Wise words

I spoke at an event this week about how to write clearly. To illustrate my points I used a few quotes, which, now that I've gathered them, I thought I'd share here:

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”

George Orwell

“If you got to use that kind of language about a thing, it’s ninety-proof bull and I’m not buying any."

Big Daddy, in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Think of leads as though they cost you 10 bucks per word, or as if every word were to be engraved on stainless steel while you’re sitting on a hot stove.”

Jack Cappon, Associated Press 

“Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

Samuel Johnson

“If you feel the decorative impulse coming on, lie down until it goes away. Strong feature writing is simple, clear, orderly and free of labored mannerisms and tricks that call attention to the writing itself rather than the substance.”

Jack Cappon, Associated Press

The Cappon quotes are from his brilliant book 'The Associated Press guide to news writing' (previously published as 'The Word') and the Orwell quote is from his 1946 essay 'Politics and the English language'. 

Hard-working families

The Guardian's Mind Your Language column, written by the editors of its style guide, now has its own blog, which has made it straight on to my list of stuff I like.

In the inaugural post, David Walsh asks readers to pick their least favourite cliches from politicians' electionspeak. One of his own pet hates is "hard-working families". I agree. Even just "families" on its own has become something of a buzzword.

When a politician says "families" what they almost always mean is "people". Or have the main parties given up seeking the votes of orphans and single people?

Native Americans?

I recently read a fantastic book called 1491 by Charles Mann, which is all about the Americas before Columbus.

The book isn't just about the history, it's about the history of the history, if you like. It's about how popular views of what the continent was like before Europeans arrived, have changed over time.

I got so engrossed in this excellent book that after finishing it I read all the appendices, one of which is titled 'Loaded words', and is about the language used to describe the people who inhabited America before Europeans arrived.

At this point you are either thinking, "You mean the native Americans?" or, "You mean the Indians?"

Mann writes:

"Anyone who attempts to write or even speak about the original inhabitants of the Americas quickly runs into terminological quicksand. And the attempt to extricate writer and reader by being logical and sensitive often ends with both parties sucked deeper into the mire."

It's a hilarious quirk of language that a whole continent's people got the wrong name because Christopher Columbus didn't know where he was. Indians (the ones in America) are obviously not Indian, because they're not from India. But 'Indian' is far from being the only misnomer in the English language, and let's face it, it has stuck.

The term 'Native American' was popularised in the 20th century as a more accurate and sensitive alternative to 'Indian'. But some people have pointed out that anyone born in America is a 'native American', whatever their ethnic background.

So what's the right thing to say? Obviously you don't want to upset people, but that in itself is a slippery concept (who was upset? When? Why? Was it justified?) Mann says he tried to call groups of people by the name they call themselves (another minefield, not least because none of the people of America thought of themselves as being 'Americans' at all until 'Europeans' showed up). He writes:

"In conversation, every native person whom I have met (I think without exception) has used 'Indian' rather than 'Native American'."

So, based on this experience, he ends up using 'Indian' in most instances, and 'Native American' here and there to avoid repetition.

A lot of nonsense gets talked about which words are or aren't offensive, and a lot of strange arguments get put forward about how the derivation of a word means it should or shouldn't be used. It's good to remember that, actually, things are a lot more mixed up than that, and there probably isn't a right or wrong answer.

Why do foreigners make their languages so hard?

On April 1st, the National Centre for Languages announced "high level negotiations with foreign governments" to get them to simplify their languages for Brits.

The French are looking at merging 'le' and 'la', and a representative of the Goethe Institut reveals details of "an ambitious five-year plan to remove case endings from German nouns".

Have to admit, I went through a good few seconds of outrage before noticing the date on this one.

