Righting the writing

Ian Cundell's website

2009-08-29T12:47:00.003+01:00

Blimey. I forgot about this place. Life, eh?

I have updated my website. Feel free to have a read about my media training and other stuff.

And drop into Space Captain Smith as well.

Puppets of the West?

2006-11-17T12:49:00.001Z

Today on Yahoo news, there was an article about the President of Pakistan releasing a British man from jail. Apparently he had been cautious about doing so, as he had been accused of being "a Western puppet".

Now, call me a pedant, and maybe I exaggerate a little, but isn't a Western puppet rather different than a puppet of the West? The latter suggests a ruler controlled by the Western powers - the former suggests, to me at least, Sooty in a cowboy hat.

I've been reading a lot of George Orwell's "As I Please" column recently, in which he wrote several articles attacking mixed metaphors used by people who weren't really thinking about the image they put across ("the fascist octopus has sung its swan song" is a particularly good example). This strikes me as a lesser example. Somewhere, the intended meaning and the words have begun to part company. It's not a howler, but it doesn't quite work - and things that don't quite work soon add up.

Clarity begins at the top

2006-11-16T00:58:00.000Z

Earlier this week I took over a job sourcing news stories for a client. Nothing at all fancy and one of those jobs that, once I'm fully tuned into the news flow, will be a straightforward source of modest income.

But I'm not fully tuned in and one of the things I've found is how utterly rubbish many news sites are at remembering to put the publication date on their web pages. In one case it took the best part of 20 minutes to establish that a story was six months old ("tuned it" it would have been five seconds).

Memo to webmasters: everything should be dated. Everything.

Not such a capital idea

2006-10-15T13:11:00.000+01:00

The Web has a Lot to Answer for.

Just as the appalling tendency to Capitalise anything that could be construed as a Noun - or, for that matter, anything that Sounded Cool - was being squeezed out of the English writing Habit, the Web brings it back.

The trouble with electronic communications is that it is Instant. Experienced business people forget that the email just sent is a Business Letter and just type and send. But the Web - well, you would think the design process would weed such nonsense out, but apparently Not.

Except where starting a sentence, none of the capitals in this piece are either necessary or desirable. Redundant capitalisation is never a good thing.

How many tanks?

2006-10-11T11:14:00.000+01:00

Well, here I am! Ian's invited me to contribute the odd article, so I thought I'd start my flagging up something that I noticed yesterday in an old science-fiction novel I happened to open more or less at random. A character is explaining the role of a tank:

"The light tanks are used to scout out enemy positions and cross difficult ground. Its armour is weak, but the weaponry it uses makes up for that."

This is the kind of bad English your eye doesn't quite pick up immediately. I reached the end of the second sentence aware that it wasn't right somehow, and I had to read the quote twice to realise exactly what was wrong. It's that the speaker has switched from a plural as the subject of the first sentence (light tanks) to a singular subject in the second sentence (a light tank), without telling the reader that he's changing the number of tanks being discussed.

So what's so bad about that? We can be pretty certain from the context that the subject is "light tanks in general" throughout the quote. What this does, however, is slows down the eye. Either consciously or not, the reader notices that something in the writing jars, and either goes back to check that he read it correctly, or continues with less certainty than he had before. In either case, the end result is that the writing is weakened, and by slowing the reader you're in danger of losing his concentration and interest in what you've got to say.

Some mistakes make the writer look pompous or stupid; this one is more subtle, making the point you want to put across slightly harder for the reader to see. Little things like this add up easily.

On what basis?

2006-10-05T12:00:00.000+01:00

I grumble about things in a regular basis. In fact, on a daily basis.

No, I don't. I think the "on an [insert word] basis" construction is the single most pervasive example of rubbish English. It is heard daily on broadcast media and written regularly in print media.

Tip: it doesn't make you sound sophisticated, it makes you sound like you are padding.

I'm very, very not not bothered

2006-09-17T15:09:00.000+01:00

The one that common sense lost was when a bunch of Oxbridge knobs decided that common folk from various locales needed a lesson in logic. They declared the exclamation: "I ain't got no bleedin' money" a logical statement.

It wasn't of course - nobody who hears such an outburst would take as a claim to great riches, or even modest means - but it is the battle lost. The double negative is declared bad grammar and that is that.

