Cliches: join the herd

Martin Amis, the British novelist:

If you can't say something nice

From Maggie's Farm:

"Euphemisms are about creating an illusion of a nursery school pretty pony and rainbow view of the world in which evil does not exist, in which we can all get along if only we wanted to, and in which we can all be anything we want, if only we would label things properly.

"Rabid Jihadists and criminals become "the oppressed," kids who cannot read well become "learning disabled," klutzes become "hand-eye coordination impaired," the socially-awkward become "Asperger's," global warming becomes "climate change," housing developments in swamps become "Riverview Estates" - and Killer Whales become cuddly "Orcas" (so as not to offend their delicate sensibilities, no doubt)."

Take the bull by the hand

The late William Safire's rules for writing:

1. No sentence fragments.
2. It behooves us to avoid archaisms.
3. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
4. Don't use no double negatives.
5. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, “Resist hyperbole!”
6. Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
7. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
8. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
9. Writing carefully, dangling participles should not be used.
10. Kill all exclamation points!!!
11. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
12. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
13. Take the bull by the hand and don't mix metaphors.
14. Don’t verb nouns.
15. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
16. Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.

Does anyone understand you?

As you watch news reports about Iraq or Afghanistan, think about this: how hard it is for our military to communicate with the locals? Then think about this: when you're trying to communicate, does your audience have as much difficulty as the Afghans and Iraqis?

Dennis M. Murphy, director of the Information in Warfare Group at the Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College, has written a rather academic piece about this, but we can bring his insights into our own presentations at work, before the PTA, wherever. He writes:

The difficulty with cultural understanding is that culture is, by its very nature, a local phenomenon. As MacNulty notes:

The society in which we live—in this context not the national culture . . . but the fairly small area in which we grow up . . . results in different culture, values, beliefs, religion, and views about money, work, marriage, gender roles, and so on.

Neighborhoods take on their own personalities, driven by such considerations as socio-economic factors and ethnic and racial identity. Value sets are different among communities that form the integrated society of a large US city.19 Transfer this reality to a foreign country where the US military is conducting operations. It should not be difficult to understand how challenging it is to influence perceptions among audiences with a “one-size-fits all” set of actions and messages.

Imagine yourself giving a presentation at work. You look at your audience. Each one of those people out there brings his or her own culture to the room, and they're hearing you differently. The finance guy isn't going to hear the same thing the IT guy hears.

Businesses segment their customers on the basis of gender, age, geography, previous purchase history, and on and on. Perhaps before we create that first brilliant PowerPoint slide, we should segment our audience.

Murphy notes that studying a language can help officers understand the local culture better, and that's always our tip No. 1: what jargon are you spouting, and do your listeners understand it? What language do they speak?

(Thanks, Rudy)

Language police: does this affect you?

effect / ê-fekt / verb, transitive

To cause to happen, to make (something) come about.

I hope the good Dr. Goodword has some effect on you:

Affect and effect are two verbs similar in sound and meaning. What you need to remember is that the one beginning in [a] is defined in terms of the one beginning in [e]: affect "to have an effect", as in "Words affect the way we think". To effect means "to cause", as "to effect radical changes in the way we do things."

Here are a couple of sentences that demonstrate the difference between these two confusing verbs: "Nothing Ivan Odor said seemed to affect Leticia romantically, so he resorted to flowers to express his affection. The flowers from Ivan effected a change of heart in Leticia that eventually led to their engagement."

History: Effect started out as Latin effectus, the past participle of efficere "to accomplish", based on ex- "out of" + facere "to make". The root fac- in Latin, which also gave us fact, feature, feat, and dozens of other words, goes back to the PIE root *dhe-/*dho- "put, set", which also evolved through Old Germanic into English do and such of its relatives as deed (thing done) and doom (done in?) The name of the Russian parliament, the Duma (where very little gets done), actually is a descendant of *dho-, via dumat' "to think" (possibly an even a worse connotation).

How many laws have you broken today?

Harvey A. Silverglate, a criminal defense and civil liberties lawyer in Boston, has written extensively about vague language on college campuses and in the federal courts.

"The respective cultures of the college campus and of the federal government have each thrived on the notion that language is meant not to express one's true thoughts, intentions and expectations, but, instead, to cover them up. As a result, the tyrannies that I began to encounter in the mid-1980s in both academia and the federal criminal courts shared this major characteristic: It was impossible to know when one was transgressing the rules, because the rules were suddenly being expressed in language that no one could understand.

