I. Introduction

Not long ago, I was casually complaining to some bureaucrats about the sorry state of English prose in office documents. They nodded in agreement and shrugged their shoulders as if to say, “Yes, of course, but what can you do about it?” I got the sense that they were just humouring me. So I pulled out a copy of Don Watson’s Death Sentences from my briefcase and read out an example just to see if I could provoke them. “Increased energy for improving employment outcomes for women can be obtained by engaging a broad range of men as EO partners … [and] a focus on outcome targets without an emphasis on improved employment practices will not deliver support from men and will not result in sustainable changes to improve gender equity outcomes.” (p. xxv) They shrugged again. A few minutes later another bureaucrat approached me with a request. “I couldn’t help but overhear what you were reading about gender equity this morning. That was great! Would you mind forwarding me a copy so I can include it in a report I’m writing?” I slapped my forehead in disbelief.

Vague bureaucrat-speak has become commonplace and so has apathy. This form of English usage undermines our ability to communicate effectively. At best, a person understands the gist of what is being said but can’t interpret anything specific. At worst, this type of prose corrupts thinking. I just read a document that chastises some people for not “delivering on vision goals”. Vision goals? Delivering? On? None of these words belong together. What could the writer be thinking? Is the underlying idea clear in his mind? Or is he using such terms out of lazy habit instead of thinking the matter through carefully? Are poor writing skills to blame? Perhaps the writer’s close colleagues have grown accustom to that combination of words and it means something to them. Maybe he wants to appear clever and authoritative. Or maybe these terms are used to manipulate. Regardless of the cause, the use of vapid language has sapped our willingness to pay attention. A senior executive once confessed to me, “I’m fed so much bad paperwork, I now read diagonally.” Meaning: I’m so sick of poorly crafted prose that I skim read most of what I’m given, skipping to the first and last passages in each block of text. Suffice it to say, he is not an engaged reader.

As a researcher, I have a special concern. The decay of language conflicts with the researcher’s job of interpreting others and expressing ideas clearly. There is a duty to be forthright (disclosing details and assumptions) and resist being vague to evade criticism. As with all writing, reports of research findings should appeal to an audience and be easy to understand. In their classic textbook The Modern Researcher (1985), Barzun & Graff included two chapters on the subject. They make a forceful point:

Jargon, clichés, and tricks of speech … are not simply sets of words or faults of writing, but forms of escape. They denote a failure of courage, an emotional weakness, a shuffling refusal to be pinned down to a declaration. The cowardice comes out on paper like fingerprints at the site of the crime. (p.307)

Moreover, research requires attention to detail and self-scrutiny. So when a research report lapses into impenetrable English it just looks like a half-hearted or amateurish effort.

Clarity comes from the use of plain language.

What is plain language? To quote Blamires, plain language “is genuine and direct, unspoiled by any hint of the bogus or the pretentious, English which is clear and open as the day, which claims no special attention to itself but rather melts away into what it conveys.” (2000, p. 1) Authors resist unnecessary embellishment, loaded terms, and code-words. There is no waste. The prose is not simplistic nor primitive, but it is as simple as it needs to be without sacrificing meaning and readability. Plain language is fundamentally about being precise, meaningful, and (above all else) clear.

Plain language is also a pleasure to read. As Primo Levi puts it: “Clarity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition: one can be clear and boring, clear and useless, clear and untruthful, clear and vulgar …”[1] Of course, there is a tension between clarity and artistry insofar as very figurative and flowery language can be confusing. But the tension does not exist if authorial creativity and flair adds to the depth of meaning.

And in case you’re wondering: plain language is persuasive. In my experience, documents written in bureaucratese are never praised as anything better than competent. They are quickly forgotten. Plain, to-the-point writing gets attention and makes ideas memorable, provided you have something worth communicating in the first place.

I’d like this review essay to be yet another wake-up call. That said, my motives for writing it are mostly selfish. A few years ago, I found myself lapsing into lazy patterns of writing: passive sentence structures, officious diction, management buzzwords, et cetera. My writing style had become corrupted. Many bad habits had to be unlearned. This realisation led me to delve through a stack of books about writing plainly. It’s an enormous investment of time but a worthwhile one. Here are some of the things that I learned.

II. Orwellian Vision

George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language (2004 [1946]) was first published half a century ago but contains lessons that are far more applicable today. Orwell argues that English usage lacks precision and relies on stale imagery. Banal statements are made to appear profound by using the passive writing voice, worn-out metaphors and idioms, sentences padded with polysyllabic words, and pretentious diction. Directness is lost when simple verbs (e.g., break, mend, and kill) are replaced by general-purpose ones (e.g., serve, form, and render). Sentences sound flat when simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by connector phrases (e.g., with respect to, the fact that, and in view of). Words of Latin and Greek origin give the appearance of elegance and culture at the cost of ambiguity, especially when a prefix (e.g., de-) or affix (e.g., -ize) is added to create nonsense words (e.g., deregionalize). Ready-made phrases are used habitually without much thought given to their meaning. As Orwell famously puts it: “As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.” (p. 132)

Orwell illustrates this by rewriting a Bible verse using only prefabricated, general-purpose phrases: “Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.” (p. 140) Does this sound familiar? If so, then it is probably not because you recognise the verse. It is familiar because it sounds like the empty sentences you read all the time at work.

