Articles and essays

• In Europe, Going Global Means, Alas, English

  (Current usage/news)
  
  ...As European banks and corporations burst national boundaries and go global, many are making English the official corporate language.
  
  Two years ago, when France, Germany and Spain merged their aerospace industries into one company, they not only gave it an English name - the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, or EADS - they also made English its language.
  
  In Germany, the national postal service, Deutsche Post World Net, increasingly uses English as its working language. Smaller companies are doing likewise. In Finland, the elevator maker Kone adopted English in the 1970's; in Italy, Merloni Elettrodomestici, a midsize home appliance maker, did so in the mid-1990's. Management meetings at big banks like Deutsche Bank in Germany and Credit Suisse in Switzerland are routinely in English
  
  ...
  
  In Toulouse, in the south of France, English has been the official language at the aircraft manufacturer Airbus since its founding more than 30 years ago as a loose consortium of aerospace companies from France, Germany, Britain and Spain. Partly, Airbus executives say, this was because of a bad experience on an earlier project, building the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic jet: Concorde's French chief engineer, despite fluent English, refused memos from his British counterpart unless they were in French.
  
  But the choice also reflected American predominance in civil aviation. "Our documentation was often based on American manuals," said Barbara Kracht, the Airbus spokeswoman. "And it was complicated - you know, there's Boeing slang, G.E. slang, Pratt & Whitney slang."
  
  In executive meetings, if a majority speak French, German or Spanish, then the majority tongue is spoken; the minutes are in English. On the factory floor, local languages prevail.
  
  In Italy, the appliance maker Merloni adopted English in the 1990's. Merloni was a family-controlled, midsize player with a name few had heard of, competing against renowned giants like Electrolux of Sweden and Bosch-Siemens of Germany. Its chief executive at that time, Francesco Caio, believed that English would give Merloni an international image.
  
  The company's subsequent growth cemented the role of English. In 2000, Merloni acquired Stinol, Russia's biggest refrigerator maker, and last December, Britain's Hotpoint, adding 6,000 Britons and 7,000 Russians to the work force. At both Hotpoint and Stinol, English is the language of management.
  
  "I can't give percentages, but now many executives are not Italian - French, English, Danish, Russian and so on," said Andrea Prandi, Merloni's spokesman. "We consider ourselves a European group. For Europe, the official language is English."
  
  ...
  
  Professor Rangan of Insead suspects that the corporate use of English represents "only shallow integration."
  
  "I doubt it's in the board room, and it's not on the factory floor," he said. "So it's a narrow sliver. It's not in labor relations, and it's not in customer relations."
  
  But it does provide a communication tool, "much the way we use mathematics and numbers," he said.
  
  Jussi Itavuori, a Finn who is group vice president for human resources at EADS, agrees.
  
  "It's neither English nor American," he said. "It's some sort of operating language. It loses quite a lot of nuance."
  
  (extract from the "New York Times" site, article by John Tagliabue)
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/international/europe/19ENGL.html

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• Mark Twain and the English Language

  (Language history)
  
  As a barefoot boy sitting on the banks of the Mississippi River, Samuel Langhorne Clemens watched stern-wheeler boats churning the muddy waters, and he heard the leadsmen sounding the depth of the river by calling out to the captains, "By the deep six ... by the mark five ... by the deep four ... by the mark three." When the river bottom was only two fathoms, or twelve feet, down, he would hear the lusty cry "by the mark twain." Long after he left the Mississippi, and after various careers as a riverboat pilot, prospector, and printer, Sam Clemens, now a journalist, contributed an article to the Nevada Territorial Enterprise on February 3, 1865, and signed it with a new name - Mark Twain.
  
  ...
  
  With these sentences, Mark Twain not only began his finest novel but uttered a clarion call for a new way of writing. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain used seven distinct dialects to reflect the speech patterns of various characters, and he also became the first important author to capture the freshness and vitality of the newly hewn American idiom in narrative as well as dialogue. Just as Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is the first significant work written in the English language, Huckleberry Finn is the first novel of world rank to be written entirely in the American language.
  