Curiously, its opposite - the double positive - is simply declared a matter of bad style. Nobody would mistake "I'm very, very happy" as anything other than a little hyperbole. Structurally, syntactically and in terms of meaning it is no different from its Cockney cousin, yet the good working class usage gets condemned.

Of course, neither has much use in business writing, so your exercise for today is to consider the many different way to give emphasis and their strengths and weaknesses.

Infinitive improbability drive

2006-09-04T00:59:00.000+01:00

Before last week I had never noticed that The Times has a blanket ban on the split infinitive enshrined in its Style Guide. Since I worked for The Times (albeit not for very long) I'm guessing I should have spotted this. But let's not dwell on that.

Part of me is surprised at the ban and part of me thinks "What do you expect?". HW Fowler published his now eponymous usage guide in 1926, but had already published his sane, common-sense and definitive essay on the split infinitive before, yet still The Thunderer holds a futile line.

Yet mostly I am reassured. The policy may be wrong - flat out, bug-bonkers, wrong - but it is a constant. The Times is owned by an uncultured Aussie who gave up his nationhood in pursuit of wealth and power and has never shown any sense of history.

Somewhere in his empire, at least, a line is being firmly held.

On a vaguely related note, this is rather cool of The Telegraph.

Situated in close proximity...

2006-08-28T14:05:00.000+01:00

Coco Chanel said: "Fashion changes, style remains".

The 1920s edition of Fowler says of situate "The short form is still common in house-agents' advertisments, but elsewhere out of favour". The 1980s revision has hardened the line: "Used by estate agents. Has no place in common usage".

I'm not sure when house agents became estate agents, but I don't think that is what Coco had in mind.

The trouble with estate agents' redundant verbiage is that it is infecting all business writing (and writing generally). "On an annual basis", "situated in", "in the event that" and so on.

Think how much more information you could show if you cut the crap.

Hale the tyop kong

2006-08-21T12:32:00.001+01:00

I was brought up in an era when anything with a keyboard attached to it was assumed to be something for secretaries to use. At school, and even at university, essays had to be hand written and my undergraduate dissertation was 'typed up' by my sister. I first encountered typed essays at LSE when American students under my supervision handed them in (it was usually horribly over-written, but that is a separate issue). When I started work at a firm of chartered surveyors, I was chided for typing my own material. It was a secretary's job, you see?

In short, I grew up in the era before the personal computer.

The result is, I was never taught to type. Several years ago a workplace ergonomist (seriously) visited my then place of work and this was one of the things we discussed. He said that, as a fast ten-finger typist, it was too late for me to learn to type properly. I took his word for it.

I do not know if this is true, but I do know that it is the source of much frustration to me. My spelling is fine - it always has been. I have a couple of blind spots (their/there), but from my first drafts you would never know. I have to take twice as long proofing stuff than I feel I should because I am all too aware that transposition, mechanical errors (hitting O rather than I for instance) and other problems that arise from trying to do something I've not been properly trained in too fast.

Was I right to take the ergnomist's word? Is it too late to learn to type?

Acronym soup

2006-08-18T17:56:00.000+01:00

Over the past 18 months or so I've noticed an outbreak of acronyms (OoA) in press releases (PR) sent to me, especially (but by no means exclusively (BBMNE)) from public sector organisations (PSO) trying to tell me how wonderful their spiffy new idea (SNI) is and how it is going to transform (T) everyone's work-life balance (W-LB).

And it is really starting to get on my tits, not least because it makes stuff a pig to read, when I suspect those drafting it believe the opposite (whatever the opposite of a pig is).

My friend Dom explained how it has happened: in financial reporting it is essential to be very clear who you are referring to, so if anything is going to be abbreviated then the abbreviating must appear next to it, at first mention. Fair enough - there are regulatory issues in play. But everyone has come to think financial PR is 'proper' PR and is copying.

However, when the release is for a new (say) television advertising campaign to encourage tourists to visit Sunderland, or wherever, it is difficult to imagine a more effective way of killing the pace of the story you are trying to interest an already ill-tempered (or was that just me?) news editor in.

A number of points....

2006-08-14T12:25:00.000+01:00

"A number of"?
How many? Look it up. Find out. "A number of" is just redundant verbiage that signifies you were too lazy to find out how many.
Even if you can't find out how many, leave it out.
Compare these two sentences:
Our proposal attracted interest from a number of investment banks.
Our proposal attracted interest from investment banks.