Orwell saw how this usage fed on itself. Modern usage covers up a lack of rigourous thinking or, worse, makes incompetent thinking appear sophisticated. As more people express themselves using sloppy phrases, thinking becomes lazy and leads to a further degradation of usage. It is easier to speak vaguely than precisely, so as people write at a faster pace on subjects they do not fully understand, it is tempting to use prefabricated phrases that conceal muddled thinking. It’s a downward spiral.

Orwell’s essay is arguably best known for its discussion of the language of modern politics. Euphemism, question begging, needless repetition, and vague turns of speech are increasingly used as instruments of politics. When politicians are speaking about controversial subjects, euphemism and vagueness help them evade responsibility. Euphemism takes the emotion out of hardship and brutality, as examples, because it makes it difficult for audience members to form mental pictures. In other words, euphemism corrupts thought by turning unpleasant realities into vague and boring abstractions, thus anaesthetising the listener.

Most of the books reviewed here draw heavily from Orwell’s essay, a debt which many of the authors acknowledge. One author even appended the essay to his book, which is why I am reviewing it here. However, there are a few excellent points made by Orwell that are not discussed at length in these books.

The first point is about the writing of academics, experts, and the cultured élite. For example, Orwell complains about the vagary of literary criticism and art criticism. Words like romantic, sentimental, and plastic are thrown around so freely that sensible dialogue between critics becomes all but impossible. At the time Orwell wrote his essay, academic writing had become extremely difficult for a layperson to understand. Surprisingly, recent books on the state of English pay little attention to academic writing, possibly because it is seen as an easy target and a lost cause … or perhaps critics are daunted by having to wade through it all. This is a strange omission given that the self-appointed plain-language police—lobby groups such as Plain English Campaign—are extremely critical of academics who mangle the language.

The second point is about people who try to convey the emotional gist of what they are feeling without caring much about detailed meaning. Whereas the euphemism pacification does not conjure up the image of soldiers burning down villages, the mixed metaphor “canker and atrophy of the soul” conjures up many images but conveys very little. Some overwrought phrases could mean almost anything. Orwell wonders about this one: “the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma’amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!” Believe me, nothing in the rest of the sentence provides a clue as to its meaning. All of these qualifiers suggest disapproval of some sort—of matronly prigs, I’m guessing, but that’s all I can discern. In the present day, we can see this type of usage everywhere in advertising. The emotion provoked by a word is treated as more important than the actual meaning.

Orwell’s argument is not entirely convincing. Orwell was a defender of “Englishness” for most of his life. This leads him to overstate the case against adopting foreign words for the sake of clarity and emotional resonance. Past political movements intent on creating a “pure” English language demonstrated that purity is neither possible nor desirable. A foreign word, once known to the reader, can add to the clarity and artistry of writing. As Christopher Moore (2004) shows with many examples, these words help readers see how something is perceived differently in another culture. In some cases, an English word or term does not exist to express something and meaning is lost when translating a suitable foreign term. By absorbing these foreign words, English becomes a much more comprehensive language. I don’t regard words such as shampoo (Hindi) and karaoke (Japanese) as threats to clarity.

The second shortcoming is Orwell’s faith in journalists to jeer bad English into disuse. According to Orwell, they were able to do this with the terms “explore every avenue” and “leave no stone unturned”, so why not others? Obviously, these hackneyed phrases have not been eradicated by journalists, nor have countless others. The larger error is the failure to foresee journalism as a major source of mangled usage, a subject the recent books discuss at length.

III. From Prescient Vision to Present Reality

In Lost for Words, John Humphrys revisits Orwell’s complaints and surveys the loss of clarity in the English language of today. Lax grammar, teen slang, cliché, occupational jargon (bureaucratese, legalese, and journalese), marketing speak, and slack Americanisms have become prevalent. Clarity is further undermined in more subtle ways. When nouns become verbs and visa versa, or when verbs are abandoned entirely, meaning is difficult to pin down with any accuracy. Similar ambiguities are caused by redundant terms (e.g., “past history”), uplifting and fear-mongering language (“hurrah” and “boo” words), tick words (e.g., frankly), filler speak, and frequently misused words, propositions, and verb tenses. The use of passive sentence structures and words derived from wholly Latin-based language has continued unabated since Orwell’s time. The most strident critique is left for euphemism. Euphemism has become a popular tool of manipulation and evasion because of its power to obscure meaning, provoke emotional reactions, and frame issues in an underhanded way. As you would expect, politicians don’t get off lightly in this book, especially those Humphrys has interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s current affairs programme Today.