  The year Twain published his saga of Huck Finn, he wrote in his notebook, "My works are like water. The works of the great masters are like wine. But everyone drinks water." He wrote pure, unalloyed American folk poetry, freed from the straitjacket of literary prose. He stripped his style of all illusion and puffery. More deeply than anyone else had thought to, he tapped the easy grace and direct simplicity of American speech.
  
  ...
  
  Of all the witty statements that Mark Twain said or wrote, none has been quoted more often than his terse response to an alarmist report. Twain was on a visit to London, where he was to be the guest of honor at a literary club dinner. Early in the day the affair was to take place, the secretary of the club was shocked to hear the news that Twain had died suddenly. The distraught officer sought to verify the facts by a diplomatic note to Mrs. Clemens in which he mentioned the whispers of her husband's demise. Twain got hold of the note and telegraphed the now-famous reply: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
  
  (extract from "The Vocabula Review", article by Richard Lederer)
  
  http://www.vocabula.com/VRAPR02Lederer.htm

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• English-only education over bilingual education is explored in Contexts, ASA's newest magazine

  (Education/learning English)
  
  The long war between English-only and bilingual education appears to have been settled, with English-only education winning. But its costs are high for immigrant families, the communities in which they reside, and society as a whole. These conclusions are drawn by Alejandro Portes of Princeton University in a feature article 'English-only Triumphs but the Costs are High' in Contexts, the newest journal of the American Sociological Association. In this article, Portes explores the costs to society of English-only policies and the implications of the bilingual language debate for education. The strong assimilationist bent of American society, supported by the militant advocacy of nativist organizations warning of cultural disintegration, has rendered preservation of foreign languages a near impossibility in the United States. Studies have shown that in a comparison of 35 countries, in no place did foreign languages fade as swiftly as in the United States.
  
  ...
  
  The loss of fluent bilingualism also threatens a vital cultural asset for society as a whole. Research demonstrates that fluent bilinguals outperform limited bilinguals and English-only in standardized tests and grade point averages. The CILS study showed that children who were fluent bilinguals in the early high school years had significantly higher academic aspirations and self-esteem three years later.
  
  Portes says that true bilingual education for immigrant students involves vigorous instruction in English with efforts to preserve the native tongue through selected teachings in that language. For native English speakers, bilingual education starts early, and it includes regular teaching of certain subjects in the chosen language. Portes argues that maintaining bilingual fluency in high school requires a modest investment of one or two hours per day rather than half of the total class time.
  
  (extract from the ASA site)
  
  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-03/asa-eeo032802.php

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• American English

  (Current usage/news)
  
  I have often wondered how W. D. Fowler, the famous lexicographer, composer of 'Oxford English Dictionary' and author of 'Modern English Usage', would have reacted to the way the English language is spoken in the United States, particularly in California.
  
  Almost half of the people living in California are first or second generation non-white immigrants or speak as mother tongue a language other than English. Such liberties are thus taken with the puritan Fowler that he must be turning in his grave outraged at the violence done to the language he cherished and to its niceties and catholic use he preached.
  
  Sir Winston Churchill, a hybrid of an English father and an American mother, had once commented that Britain and America were two nations divided by a common language. Another British writer and wit had observed after a visit to the US: "We have many things in common with the Americans except the language."
  
  When President Ronald Reagan visited London, the then British PM, Margaret Thatcher, had mocked, of course in a lighter vein, "You ain't seen nothing yet".
  
  <...>
  
  Noah Webster, the man who gave America its first homegrown dictionary, argued that in order to win true independence from England, Americans needed to invent their own language, related to English but distinct from it. His contribution to this has no doubt been monumental. But the process had started much earlier and quite naturally.
  
