September 17, 2009
Posted at 8:27 PM in Word Choice/Choice Words
You wouldn't guess it from my wardrobe, but I subscribe to Lucky magazine. Is it worth the $12 bucks a year? You bet! Forget the fashions--I read Lucky for the prose stylings. For instance, the October issue has me asking: Are mustard-colored trousers really "huge for fall"? (Is this good news for plus-size women?) Can a lip balm be "adorable"? Is "glowify" an actual verb?
Lucky's editors are masters of the to-die-for compound modifier. A tote is "intriguingly organic, touchably matte." Skinny tweed trousers are "distinctly autumnal." Hair is "sexily unstudied." (I especially like that one. Dropout chignons, anyone?)
Oh, and the October issue features an ad with Paris Hilton dressed up as a mermaid. It's no wonder I have trouble getting dressed in the morning.
August 5, 2009
Posted at 7:41 AM in Word Choice/Choice Words
One of the occupational hazards of journalism is that you become dependent on certain words and phrases. There's "says," unavoidably. At least it's short and unobtrusive enough to be glossed over by a reader, even if it turns up dozens of times in a story. Shorthand and economy are useful things when you have a tight deadline and tighter space to fill.
When you write about certain fields, you also come up against the rhetoric deployed by those who work in that field. Business reporters encounter this a lot. Think of all the bizspeak kicking around--"low-hanging fruit," anyone? Every walk of life has its professional verbal tics, its rhetorical rituals of membership. Even if you don't use that rhetoric yourself, you have to find ways through or around it as a writer.
Here are five words or phrases that have been giving me journalistic agita lately. If you have work-arounds to suggest, please do.
1. "notes"
--Often used in a well-meaning attempt to ditch "says" and still preserve a certain middle-of-the-road neutrality, this one never sounds quite right to me, even though I use it a lot.
2. "dissemination"
--In the world of higher ed, this is a biggie, a staple of phrases like "the dissemination of knowledge" or "research dissemination." Talk about unlovely. Substitutes such as "the spread of knowledge" just make me think of something you'd find on the breakfast table. (Marmite, kids?)
3. "interrogate"
--Certain academic fields have taken a lot of heat over the last few decades, sometimes unfairly, for their reliance on theoryspeak and highfalutin terminology. When I encounter terms like this, I understand the criticism. "Interrogate" is what they do in police procedurals and at Guantanamo Bay. Scholarly skepticism is an admirable thing; it doesn't need the faux muscularity of "interrogate" to describe itself.
4. "intervention"
--Once reserved to describe an attempt to get an addict off the path to self-destruction, "intervention" has become a staple way to describe a new foray into a theoretical or scholarly debate. See my point about faux muscularity, above.
5. "knowledge production"
--This phrase drips with mechanistic and self-aggrandizing bravado. You might as well shout "Go away!" at a general reader when you use it. Are we talking about researchers or Henry Ford?
Bonus question: How are we defining "knowledge," anyway?
June 9, 2009
Posted at 2:47 PM in Word Choice/Choice Words
It occurred to me the other day that it's become refreshing to hear someone drop a good old-fashioned cliche. Put the cart before the horse. Make a mountain out of a molehill, please. Let the wheels come off the wagon. (Just don't throw me under the bus.) Why? I think it has to do with the virtualization--ugly word, sorry--of everything. Spend too much time pondering abstractions like "knowledge production" and "the dissemination of research" and you begin to long for something concrete to hang onto. Phrases that used to feel worn smooth, like rubbed-out pennies, have texture again, if you bother to stop and think about them. Most of us in big-city America don't see carts or horses very often, and when we do they're a surprise. I like being reminded, even tangentially, that such things exist, and that somewhere, if the sun's shining, I could make hay. In a field. A real field. Where things grow.
What are the digital era's most obnoxious--or lovely--cliches? Got any favorites, old or new? I'd love to hear them.
September 24, 2008
Posted at 7:25 AM in Word Choice/Choice Words
It's the sound of word lovers mobilizing to save their favorite bits of under-used English from the dustbin of diction. From the Times (U.K.):
Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book.
Translation: These words are being booted out of Collins's dictionary to make room for words that everybody still uses.
You can help. The Times has organized a voting campaign, asking readers to pick their favorite from a list of 24 threatened words. Some British celebs have already joined the cause:
Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, will support skirr, a word he has occasionally used to describe the sound of beating wings. "I’m a very keen bird-watcher," he told The Times. "Birders do use this word from time to time so I thought it might have a better chance than others, such as vilipend. I saw 10,000 knot flying over The Wash in the evening recently and the noise they made was a skirring noise."
September 18, 2008
Posted at 9:47 PM in Word Choice/Choice Words
A new, occasional feature for those I-got-the-diction-blues days, which get more frequent the more time I spend online.
Today's entries: access, process, networked, friend (as a verb).