The quandary, according to Humphrys, is figuring out what is acceptable and what is not. It is not always obvious if a popular phrase should be deemed a cliché, except for those instances when it is used to exaggerate or conceal a lack of rigorous thinking. A coinage can add nuance and vitality to the language, it is argued, unless it is a bit of posh posing or youthful gibberish. The goal is common usage and clear meaning so that communication is pleasurable and easy to understand.

Lost for Words has shortcomings. Several tangents give the impression that Humphrys is anxious to dump all his linguistic peeves into a single volume. For instance, there is a passage devoted to stray opinions about British pronunciation (glottal stops suggest a lack of sophistication and so forth). The final chapter is a lengthy rant in which Humphrys takes swipes at various public figures and political doctrines. Many of the attacks are on easy prey (e.g., George W. Bush and U.K. National Health Service reformers), while several targets require a more thorough rebuke (e.g., Anthony Giddens). It isn’t that some of these targets don’t deserve it. It’s that Humphrys’ isn’t as good at revealing their obfuscation as he supposes. This is especially the case in his radio interviews, which deserve some scrutiny too.

In Death Sentences, Don Watson does a better job of articulating my complaint about Humphrys’ interview style. The mainstream news-media demand that politicians be categorical (e.g., “What’s the answer, yes or no?”) and put pressure on them to hedge. Politicians are often asked to reply to unanswerable and sensationalist questions. As Watson puts it, “Weasel words are no less the product of their environment than weasels are.” (p. 81) Humphrys’ specific method is: wind-up the interviewee with a barrage of baiting and leading questions, interrupting in mid-sentence if the answer isn’t going in the right direction; once the interviewee is rattled, ask a lurid question as a provocation. Here the onus is on the interviewee to “clear the air”, to use a euphemism that Humphrys won’t give up. In such no-win situations, it is easy to see why politicians rely on vagaries and evasions … or they just don’t show up and let the “spin doctors” do the talking.

Watson’s book is a good supplement to Lost for Words for two other reasons. First, Watson discusses weasel-words, management-speak, and euphemism as its focus, so he offers much greater depth of analysis. Second, Watson approaches clarity and meaning problems from the other side of the divide; he is not a journalist, but a former speech-writer and consultant who became fed up and rebelled. Watson isn’t pissed-off that politicians are stonewalling him. He was once the back-room apparatchik handing them ammunition. He’s pissed-off about his eleven-year-old grand-daughter being forced to compose a personal mission-statement using PowerPoint slides. The degradation of language became personal.

Watson’s scorn is mostly directed towards “dead words” and “death sentences”.

A dead word is jargon that anesthetizes, sounds vapid, covers up a lack of rigorous thinking, obfuscates and manipulates, or lacks clear meaning (or could mean almost anything). Above all, it is unoriginal and clichéd. Examples of dead words and phrases include: actioned, closure, commitment, core, customer, deliverable, empower, enhance, flexible, going forward, impact, implement, input, in terms of, issue, outcome, robust, strategy, and values. Watson appends a longer list to the end of his book.

A death sentence lacks clarity and character because it is a combination of these dead words. There are also fewer verbs. The verbs are vague and passive. There is no rhythm to the sentence, no active voice, no directness. The message sounds innocuous, pedestrian, or incomprehensible. The sentence may be a slogan, but even if it is, it doesn’t ring; it has little emotional resonance and meaning and, thus, is rarely memorable. Here is an example from government: “Given the within year and budget time flexibility accorded to the science agencies in the determination of resource allocation from within their global budget, a multi-parameter approach to maintaining the agencies budgets in real terms is not appropriate.” (p. 170) The problem isn’t so much that a sentence like this can’t be decoded. It’s that it is difficult to make oneself care enough to bother trying. These sentences make the mind drift.

Much attention is given to how and why this dead language is spreading. Organisations rely on consultants, “communications” experts, and “script-doctors” to rewrite prose (i.e., they “word-smith”), which separates thinking from writing. Drawing from Orwell, Watson argues that these sentences require less effort and imagination to write. The language eventually frames the way people think. Terms are used out of habit and sloppy thinking. Watson relates Orwell’s ideas to modern media and the public relations industry. Modern media and technology privileges images over words. When words are used, it’s mostly an abbreviated form of signage; as if “‘cookies’ written on a cookie package, or ‘gorilla’ written on a gorilla cage, tells us about cookies and gorillas.” (p. 82) We are increasingly being marketed to and the vocabulary of marketing is creeping into common ways of speaking. Politicians try to take the risk out of what they say, so they use apparently harmless words that have coded meanings that resonate differently with different audiences (a tactic called dog whistling). As a result, our public language is becoming less subtle, less sensitive, and less articulate.

