanks to my friend Paul G. Henning, who called my attention to this example.

See disclaimer.

*A mania word (my coinage, I believe) is a fad word that writers have begun using prodigally, promiscuously and rashly. Other mania words favored by the University of Minnesota are drive, issue, passion, and self-esteem.

Insinuation

As you know, the verb to be is the most frequently used verb and the weakest (least-expressive) verb in English. Writing coaches usually urge beginning writers to form the habit of using stronger verbs most of the time. For example:

The clause “her father was instrumental in the writing of the Navajo Code Talkers codebook” is weak. (Source)

The clause “her father co-authored the Navajo Code Talkers codebook” is stronger.

But we live in licentious times; you will notice that many writers today use weak verbs deliberately, in order to insinuate. To insinuate is to convey something sneakily – usually because it would sound improbable, dubious or absurd if it were stated straightforwardly.

For example, in a recent issue of The New York Times we see this sentence:

“But as word of the project [hiring homeless people to carry mobile Wi-Fi gear] spread on the ground and online, it hit a nerve among many who said that turning down-and-out people into wireless towers was exploitative and discomfiting.”

Analysis

In her summary of what the critics said, the writer used the weak verb was and followed it with two expressive adjectives (exploitative and discomfiting).

Watch what happens when we strengthen the sentence structure. We replace the weak verb was with the strong verbs exploited and discomfited. We get “it hit a nerve among many who said that turning down-and-out people into wireless towers exploited and discomfited [direct object].”

I’m sure you can see why the writer wanted to avoid this structure: Changing the adjectives into transitive verbs would have forced her to use a direct object, thereby identifying the exploited and discomfited. She probably sensed that if she wrote, “exploited and discomfited the down-and-out people” or “exploited and discomfited them,” readers would have snickered.

By the way, the article did not quote a single “down-and-out” person who said that the people who had hired him to carry the Wi-Fi gear had thereby exploited or discomfited him.

The Takeaway: In most non-fiction, you should avoid insinuation. Make straightforwardness your default style and insinuation the exception.

See disclaimer.

The perversion of “judgment” and “judgmental”

In the last decade or two, we have witnessed the widespread perversion of the words judgment and judgmental.

The late American columnist Joseph Sobran once said that the word judgmental sums up the age we live in:

“Everything [is getting] exponentially worse. Worse cubed. It’s all summed up in the word judgmental. This idiotic word says it all: the final censure of a relativist age. It’s wrong to say anything is wrong…. Can it be an accident that back when people were more judgmental, they didn’t shoot each other quite so often? It may seem paradoxical, but it’s quite natural. Simple, even. When you have commonly accepted moral standards, you don’t usually need to resort to force.”

For a memorable example of the perversion of judgment and judgmental, see this blog post by Karen De Coster, a businesswoman of high intelligence and good judgment. She describes how Planet Fitness, an American chain of fitness centers, uses the word judgment in a deceptive advertising campaign – deceptive because it makes a promise that cannot be kept.

The Takeaway: Don’t embarrass yourself by perverting judgment or judgmental. Your intelligent readers may judge you on it. They may – fairly or unfairly – conclude that you are idiotic or immoral.

See disclaimer.