  American English, like Urdu, is the product of the inter-mixture and cross-fertilization of various ethnic groups inhabiting this vast and varied country. The inflexibility of the puritans had thus to yield to the need for quick and easy communication. Waves after waves of immigrants from all parts of the world came to this land seeking freedom of action and pursuing their dreams of achieving something or another. Quick expression with a minimum vocabulary became the norm, not the exception.
  
  <...>
  
  Slangs have further enriched the language and made communication much easier. So many slang words are freely used by even American men of letters that often it becomes difficult to differentiate between a literary or slang expression. Example:
  
  On a visit to America, an old British lady, wary of slang words, asked her American-born granddaughter: "Promise me that you will not use two words while I am around. One is swell and the other is lousy".
  
  "Why sure, grandma", replied the girl "what are the words."
  
  As a slang word, "hip" stands for sophistication and for fashion, hipper and hippest being its superlative forms. If a lady is referred to as being the hippest in her group, don't think that someone is referring to her substantial behind but to her sophistication, her excellence in fashion.
  
  "Waste'em! means kill them in military slang. After thousands upon thousands have been so wasted, one may refer to the event as "no big deal". Good examples of "no big deals" are the massacres in Mai Lai and in Kosovo.
  
  Even the most finicky about the use of slang would run the hardest to grabsomeone else's loose "buck". One elected leader in Islamabad stole it while the other robbed it. You may, if you like, put it the other way round. Both are abroad, having "hell of a time".
  
  If you want to praise some thing, you may use either of the words 'hot' or 'cool'. You may call a deep-freezer as hot and a room heater as cool - both words stand in slang for good and attractive. If you are really much impressed, add the word 'way' to either. You may say: "That is cool, way cool, man". Or, you may call it "groovy - real groovy". Isn't that expressive and convenient?
  
  (extract from the "PakistanLink" site, article by S. Arif Hussaini)
  
  http://www.pakistanlink.com/hussainni.html

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• Can we Defang the N-Word before We Cleanse People's Minds

  (Current usage/news)
  
  "I love black people," comedian Chris Rock says in one of his best-known routines.
  
  "But I hate niggers. It's like our own civil war. On the one side, there's black people. On the other, you've got niggers. The niggers have got to go.
  
  The distinction that Rock, an African American, makes is one deeply embedded in the black community. It is the difference between black people who work hard and struggle honestly to get what they have and those who are lazy, scheming and criminal in their efforts to get ahead.
  
  While most African Americans cringe when a white person utters the so-called N-word, many give black entertainers like Rock a special dispensation to use it. This dichotomy is the heart of "Nigger," Randall Kennedy's controversial new book.
  
  The Harvard professor - who is anything but a Boston Brahmin - dissects with surgical precision the various usages of this racial epithet. He explains why so many African Americans alternately hate the word and love to use it. He recounts the mean-spirited way in which white bigots have employed it, and he explores how the current generation of young whites and blacks are tinkering with its meaning.
  
  In one passage, Kennedy recites the words of rapper Coolio, who intones in one of his songs: "I'm the kind of nigga (a phonetic spelling of the word) little homies want to be like, on their knees in the night saying prayers to the streetlights." In another he recounts how rap legend Tupac Shakur "proclaimed that for him, nigga stood for 'Never Ignorant, Get Goals Accomplished.
  
  These and other attempts to redefine the N-word caused Kennedy to conclude, "There is much to be gained by allowing people of all backgrounds to yank nigger away from white supremacists to subvert its ugliest denotation (OK, so maybe he is something of a Brahmin), and to convert the N-word from a negative into a positive appellation."
  
  I don't think so.
  
  The evolving meanings for this epithet have done nothing to alter its racist taproot. Nearly 250 years of slavery and the Jim Crow century that followed have imbued the word with a meaning that cannot easily be altered. No one who lived through the civil rights movement and saw television images of white housewives screaming the N-word at students trying to integrate Little Rock High School or white Alabama college students screaming this hateful epithet at blacks trying to end racial segregation there can imagine that this word will ever shed it ugly meaning.
  