I am left wondering whether Watson leaves any room for, what empiricists call, complex concepts. A complex concept is a term that summarizes several related ideas or, put another way, is an idea with several dimensions. The term totalitarian and democracy are examples, ones which Watson uses without apparent concern. (This is strange given that totalitarian is a fuzzy concept compared to, say, authoritarian or dictatorship; the root words “total” and “totality” don’t relate to the actual meaning of the term in a straightforward way.) Several others concern him a great deal, such as accountability and transparency. I’m not so sure that accountability is an empty buzzword, for it is difficult to think of democracy without it. I would define it as: the duty of elected representatives to (a.) report what they’ve done or haven’t done, (b.) answer questions about it, and (c.) change government policy within their purview if the need for change is acknowledged. I accept that it is a complicated notion. Others may not agree that my definition captures the concept entirely, or even correctly. However, it seems perfectly acceptable to use such concepts if you adequately explain what you mean by them. Watson insists that people are no longer inclined to do that. Does that mean we can no longer use the concepts?

Watson has an easier time attacking terms like transparency and its usage, partly because of its recent origins and the ambiguity of the metaphor. He asks why we don’t simply call it “disclosing information”? If that is all that is meant by transparency, then I would agree: use the simpler term. But what if transparency means disclosing information and independent verification of the information’s accuracy and allowing employees to leak information about wrong-doing to the public? It would be necessary to itemise all those things as clearly as possible, but it does not preclude using the term transparency as a summary device after doing so. This is an approach to word usage that Watson ignores or implicitly dismisses. As we’ll see later in this essay, many of the words we think of as simple and clear also have many dimensions and connotations. The point is to clarify ambiguous terms while using them (not taking the audience’s knowledge for granted) and use them sparingly. Only if the term is used to manipulate surreptitiously—as with loaded terms—should it be avoided entirely.

I start with Orwell, Humphrys, and Watson because they survey the debasement of English usage in general. Attention now turns to an examination of the specifics.

IV. Obscurity in the Office

In Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, Fugere et al. attack the “jargon, wordiness, and evasiveness” in business-speak. The authors claim that most business people try to impress, not inform, and avoid using concrete language because they’re afraid of committing themselves. Most business activities are bland and of little consequence, so attempts are made to romanticise, sermonise, over-generalise, hard-sell, and hype; using “fifty-cent words to make a five-cent point.” (p. 18) The problem isn’t with jargon per se but with gratuitous jargon. Technical terminology has its place if used appropriately and respectfully. Gratuitous jargon—that is, bullshit and bafflegab—allows business people to fake an understanding of something and bluff their way through an argument. Brevity, clarity, and directness are the products of careful and rigorous thought. So gratuitous jargon and pre-digested ideas—mixed and repackaged with word-processor cutting-and-pasting and general-purpose templates—have bloated office documents and presentations. The human voice becomes lost as communication becomes depersonalised, predictable, clichéd, and humourless. Acronyms are everywhere, adding confusion because each one isn’t self-evident and could refer to so many different things. The net effect of all this obscurity, which Fugere et al. liken to the fog of war, is to make businesses dumb and tedious.

The realities of organisational life encourage this obscurity. Criticism and bad tidings are the prerogative of the powerful—they are instruments of control and influence. Those without power become “happy messengers” who gloss over bad news and fret about the “negative tone” of candid messages. That distorts meaning and removes many blunt words from the vocabulary. Business managers also tend to be compulsive fiddlers, not content to leave well enough alone. Strengths are not left to speak for themselves. As the authors put it: “[business people] embellish and contour and augment things until they resemble one of those poor fools who’s made one too many trips to the plastic surgeon.” (p. 26) These people also worry about offending others and avoid the risk inherent in humour. Mistakes are frowned upon and no one wants to admit to being fallible. All told, organisations have a built-in bias against natural speech. Lawyers, public relations officers, and supervisors (under the guise of “coaches”) reinforce this conformity.

Fugere et al. are business consultants. That makes them apparently duty-bound to offer pop advice at every opportunity. Most of it amounts to: stop doing that, try doing the opposite instead! That advice is not very helpful for reforming the systemic biases and incentives just mentioned. It is also meagre. For instance, when the advice is to add humour to work, the authors point to some clever quotations and advocate self-deprecation. Or when advocating words that have greater resonance, they offer a “starter list” of “intriguing words” such as sizzling, wizard, lollapalooza, iridescent, and staccato. These all seem cryptic and hyperbolic within a generic business context. Much of the advice is intended to illustrate but it comes across as superficial half-measures or contrary to the authors’ thesis. In their day jobs, the authors remain within the world of consultancy clap-trap. It shows. The authors admit to being “recovering jargonaholics” but not fully recovered ones. Why else would they use terms like outsourcing and turbocharged without apparent irony in a book that opposes gratuitous jargon? Why would they criticise “cheesy clip art” illustrations in slide presentations and, instead, advocate the use of slightly-less-cheesy, clip-art photography? Also, the authors’ irritating corniness doesn’t add credibility to their sections on humour and tedium … unless, of course, their typical reader is easily amused.

