SUMMARY ---------------------
But it's not enough to simply vomit out of your fingers. It's important
to say what you mean clearly, correctly and well. It's important to
maintain high standards. It's important to think before you write.
The technology of instant -- or near-instant -- communication works
against that. But it's not as if you can't surmount this obstacle. You
only have to be willing to try.
------------------------------
Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone
Commentary by Tony Long | Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Feb, 16, 2006
Years ago, the night news editor at the newspaper where I worked got
upset when his frivolous story judgment was questioned by another editor.
"We can either put out a history book or a comic book," he said, taking
a defensive swipe at a rebellious strand of hair. "I know which one I'm
putting out."
He was clearly a man ahead of his time.
The Luddite
The Luddite
Welcome to the comic-book generation, the post-literate society. The
stories that excited my news editor's imagination then -- the ones
packed with lurid sex, vapid celebrity shenanigans, fallen idols -- are
merely the plat du jour of journalism these days.
It doesn't matter whether you're reading your local rag, surfing the net
or trying to make heads or tails of someone's inane blog -- the quality
bar is set lower than ever, which is saying a lot considering it was
never set very high to begin with.
But I'll save the critical examination of my profession for another
column. Today, I want to talk about one of the byproducts of all this
mediocrity. Today I want to talk about the all-out assault on the
English language and the role technology plays in that unprovoked and
dastardly attack. I especially want to talk about the ways dumbing down
the language is not only seen as acceptable, but is tacitly encouraged
as the status quo.
Any number of my acquaintances excuse the bad writing and atrocious
punctuation that proliferates in e-mail by saying, in essence, "Well, at
least people are writing again." Horse droppings. People have never
stopped writing, although it's reaching a point where you wish a lot of
them would.
The very nature of e-mail (which, along with first cousins IM and text
messaging, is an undeniably handy means of chatting) encourages sloppy
"penmanship," as it were. Its speed and informality sing a siren song of
incompetent communication, a virtual hooker beckoning to the drunken
sailor as he staggers along the wharf.
But it's not enough to simply vomit out of your fingers. It's important
to say what you mean clearly, correctly and well. It's important to
maintain high standards. It's important to think before you write.
The technology of instant -- or near-instant -- communication works
against that. But it's not as if you can't surmount this obstacle. You
only have to be willing to try.
Technology conspires against language in another, more insidious way:
The sheer speed with which things move these days has given us the
five-second attention span, the 10-second sound bite and the splashy
infographic that tells you very little, if anything, while fooling you
into thinking that you are now somehow informed. (Of course, if you need
more than 10 seconds to "get" Mariah Carey, well, shame on you.)
Sadly, this devalues the thoughtful essayist and the sheer linguistic
joy of the exposition. And the language dies a little more each day.
Then there's the havoc wrought on spelling and punctuation by all this
casual communication. You can't lay all that at the feet of technology,
of course. Grammar skills have been eroding in this country for years
and that has a lot more to do with lax instruction than it does with
e-mail or instant messaging. (Math is a different matter. No student
should be allowed to bring a calculator into a math class. Ever.)
But couple those deficient grammar skills with the shorthand that's
become prevalent in fast communication (not to mention all those
irritating acronyms: LOL, WYSIWYG, IMHO, etc.) and you've just struck a
match next to a can of gasoline. And people wonder why the tone of
e-mail is so easily misunderstood.
On another front, we live in a world where the creep of tech and
business jargon threatens to make the language indecipherable to
everyone, even the spewer of this bilge water. It's amazing that any
business gets done at all, with junk like this clotting our
communications arteries.
Business jargon is simply the art of saying nothing while appearing to
say a lot.
As a result, we have CEOs of major corporations who lack the basic
writing skills to pen a simple, in-house memo in plain-spoken English.
We see marketing swine get paid princely sums to lie about their
products in language so bloated with jargon that their lies -- and even
their half-truths -- are unintelligible. We see company flacks churning
out impenetrable press releases that no editor in his right mind would
consider reading, let alone using. We see business reporting reduced to
the trite and formulaic because the reporter is either too uncritical or
too lazy to take a hard look at what lies behind the smoke and mirrors.
Technical jargon, thankfully, is less invasive because most of it is so
geeky that it has no practical application in the real world. Still, a
few words and phrases manage to slip out now and then (help yourself
here), especially when the business and tech boys overlap, which they
frequently do. Eternal vigilance is required to nip these encroachments
in the bud. While tech jargon might be very useful among engineers and
programmers, it should stay among engineers and programmers so as not to
frighten the children and the horses.
Apologists will argue that language isn't static, that it's
ever-changing and evolving. That's true. Language does change. Idiomatic
English is the product of centuries of social and cultural infusion, a
fact that gives modern-day English much of its color and flair.
But when change does violence to the accepted standards of the king's
English and takes the mother tongue into the realm of the unfathomable,
as does almost all jargon coming out of the technology and business
worlds, it's our job as keepers of the grail to drive it back into the
dark little hole from whence it came.
If you've got some time to kill, you're welcome to join us, the happy few.
- - -
Tony Long, copy chief at Wired News, believes that all business majors
should be required to study Latin and minor in English lit.
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--
1) Eat Till SATISFIED, Not STUFFED... Atkins repeated 9 times in the book
2) Exercise: It's Non-Negotiable..... Chapter 22 title, Atkins book
3) Don't Diet Without Supplimental Nutrients... Chapter 23 title, Atkins
book
4) A sensible eating plan, and follow it. (Atkins, Self Made or Other)