  And they shouldn't.
  
  The insidious history of this word cannot be dismissed easily. The stain of its use by Klansmen, politicians and average white Americans is too deeply rooted to allow someone to claim it has been redefined simply by turning the topsoil of race relations. Most who attempt to rewrite this word's meaning either don't know its awful history or want to wipe away the memory.
  
  Should the word be redefined before the attitudes that produced it are gone?
  
  For far too many African Americans, the Jim Crow era has been replaced by that of Jim Crow Jr. - a kinder, gentler form of racial discrimination. Bigots who once laced their speech with the N-word now avoid its use in polite society. But while their style has changed, their substance remains the same.
  
  According to Randall, the process of defanging the N-word "is already well under way, led in the main by African-American innovators who are taming, civilizing and transmuting 'the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language.'" But his book was published just weeks after a white reader who differed with something I had written resorted to the word's most hurtful use in rejecting my view.
  
  "The same tired arguments were made by other niggers," the man wrote me. "I'm not some racist that thinks all blacks are niggers. You're black by birth; you're a nigger by choice." That's his new spin on this old racial epithet.
  
  (from the "Gannet News Service", editorial by DeWayne Wickham)
  
  http://www.gannett.com

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• Politics and the English Language (1946)

  (Accents and speech)
  
  Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
  
  Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
  
  [...]
  
  Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution ) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed . Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning withouth those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line . Another example is the hammer and the anvil , now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.
  
  Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc.,etc . The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill , a verb becomes a phrase , made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render . In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining ). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that ; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion , and so on and so forth.
  
  Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate , are used to dress up a simple statement and give an aire of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable , are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion . Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien r&eacutgime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung , are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g. , and etc. , there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous , and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard , etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.
  
  Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality , as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
  
  [...]
  
  But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write -- feels, presumably, that he has something new to say -- and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases ( lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation ) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.
  
  I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned , which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.
  
  To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard English" which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a "good prose style." On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When yo think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to mak on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
  
  Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
  
  Never us a long word where a short one will do.
  
  If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
  
  Never use the passive where you can use the active.
  
  Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
  
  Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
  
  These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.
  
  I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.
  
  (extracts from "Politics and the English Language", by George Orwell)
  
  http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html

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• The need for simple English on the Web

  (Usenet/Netiquette)
  
  This is an age cursed with complexity. On every side we are bombarded. We are yearning for simplicity. Our language has been invaded by an unruly mob of new words and terms. There has never been a greater need to write clear, simple English.
  
  "After removing client-sensitive information, we develop 'knowledge objects' by pulling key pieces of knowledge such as interview guides, work schedules, benchmark data, and market segmentation analyses out of documents and storing them in the electronic repository for people to use."
  
  The above is a statement by a manager at a large consulting firm. It sounds very impressive on the surface. However, just what is a 'knowledge object?' What exactly is an 'electronic repository?' Could a 'knowledge object' be some sort of fancy gadget that through extraordinary feats of rocket engineering and design, Nobel-prize-winning scientists have created a novel environment whereby text and images can be stored and viewed? Or could this 'knowledge object' in fact be that thing we used to call a 'document' back in the good old days? Could an 'electronic repository' in fact be an intranet?
  
  The need to over-complicate language must be a deep and compelling one. Perhaps it harks back to our tribal roots, and the need to have a language or slang that only an elite few can understand. Or perhaps it's because as someone once stated, 'In the mystery lies the margin.'
  
  [...]
  
  George Orwell, another great writer, once wrote: 'If it is possible to cut a word, always cut it.' The Web is the world of the impatient reader. People scan their way across text, looking for the meaning, the relevance.
  