At the end of Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, Fugere et al. offer a “bull spotter’s guide”—a lexicon of jargon, to put it in plainer words. This adds to Watson’s list of dead words. Choice specimens include: action item, best of breed, centre of excellence, drill down, incentivise, leverage, synch up, utilise, and touch base. Notice that these terms are used more in bureaucracies than in public discourse. Lois Beckwith has written a bigger lexicon called The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit. Each term is accompanied by a serious definition (insofar as that is possible), a sarcastic re-interpretation, and a dismissive judgement. Besides jargon, Beckwith includes a lot of business euphemisms (e.g., business class and conference call), common activities (e.g., management training, marketing, and business trip), and slang (e.g., juice baiting, nastygram, office slut, and hundo). Not all of these words are used by business people. Some are sarcastic terms used to describe questionable business practices (e.g., a permalancer is a temporary employee who is strung along on endless short-term contracts without the usual employee benefits). Much of this book seems to be inspired by Scott Adam’s Dilbert cartoon, which is probably the best running-commentary about obscurity in the office.

V. Political Manipulation

Steven Poole’s book Unspeak adds to our understanding of manipulative language. What does Poole mean by “unspeak”? The word is defined on the cover of the book in faux-dictionary style: “unspeak 1. n. mode of speech that persuades by stealth.” (It’s used as an adjective too.) These are terms and phrases that convey unspoken arguments, often silencing others by making their views somehow seem unacceptable or suspicious. Why not just use the term euphemism instead? It’s too crude a term, he claims. He also doesn’t like “doublespeak”—saying one thing while meaning another—because he considers that to be just a euphemism for lying. Poole thinks Orwell’s view is too limited. He’s thinking about a broader collection of wily tactics.

So what does this collection encompass? That’s difficult to pin down because the book is mostly commentaries about particular terms and political gambits. My list of the varied ways Poole uses the term unspeak includes:

• loaded terms, a word or expression that implicitly frames a debate or is intended to slyly lead an argument in a particular direction;
• euphemism, terms and phrases that obscure an issue or are intended to distract from the heart of a matter;
• bafflegab, vague but sophisticated-sounding jargon used to bluff one’s way through an argument;
• code words, terms and phrases with multiple meanings that are used to send different messages to different audiences, or terms that allow a person to make a controversial claim while being ambiguous enough to deny making the claim;
• sound bites, compact and memorable messages that condense a complicated argument or mock something, often to score cheap debating points;
• generic labels, bland terms and number-letter sequences assigned to an item that do not offer much (if any) descriptive detail and, in some cases, are used to downplay the controversial nature of an item;
• dismissive names, derogatory terms used to label opponents, sometimes subtly, so that their arguments are not fully considered or are completely dismissed;
• false dichotomies, reducing a multifaceted topic or debate into a crude distinction between two opposing camps;
• bad analogies, an inappropriate comparison that is intended to mislead;
• debased words, a common term that is misused repeatedly in order to twist the meaning and reduce its emotional resonance;
• debased principles, a value-laden and cherished precept (such as freedom and liberty) that is misrepresented repeatedly, often to justify violation of the precept;
• waffle, a switch of stated positions in a debate, often under the guise of “clarification”, in order to evade criticism;
• cheerleading and self-justifying names, labels given to policies, initiatives, and organisations that imply a rationale for their existence and support (e.g., the military campaign called Operation Just Cause).

Admittedly, it is not always easy to make such fine distinctions in the cases that Poole raises. I doubt that Poole would appreciate his detailed analysis of rhetoric condensed into a handy list. I’m guessing this is why he prefers the cryptic, catch-all term “unspeak”. This coinage won’t catch on because Poole has trademarked it, signaling that you’re not welcome to just bandy the term about. Someone must have already trademarked the word “spin”. I’m wondering if part of the problem is that, these days, so many writers coin their own catchword to give the impression of special insight.

Poole’s main thesis is that politicians (and other powerful people) use mangled English in calculating ways to surreptitiously persuade the public and evade criticism. Poole cautions against dismissing such usages as simple-minded or ignorant, although many of his examples do show clumsiness. Few causes are cited, although self-interest, ideology, and the spread of professional “media management” seem to be partly to blame. Ultimately, the aim should be to create a more neutral and explicit language, suggests Poole in passing.

William Safire’s No Uncertain Terms looks at clarity problems using a different type of analysis. Safire studies the origins of terms and the history of usage (i.e., etymology). He looks at the meaning (or meanings) of vague words and reveals the ambiguity of seemingly plain ones. This approach adds some complications ignored by the other authors. First, even the meaning of overly used buzz-words and silly slang can be determined with a bit of effort and, therefore, they can be stipulated to clarify. Second, the meanings and connotations of most words are in flux over decades and centuries, or even shorter periods. Third, simple words can be a tool of manipulation in much the same way as jargon depending on how the rhetoric is crafted. Being clear is not always easy and the use of common words doesn’t ensure forthrightness. As if to demonstrate the contested and ambiguous meaning of many words, Safire doesn’t attempt to explore linguistic uncertainty on his own. The book is the latest compilation of his New York Times column, with corrections and opinions from readers forming part of the analysis.[2]

Poole’s is fixated on the rhetoric of George W. Bush and his administration. Politicians on the left of the political spectrum (other than Tony Blair) mostly escape criticism. In contrast, when Safire joined the New York Times, many staffers complained about the appointment because of Safire’s conservative views. Over the years, as this compilation shows, he has come to correct and critique politicians from across the political spectrum. Safire’s book is a wider ranging and more even-handed look at the evolution of political jargon.