Why PR is rubbish

Some PR is good. I rely on good relationships with PR people to get a lot of work done. So the title above is a bit mischievous. It's just that so, so often, PR is so, so shit, and I've had several bad experiences just in the last 24 hours, which have made me feel all ranty. Let me share them with you:

• Fudging - Press releases about financial results that only give the figures they want to give. Profit is up 30% - from what to what? Revenue was £2.3m - but what was it last year? It's a private company so I can't look them up anywhere. Press releases are meant to answer questions, not raise them.
• Making stuff up - This one didn't happen to me personally, but similar things have on many occasions. I stumbled upon Ben Goldacre's record of his wrangling with Rentokil about their made-up figures about cockroaches on trains. This sort of thing is endemic in the British press (tabloid and broadsheet alike) - not because PRs are stupid (though many are) but because lots of them just don't care. They feel they have the right to make any claim they want - and don't bother talking to them about evidence or responsibility or survey methodology because they could not give a rat's arse.
• Rampant hyperbole - A press release about a fairly small-scale film competition, mostly involving amateurs, claimed to have uncovered "the most talented filmmaker in the country". This is stated as a plain fact. Later in the release (which was distributed immediately after the winner was announced), he gives an extensive quote about how it felt to win - a work of fiction. This is the sort of release that makes journos feel like they're in a fight with PR: they throw exaggerations, half truths, fudged numbers and complete lies at you, and you try to parry them as best you can. If you're not alert enough or are pushed for time, they'll get some hits in. Is that how it's meant to be?
• Obstruction - PR is meant to help journos get facts right, isn't it? Yesterday I was on the phone to a utility regulator in the UK whose PR person refused (yes, point blank refused) to tell me what penalties the regulator is empowered to issue on companies, on the grounds that I would probably use it to blow the story out of proportion. I tried to tell her that the information was in the public domain, and that I was only ringing up to make sure I didn't misunderstand what I had found buried in long legal documents on the website. But she had already presumed my ill will and incompetence and refused to elucidate any further. As a result my story contained a reference to what I think is the maximum possible penalty the regulator can ever issue (presumably only to be used in cases where people, like, die and stuff). It was impossible for me to write a proper story without reference to what the consequences could be. If the PR had chosen to give me facts rather than hiding them, perhaps I could have given a figure that she, I, and my readers would have preferred.

Dear people of the PR world,

Please stop destroying your industry and making journos hate you.

Warm regards,

ROBOT

In defence of the beeb

I am a defender of the BBC. My main argument in favour of it is that it is awesome.

Especially in the case of online news, the argument that the beeb should get out of the way in order to make life easier for commercial rivals is, IMHO, complete arse.

It's the same sort of confused claptrap you hear from record companies - who are also in the position of having had the business model they relied on for years blown up by the interweb, and resent the fact that it means they have to do things like think and change and experiment and take risk and possibly not make as much money than they used to. Well boo hoo.

David Mitchell put it nicely in a piece in yesterday's Observer:

I understand why the BBC frustrates the private sector – it makes business much harder for them. But I don't know why they expect the public to care, other than out of concern for the Murdoch and Rothermere families' finances. In all their whingeing, they've consistently failed to point to any other country where, thanks to the unfettered function of a free market, better television, radio and online content are available. On the contrary, the BBC is the envy of the world. Why are we letting its competitors, and the politicians they have frightened or bought, tell us that we can't keep it as it is?

I concur.

Is the web killing tabloidese?

Carol Midgley writes in The Times that the internet is killing the art of tabloid speak.

Because the web doesn't have the same constraints of space that print publications do, she argues, there is no need for all the mad little euphemisms and turns of phrase (tot, romp, dub etc) that sub editors have invented over the years, giving rise to such gems as 'Sex romp bus driver clears name'.

I think Midgley is right that the web will kill tabloidese, but I think it's about more than just brevity.

She describes tabloidese as "those words and phrases that red-top newspapers use because they are 'popular' yet have never been uttered in real life by a single person, not once, not ever."

The apparent contradiction she describes is, I believe, quite deliberate. Users of tabloidese are trying to perform a balancing act: sounding down-to-earth, while at the same time sending out the message: "I am a journalist. Look, I speak in special journalisty language. You should listen to me." It's a way of convincing the reader that you're their type of person, while simultaneously setting yourself up as an authority figure and drawing a line of separation between you.

This isn't just the case in the tabloids - the pattern extends to more subtle examples of journalese used in all sorts of media.

If you want to use language to try to set yourself apart from your readers, fair enough, but it seems frightfully old media. One thing that blogs and other web-based sources of information are good at is talking to people on a level. Instead of using language to identify themselves as something different and establish a one-way "I talk, you listen" relationship, they use it to join in the conversation. Because that's what media is increasingly about: conversations.

I think that's the more significant change in the way journalism works online, and I think it's the real reason why the web will kill journalese.