Language - Bloggercises

15 followers

127 daily readers

rank of 48

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out, said George Orwell in his rules of good writing. Had he been clairvoyant, he might have been referring to the following sentence.

"For 35 years, Canadian Living has been developing creative meal solutions for Canadian families."

Good on them. If only they would stick to recipes, within which the scope for mangling language is limited.

Of course, this atrocity has most likely been committed by someone outside the Canadian Living organisation. It has almost certainly been committed by someone from the International War on Language Alliance, also known as marketing.

Some people should never be allowed near a keyboard.

For anyone in marketing unsure why I have steam pouring from my ears, I appeal to any atom or two of interest in the integrity of language which remains within your buzz word-addled brain.

I do so by asking what is wrong with the following:

"For 35 years, Canadian Living has been developing creative meals for Canadian families."

Buzz words are instant clichés. They are communication tools for the lazy and the unimaginative. Tell that to your marketing lecturer.

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Clichés, Language, Redundancies, Writing

Email this Post to a Friend

So says Sarah Palin

April 20th 2011 10:10

One of the tougher jobs in the world is to make decisions on what non-words should become words. The responsibility for these weighty decisions rests with publishers of dictionaries, who recognise that language is a restless beast which must grow.

None is more restless than English, which is also, with the exception of Mandarin, the world’s wordiest language. Despite its size, or perhaps because of it, there is a never-ending list of potential newcomers, and there always will be while we have consummate word manglers like Sarah Palin.

Not that many Palinisms are serious candidates for promotion to full lexicological recognition, but when you have so little command over language, communicating with what might be termed a scatter-word approach, some mistakes will be less wrong than others.

Take the Palin invention “refudiate”, for example.

Last year Palin called on US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle to “refudiate” a claim by America’s National National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that the country’s right-wing Tea Party movement was racist.

Obama, perhaps because he had no idea what an act of “refudiation” might involve, failed to act, but the publishers of the Oxford range of dictionaries did act. It added the word to its list of candidates for elevation, it pondered and discussed and pondered some more, and than it said, “From a strictly lexical interpretation of the different contexts in which Palin has used 'refudiate,' we have concluded that neither 'refute' nor 'repudiate' seems consistently precise, and that 'refudiate' more or less stands on its own, suggesting a general sense of 'reject,'.''

So Sarah Palin has created a word. I’d call it dumb luck but you might think I’m jealous.

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Language

Email this Post to a Friend

A good word about Marina Diamandis

November 10th 2010 03:22

George Orwell’s Third Rule for Effective Writing:

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

In an interview published in Australia’s mX newspaper today, British singer and song-writer Marina Diamandis talks about her passion for words.

Those who compose the words to songs work under the same constraints as writers of poetry. This is language at its most spare, and superfluous words – imposters inserted, perhaps, purely to help with metre or rhyme – stand out like a pimple on a nose.

“When I'm writing lyrics,” says the 25-year-old Diamandis, “I don't use any surplus words. I want every single word, if possible, to be great, even if that sounds a bit weird.”

If Diamandis understands Orwell’s Third Rule, she understands that there is nothing weird about it. What’s usually weird is language written or spoken without regard to the rule.

Of course, Diamandis does understand – you don’t have a hit debut album, as she did, if your songs are sloppy with unwanted words. Perhaps, in the generosity of youth, Diamandis is empathising with those who don’t understand the need to get rid of unnecessary words. We can’t all be writers and poets.

“A three-minute song should be like a huge idea filtered down into a very consumable story,'' Marina Diamandis continued. Bravo.

Orwell would approve, as would a fellow-poet, Ezra Pound. He once put it this way: “Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”

Vote

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Language, Poetry, Redundancies, Writing

Email this Post to a Friend

The power of language

September 1st 2010 03:54

Words, like numbers, can be twisted to suit the aims of the user.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Language, Writing

Email this Post to a Friend

Basic rules for writing a novel: 1

April 11th 2010 00:36

Anyone can write a novel, and many dream of doing so for reasons other than profit and critical acclaim. For many it is like running a marathon — something to be done for the satisfaction; because it is there.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (2)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Consistency of style, Language, Writing

Email this Post to a Friend

Dark corners of the language: clichés

February 1st 2010 05:17

We have in the past advised novice writers against using clichés. There no known excuse to use a cliché, we said. There is no imaginable circumstance in the occupied universe, we advised, that can justify using a cliché.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (8)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Clichés, Language, Writing

Email this Post to a Friend

A new word for an old feeling

December 21st 2009 06:52

In news which perhaps sums up a year which was unfriendly to the global economy, to the environment, to developing nations and to the remaining optimists who had faith that our leaders were capable of leading, we hear that a senior lexicographer has chosen "unfriend" as the word of the year.

It's a new word which Planet Earth knows well

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (4)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Language

Email this Post to a Friend

Word of the day: chronovore

September 11th 2009 00:32

Chronovore: something which eats your time.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (3)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Language, Social media, Twitter, Word of the day

Email this Post to a Friend

A word is born

May 27th 2009 23:05

Recruitment companies, like property agencies, have developed an industry vernacular and style. Or, to put it another way, they manage to mangle the language in their own ways.

[ Click here to read more ]

Vote

Comments (5)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Language

Email this Post to a Friend

English. RIP

March 20th 2009 17:31

Vincent van Gogh, Sorrow (1882)

The language as we know it is doomed. The pressures of change have grown until they are irresistible. Twitter may be the straw which breaks the back of English. Perhaps it is it too late. Language as we knew it

[ Click here to read more ]

160

Vote

Comments (48)

Add Comments

[ Link ]

Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Blogging, Language, Writing

Email this Post to a Friend