  What do you get when you take Orwell's rule to its extreme? Classification (taxonomy). On the Web we have learned to read by classification; is it in this section of the website or that one?
  
  Unlimited choice scares people. (Practically nobody goes beyond the second page of search results.) Complex language confuses them. Long convoluted documents turn them off.
  
  Time is our scarcest resource. The less time we have the more our attention span contracts. Write simply. Keep headings, summaries, sentences, paragraphs and documents short. Get to the point. Then stop.
  
  (extract from "The need for simple English on the Web", by Gerry McGovern)
  
  http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2002/nt_2002_01_28_simple.htm

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• Defining words can leave some of us tongue-tied

  (Current usage/news)
  
  Several weeks ago I was riding in a cab when the driver's eyes caught mine in the rear view mirror and he said, "Excuse me, Miss? Can you help me?"
  
  As any hard-bitten city dweller knows, the correct answer to a generic "Can you help me?" should always be some version of "It depends." I chirped, "Sure."
  
  "Thank you," he said. He passed a scrap of yellow paper into the back seat.
  
  I stared at the paper, mystified. Was this a joke? A threat? An abridged haiku? Hand-printed on the paper in tiny block letters was this:
  
  proverb
  
  peculiar
  
  idiomatic
  
  "Please," he said. "What is the meaning of these words?"
  
  [ ... ]
  
  Until that moment, I'd been so inspired by the driver's determination to learn English, so enthralled by the chance to indulge my curiosity about words with another curious soul, that I didn't fully grasp the potential for linguistic fraud perpetrated in this man's cab. Now I could barely allow myself to imagine what kind of warped English he was being fed by cowards like me who couldn't simply say, "I don't really know my own language."
  
  I can only trust that someone as curious as he is also owns a dictionary. And that he figures out that, no matter what his passengers may say, haste doesn't always make waste at the gapers block.
  
  (extract from "Defining words can leave some of us tongue-tied", Mary Schmich, "The Chicago Tribune")
  
  http://chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0201160120jan16.column

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• Why bad grammar ain't so bad

  (Grammar)
  
  Even graduates of France's top university have been offered help writing official letters. But is perfect grammar really that important asks BBC News Online's Ryan Dilley? It seems even attending a world class university cannot adequately equip modern graduates with the skills required to pen a formal letter.
  
  The Sorbonne in Paris has decided a two-year course in letter writing is required to instruct students in the art of corresponding with officialdom.
  
  "Don't you have spell checkers in London, Tony?"
  
  It is not only the notoriously precise French who are horrified by the inability of some citizens to adhere to the rules of grammar. On this side of the Channel there are many who grumble that standards of formal English just ain't what they used to be.
  
  The conventions of grammar and punctuation do seem to be falling victim to a new informality in our written communications. At the spearhead of this onslaught is e-mail.
  
  Two-thirds of those aged 18-24 admit to being more concerned about the content than the grammatical correctness of their electronic missives.
  
  Bad spelling btw :(
  
  Even one in four older e-mailers say they don't worry about grammar when tapping out a message.
  
  Oddly, the majority of those questioned in this MSN survey said they were annoyed by errors in e-mail they receive.
  
  Tolerance for mistakes reaches an even lower ebb when words are set to paper.
  
  "I r a genius"
  
  This year, a Royal Mail survey of companies showed poorly-written letters and literature were a major turn off.
  
  Using such errors as an indicator of their wider professionalism (or rather lack of), bosses said they would not do business with a firm that couldn't weed out grammatical mistakes.
  
  Unbelievably, even overcharging was seen as a less serious business-loser than missing an apostrophe. The survey calculated dodgy writing skills could be costing offending firms 2bn in lost contracts.
  
  It's not only managers who get irritated about such mistakes. Earlier this year Wigan MP Neil Turner returned a letter to a constituent having added his own handwritten corrections of the correspondent's mistakes.
  
  (extract from the BBC News site)
  
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1235000/1235401.stm

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