VI. Muddled Thinking, Muddled Composition

Recall that Orwell claims that muddled language often comes from muddled thinking. In Compose Yourself and Write Good English, Harry Blamires expands on Orwell’s point. The focus is on composition, the process of bringing consistency and coherence to communication by carefully crafting it. Blamires describes it as a struggle against inner conflict: “Anyone concerned for good English usage must be aware that to ‘compose’ well in speech or on paper is to produce a fabric in which the parts fit together harmoniously … ‘Compose yourself!’ is generally advice to get rid of any disquiet, confusion or turmoil that may be disturbing the system.” (p. 6) Much of the inner conflict comes from the bad usage that “contaminates” or “infects” our minds from daily exposure. “Modish cliché”, “fashionable wordiness”, and lax media-speak devalue the older virtues of directness, simplicity, and clarity. Logic will save us: “Logic is that branch of study in which there is careful analysis of the patterns of reasoning that we follow when arguing a case. It trains us to be exact in our thinking and precise in our utterance, oral or written.” Well said.

Much of the book is a catalogue of good and bad English, drawing heavily from Blamires’ giant repository of examples. His other recent book, The Penguin Guide to Plain English (2000), covers much of the same ground but offers a much larger collection of examples.

The Blamires method starts with finding the right word, one which caries the right meaning instead of one that is used out of thoughtless habit. Avoid abused words or use them precisely (e.g., aspect, deliver, focused, implement, and solution). Avoid “ready-made vocabulary” that offers inappropriate or vague connotations. Avoid words that add intensity at the expense of meaning (e.g., terrific and incredible, which are often used without consideration of their specific meaning). Next, craft sentences that are consistent and coherent, not sentences that force the reader to muddle through grammatical and logical lapses. This requires us to pay careful attention to our use of “binding” words that create a logical sequence (e.g., in, to, for, of, by, at, with) while avoiding overused connector terms (e.g., in terms of). Keep to the point. Guard against meaning that shifts within a sentence or paragraph. Use metaphors to evoke an image but avoid inexact, debased, and mixed metaphors. Avoid clumsy mixtures of the literal and figurative meanings of a term. Be careful when using “stand-in” words (e.g., they, them, it, this, him/he, and her/she) and make sure they connect to their subject.

Blamires ends with a brief look at the “spread of turgidity” in business-speak, which includes many of the bad habits discussed by Orwell: abstract nouns (e.g., sustainability), general-purpose verbs (e.g., promote), the overuse of nouns within a single sentence, and the overuse of polysyllabic nouns. Blamires quotes Winston Churchill to sum up the wordiness that results from these habits: “He has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.”(p. 241) Churchill was talking about Ramsay MacDonald but the description fits the thoughtless bureaucrat just as well.

It’s difficult to summarize Blamires’ book in a few paragraphs. And both of his books deserve to be studied in depth because, together, they form the most comprehensive discussion of what ails English usage. These books have been the most helpful in my attempts to improve my writing.

In Between You and I, James Cochrane presents the grumpy-old-editor contribution to the debate. He’s most concerned by our cavalier attitude towards word usage. His main peeve is exemplified by the term “bored of”, which seems to be a conflation of “tired of” and either “bored by” or “bored with”. Or we use a superfluous of when someone falls off something (as in “falls off of”). We often fail to pay attention when using connector words such as of, with, than, from, and on. He hates meaningless repetition (“is, is” or “was, was”) and, of course, euphemism. Sadly, he hates “sentence adverbs” such as the one at the beginning of this sentence. (Sorry Mr. Cochrane, I’m not giving up my “sentence adverbs”, as you call them, except for the most obnoxious ones, such as frankly and clearly.) He hates jargon like incentivise, which is slightly less annoying than incent, the more fashionable term in business books lately. And as you’d expect from a cranky editor, misstated terms drive him crazy (e.g., free reign instead of free rein, or in the throws of instead of in the throes of). These make the writer seem unsophisticated, even when they’re trying to seem sophisticated. The best example is in the title of the book—the so-called toff’s error “between you and I”—which is a fear of using the word me because it seems crude.

Cochrane’s book has the same format and style as Kinsley Amis’ excellent The King’s English (1999). These are alphabetised compendiums of peeves and preferences. Alphabetisation seems arbitrary unless these books are intended to serve as references. Both books are too short and selective to work effectively as reference books. Cochrane writes with an argumentative voice in each entry in an attempt to make the book easier to read straight through. However, he isn’t as successful as Amis, a venerable novelist who provides detailed rationales for his judgments.

