Mr. Clarity goofs off (5)

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Thesaurus recently published an amusing list of 10 sophisticated insults.

My favorite is #2: twee (sweet or cute in a way that is silly or sentimental). I was introduced to this chiefly British expression by a British client who complained that a speech I had written for him contained a “twee” paragraph. I was young and callow then; I hope I’ve become more observant during the four decades since that embarrassing oversight.

The Takeaway: Enjoy the list. And remember Oscar Wilde’s words: “A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.”

See disclaimer.

The uninhabited clause (19)

The Uninhabited Clause* is a clause with a physical or conceptual subject, as opposed to a human subject. For example, “New York” is a physical subject, “assertiveness” is a conceptual subject, and “Donald Trump” is a human subject. There is nothing inherently wrong with using uninhabited clauses. But when we use a lot of them, we bore and exhaust our readers. They want to read about people.

Here are the first four paragraphs of an article titled “Overuse and Abuse of Adjunct Faculty Members Threaten Core Academic Values,” by Richard Moser:

The increasing exploitation of contingent faculty members is one dimension of an employment strategy sometimes called the “two-tiered” or “multitiered” labor system.

This new labor system is firmly established in higher education and constitutes a threat to the teaching profession. If left unchecked, it will undermine the university's status as an institution of higher learning because the overuse of adjuncts and their lowly status and compensation institutionalize disincentives to quality education, threaten academic freedom and shared governance, and disqualify the campus as an exemplar of democratic values. These developments in academic labor are the most troubling expressions of the so-called corporatization of higher education.

“Corporatization” is the name sometimes given to what has happened to higher education over the last 30 years. Corporatization is the reorganization of our great national resources, including higher education, in accordance with a shortsighted business model. Three decades of decline in public funding for higher education opened the door for increasing corporate influence, and since then the work of the university has been redirected to suit the corporate vision.

The most striking symptoms of corporatization shift costs and risks downward and direct capital and authority upward. Rising tuition and debt loads for students limit access to education for working-class students. The faculty and many other campus workers suffer lower compensation as the number of managers, and their pay, rises sharply. Campus management concentrates resources on areas where wealth is created, and new ideas and technologies developed at public cost become the entitlement of the corporate sector. The privatization and outsourcing of university functions and jobs from food service to bookstores to instruction enrich a few businessmen and create more low-wage nonunion jobs. Increasingly authoritarian governance practices have become the “new normal.”

Don’t be embarrassed if you nodded off. It is soporific text. The author has heavily used uninhabited clauses:

exploitation is
strategy is (implied) called
system is established
system constitutes
it (implied) is (implied) left
it will undermine
overuse, status and compensation institutionalize
overuse, status and compensation threaten
overuse, status and compensation disqualify
developments are
“corporatization” is
that (implied) is (implied) given
what has happened
corporatization is reorganization
decades opened
work has been redirected
symptoms shift
symptoms direct
tuition and loads limit
faculty and workers suffer
number and pay rises (sic for rise)
management concentrates resources
wealth is created
ideas and technologies become
that were (implied) developed
privatization and outsourcing enrich
privatization and outsourcing create
practices have become

Only two of these clauses are inhabited:

faculty and workers suffer
management concentrates resources

The other 26 clauses are uninhabited; all the subjects are conceptual. The rest of the article is the same: almost every clause has a conceptual subject.

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 may sound academic and boring.

_____________________
*My coinage, so far as I know.

See disclaimer.

Gobbledygook (5)

I’ve discussed gobbledygook in four previous posts (for example, here and here). Today I have another good example of gobbledygook for you.

It’s an article by James Kobielus, who works at IBM. In the article, Mr. Kobielus uses gobbledygook such as “the pivotal concept of a holistic customer journey.” He appears to be fond of trendy, overused and misused words (core, drive, experience, focus, issue and parse) and phrases (at the heart of, reality check, and subject matter expert).

Even his job title contains gobbledygook:

IBM Senior Program Director, Product Marketing, Big Data Analytics solutions

Not Big Data Analytics, mind you. Big Data Analytics solutions.

Many other users of gobbledygook do likewise; in an attempt to make topics (and indirectly themselves) sound more important, they add unnecessary nouns after other nouns:

seafood solutions
crisis situation
boarding process
flooding issue
emergency condition
strike action
clearance sale event
audience interactivity elements

You have to keep a close watch on these people; every time you turn your back they debase, dilute and corrupt the language a little more.

The Takeaway: Read the whole article; it’s a good example of how not to write. Don’t use gobbledygook. Shun those who do.

See disclaimer.

Weasel words online

When you buy a ticket online from American Airlines (AA), the AA computer responds with this:

Note: This is not your receipt. You will be receiving your itinerary confirmation along with your receipt soon. You may print your Itinerary & Receipt directly from AA.com once the status is updated from “Ticket Pending” to “Ticketed”.

Except for “AA.com,” these are all familiar English words. But as AA has combined them, the words conceal more information than they reveal. They have become weasel words. Here are the words again, interspersed with the unspoken reactions of an intelligent customer:

Note: This is not your receipt.

Not my receipt? Then what is it, and why are you showing it to me? Where’s my receipt?

You will be receiving

On this page? In an email? In the U.S. Mail?

your itinerary confirmation along with your receipt soon.

“Soon.” Does that mean seconds, minutes, hours or days?

 You may print your Itinerary & Receipt directly from AA.com

Print them from the email you will send me, from this page which is open right now, or – as “directly from AA.com” suggests – by abandoning this page and going to the AA home page? You’re confusing me.

once the status is updated from “Ticket Pending” to “Ticketed”.

And how will I know when or whether that action has been completed? Will I see some notice on this page, in the email you may or may not send me, or on some page I have to go to after I go back to the home page? How long will it take? I just spent more than a week’s pay for an airplane ticket and you won’t even tell me how or where or when I will receive a receipt? Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?

The Takeaway: If you are responsible for the words that your company uses in its online commerce, always keep in mind that you may be insulting thousands of customers every hour. That’s worse than erecting an insulting billboard beside a busy highway. Before you put your words online, have them edited by a careful reader.

See disclaimer.

A digression: writers, pens and typewriters (2)

Walter Cronkite, a journalist as well as a book writer, of course used a typewriter.

The same is true of William F. Buckley.

Somerset Maugham seems to have used a typewriter in his early years.

But in his later years, he appears with a pen in more than one photo (here’s one).

Emlyn Williams used a typewriter.

So did Erma Bombeck.

Anne Sexton used a typewriter. We tend to think of poets as always writing with pens – even quills! But that’s probably just a silly stereotype.

Mark Twain was probably the first famous writer to use a typewriter. The machine was probably a Remington No. 2 (pictured below right).

During his Hartford years, Twain wrote in his billiard room, the sunniest room in the house. His writing desk is partly visible in the right-hand side of the picture below. If you like tours of historical houses, you will love this house.

As Twain was noted for using an early typewriter, Edith Wharton was noted for using a pen. In bed, that is. As the docent explains at Wharton’s house in Lenox, Massachusetts, Wharton did pose at her desk once or twice for a photo (one below), but she actually wrote in bed, accompanied by her dogs. Reportedly, she tossed finished pages to the floor for her secretary to retrieve and type. Wharton was quirky in many interesting ways, and the house tour is fabulous.

The Takeaway: Keep writing.