Cochrane cites many bad habits and errors. I wouldn’t attributes all of these to being mentally lax and apathetic. When reading Amis, you get a better sense of how quirky the English language is. Ask anyone trying to learn English and they’ll tell you that they’re often frustrated by the lack of consistent rules in the language. You’ll discover why English is so quirky by reading Melvyn Bragg’s The Adventure of English (2004). At many points in history, English has had to cope with enormous regional variation and lack of strict rules. When standardisation came, it was the result of arbitrary decisions by central bureaucrats, influential authors, typesetters, publishers, dictionary writers, and so forth. Or mass adoption and geo-political circumstance settled a particular usage. That’s why English speakers have to learn so many strange usages and exceptions to rules.

VII. Grammatical Sloppiness

There is at least one point of consensus among these books. Clarity of expression is not simply a matter of observing grammatical rules. The books reviewed here contain many examples of grammatically correct sentences that do not make sense. But is it possible to be clear without observing grammatical rules?

Humphrys and Safire argue that good grammar is important for preserving clarity but they distance themselves from the pedants of proper usage. One reason: the correct way to speak and write can not always be determined, or at least determined to everyone’s satisfaction. Another reason: there is a role for personal taste and the conscious bending of rules if done to add clarity or artistic flair. As a radio journalist, Humphrys admits to committing grammatical gaffs while on air because he doesn’t have time to carefully edit his speech. He holds writers to a higher standard because they do have the time to edit. As a newspaper journalist, Safire is not so kind to people who speak ungrammatically. This is unsurprising given that politicians are his favourite source of gaffs and very few bother to write down their thoughts. Yet he does bristle at editors and sub-editors who take very rigid interpretations of newspaper style-books, especially when highly regarded style-books disagree about a grammar rule.

I’m starting to see a pattern form here.

Blamires argues that mastering grammatical rules is far less important than thinking logically and carefully. For example: “Having read ‘Glancing to the right, the church spire is visible above the rooftops’, the grammarian will talk about the ‘hanging participle’, while the clear-headed reader will always protest ‘But the church spire is not glancing to the right’.” (2000, p. 3) For Blamires, reliance on grammatical rules leads to overconfidence. Moreover, those who are too fixated on grammatical rules often make mistakes involving simple logical sequences. Cochrane, a former literary editor, has a different view from Blamires, a former professor of literature. Cochrane implies that certain grammatical mistakes are a sign of mental laxity and lack of refinement.

Yes, the pattern is becoming clearer.

The former speech writer, Watson, goes so far as to claim that grammatical rules are not at all important for achieving clarity. The gang of consultants, Fugere et al., think along the same lines. Clarity of expression and spiritedness are hailed, not a dogged commitment to rules.

Ah ha, the pattern is now obvious.

So what is the pattern? The authors’ attitudes towards grammar seem to reflect the types of clarity problems they face most regularly. And these peeves correlate with vocation. The authors also don’t want to be tied down by rules when it suits them. All of this is not very surprising given the way we organise ourselves into narrow disciplines these days … while giving short shrift to those in other disciplines. But what would a grammatical stickler say?

Let me introduce Lynn Truss. Her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves is focused on a single topic: the importance of punctuation for preserving clarity. Truss is an unrepentant zealot of proper grammar. (The term “zero tolerance” in the subtitle suggests as much.) Truss does not see a contradiction between being staunch and being flexible in those cases where there is no right or wrong usage. The use of the comma may fall into the grey area because usage is sometimes a matter of personal style. Commas influence the cadence and emphasis of a sentence, usage which is impossible to distil into a delimited set of rules. The placement of an apostrophe does not fall in that grey area, however, because the rules are clear and the appropriate uses are finite. The principle is this: “in some matters of punctuation there are simple rights and wrongs; in others, one must apply a good ear to good sense.” (p. 27) Thus, Truss offers a rallying cry for fellow sticklers to unite against pervasive and obvious mistakes, while cautioning against infighting over the ambiguous cases.

Truss’ account of misuse and disuse of punctuation emphasizes the loss of sense-making. The title illustrates how a misplaced comma changes the meaning of a phrase entirely. She blames technology (text messaging and grammar checkers), newspaper headlines, literary fads, the education system, and apathy. Poor punctuation impairs people’s ability to craft prose that adequately expresses feelings and wit. Truss worries about worthwhile punctuation conventions that have fallen into disuse because of indifference and neglect. For example, the slow death of the hyphen for conjoined words is undermining clarity. Consider this: “A re-formed rock band is quite different from a reformed one. Likewise, a long-standing friend is different from a long standing one.” (p. 171)

All told, I find Truss’ advice a useful reminder about the thoughtful use of hyphens and apostrophies to preserve meaning. I find her advice about typographical conventions flawed (look to Felici, 2002, for a correction). If you’ve been following the drama surrounding her best-selling book, you’ll know that she has taken a few heavy punches from fellow sticklers who have discovered grammatical errors in her “zero tolerance” book. Ideologues find it difficult living up to their own ideals. And ideologues eat their own.

Revisiting the bigger question, what role does grammar have in expressing things clearly?

To answer that question, we ought not rely on the advice of ideologues and opportunists. We ought to look to people with historical perspective and an empirical sensibility. It’s time to pull David Crystal’s book off the shelf. Crystal is sceptical about the ability of grammatical rules to ensure clarity. He admits that bad grammar can cause confusion, although the context often prevents small errors from causing confusion. Just because a grammatical lapse causes confusion in a few cases doesn’t mean that the same lapse causes confusion in every case.

Much of The Fight for English is devoted to rebutting grammar pedants such as Truss. Crystal shows, as Bragg (2004) does, that the evolution of English was extremely messy. Attempts to enforce a standardized, formal, high-brow English are moral movements driven by petty snobbery. Some of the rules that sticklers espouse can make sentences seem laboured and clunky. Sticklers routinely break their own rules. Most importantly, new usages are what cause a language to evolve. The only languages that don’t evolve are dead languages.

Those who advocate strict grammatical rules, not allowing for exceptions, have a false sense of security in limits.

There is no simple relationship between clarity and language. … [Clarity] cannot be achieved by forbidding the use of whole areas of language, such as figures of speech or classical vocabulary, for the obvious reason that a thought might be best expressed by using precisely those means. … Clarity depends on our making judicious use of all of a language’s resources. Words, grammar, rhythm, discourse, and stylistic level all play their part. It is never possible to identify a single dimension or principle of usage, or a cluster of ‘rules’, and say that these are obligatory features of clarity of expression. (p. 65)

The modern problem with clarity, Crystal concludes, comes from cliché, jargon, and the other bad habits of vocabulary. Crystal isn’t arguing for an “anything goes” attitude towards grammar. Indeed, he has written a book about grammar and advocates intensive grammar education in schools. However, he is arguing that we shouldn’t buy into the paranoia that grammar is the main source of clarity problem.

Our writing should follow the natural rhythm of speech. Conversation has the advantage of immediate feedback if a person doesn’t understand something. Therefore, we should write in a way that carefully considers the audience because there are fewer opportunities for feedback. According to Crystal, that doesn’t mean being a slave to grammatical rules. I agree.

VIII. Conclusion

After the release of Orwell’s essay, a British civil servant named Ernest Gowers published a manual called Plain Words in 1948 and a sequel called The ABC of Plain Words in 1951. These books later merged to create The Complete Plain Words (1962 [1954]), now in its third edition (2004).

I bought a first-edition copy of that last book from a dusty used-book store. The book smells musty. The pages have turned dingy brown. The original owner, someone named Jackson, underlined two words. He underlined “nonfornicative”, a particularly silly mixture of latinate diction. A sillier example from the book is “dedirt” (meaning “to clean”). “Jargantuan” is the other word. Its a coinage by Ivor Brown to describe big documents full of gobbledygook. Bureaucratic reports are usually jargantuan. Cute.

In some ways, The Complete Plain Words is a depressing read. Why is that? It isn’t because of Gowers’ attitude. Gowers is somewhat optimistic about the state of bureaucratic writing. Bureaucratic writing isn’t that bad, he claims, it’s just among the most vulnerable to criticism. Gowers is the most pragmatic of the authors discussed here. For example, he sees a need to sometimes be imprecise to avoid political conflict. He defends some jargon on the grounds that formulaic, technical, and rigid meaning is often necessary (as with legalese). Fair enough. However, I find Gowers’ book depressing because I doubt that he would be so optimistic and forgiving these days. Matters have gotten so much worse since the 1940s and 1950s. It’s as if the worst usages criticised by Orwell and Gowers have become “the new normal” for workplace and public discourse. As I said: depressing.

If you want to improve your English usage, I recommend studying some of the books reviewed here. It might be unrealistic to read through all of the 3,000 or so pages cited here. (That would take hours!) However, a few books stand out from the pile. Watson’s characterisation of the current situation is the most astute. Studying Blamires (2003) is the best way to rid yourself of bad habits. If that works for you, consider Blamires’ nearly comprehensive work (2000). If you work for government, then Gowers et al. (2004) may be more relevant than Blamires’ books. And read Orwell’s essay. It contains many insights in few pages.

If you want to improve the English usage of others, the first thing that you can do is to demonstrate good form. The second thing you can do is insist on good form. I’ve been following that advice for the last three years. My writing is read by more people. Fewer people try to bamboozle me. Bureaucrats don’t “word smith” my documents as much as they used to. If they want prose full of weasel words they ask someone else to write it (good riddance!). Editors complement me on my directness and precision. When writing academic articles, peer reviewers insist on fewer changes. My arguments are stronger. Life is good. I continue to look for ways to improve my writing.

Perhaps the final word should go to Roger Ascham, who is quoted in Gowers’ epilogue.

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do; and so should every man understand him, and the judgement of wise men allow him. (p. 261)

By Peter Stoyko

NOTES

[1] Premo Levi, Other People’s Trades (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989); as cited by Watson, p. 121.

[2] Safire has written more than a dozen books on language over his career, many of them compilations of his column. If you’re interested in the discussion of problematic terms and phrases, you may also want to look at the Word Court column in The Atlantic Monthly.

REFERENCES