"I would not approve of speech codes on campuses even if they were clear in specifying the language that could get a student tossed out of school, and even if the disciplinary hearings were fair and rational. But at least clear codes would have the benefit of giving students notice of what could get them disciplined or expelled. The combination of outlawing speech, doing so in terms that even an educated person could not understand, and trying the charge before a tribunal worthy of the court of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, is a particularly insidious stew.

"In the criminal justice system it's vagueness of federal law. The U.S. Department of Justice began prosecuting people, around the mid-1980s, under statutes and regulations that even I could not understand; what's worse, federal courts seemed not to recognize this obvious unfairness and convicted people of serious crimes carrying harsh sentences. Years ago I told my law firm colleagues, half-serious and half-sarcastic, that an average citizen could commit several federal crimes in any given day without even realizing it."

Things that shouldn't be on a resume

Investopedia lists some resume no-no's:

References
Listing your references on the resume is a definite no-no. References should always appear on a separate page, and should only be produced when asked for. Also, be sure to delete the "References: Available Upon Request" line. It's understood that you will, so save some space and your potential employer's time.

Full Sentences
The headhunter has likely received dozens if not hundreds of applications -- help them out! Your resume should be short and sweet and bulleted. You aren't writing a novel, you are trying to catch a skimming employer's eye and prove you are worth a second look -- and an interview.

Just words
One of the worst things you can do on a resume is be vague. Don't just list your accomplishments in a general way -- have the quantitative data to back it up. If you exceeded a goal, by how much did you exceed it? If you created and distributed company performance reports, how many did you do? Adding numbers concretizes your accomplishments and paints a better picture of what you actually did. Also, make sure you are answering the "how" question. If you completed five projects this year instead of the expected four, how did you do it?

The Words "Duties" or "Responsibilities"
When you are writing your current or former job description, focus on your accomplishments, not what you had to do. As an alternative to "duties" or "responsibilities," flip your tasks into achievements. For example, instead of being "responsible for the sales team," consider "directed the sales team to beat their repeat client objective by 10%" -- remember that number thing!

An Objective
For the most part, objectives sound insincere and, worse, can limit your options. Let your cover letter do the talking when it comes to why you want that particular job. And remember, each cover letter and resume should be individually tailored to a specific job posting -- not just a specific field. Taking an interest in the specifics of the job makes you look professional and focused and not like you are mass-emailing anyone who might hire you.

An Unprofessional Email Address
In a world where email is free, and most of us have multiple addresses, make the effort to have a professional email address. Keep it simple -- using your name is best. Just make sure you leave the sparklebaby@hellokitty.com for personal use. One more tip? Don't use your current work email unless you are self-employed.

More at the link.

About those top ten lists

A top ten list is an easy device for communicating multiple ideas, but it has its weaknesses.

Tom Davenport, a management guru, holds the President’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He offers the top ten reasons for top ten lists at Harvard Business Review:

10. Lists don't take a lot of human attention to process. Since we don't seem to have much to spare these days (particularly online), that makes them popular.

9. Ranked lists imply a comforting order to the universe. People like to believe that some people, teams, or companies are simply better than others. Never mind that it's all about the criteria the rankers use, and the niggling detail that there may be no significant difference between ranks.

8. Lists can be worded tersely. They're easy to write.

7. We've gotten conditioned to the context-free sentences (or even less) in lists, perhaps because of the popularity of bulleted lists in PowerPoint.

6. Lists are popular online because they are amenable to the "slide show" web format, which artificially runs up the page view count. In other words, they help to impress advertisers. Readers hate slide shows, but they seem to be proliferating nonetheless.

5. You can get away with silly statements in the middle of the list, because nobody's reading closely at that point. For example, it's clear to me that lists are to Internet content what Paris Hilton is to acting.

4. Lists are a good way to present jokes. Witness their popularity on Letterman since September 18, 1985 ("The Top Ten Things That Almost Rhyme With Peas" was the first ever).

3. Lists imply that you have exhausted the possibilities for items in them, although the predominance of the decimal system in our society means that you usually have to have ten items. Sometimes that means a need for artificial list fillers or repeats.

2. Lists seem to come in 10's, so be wary of repetition.

1. Particularly when the numbers in the list are in decreasing order, there is an expectation that the number one item will be particularly momentous. Sadly, the last item rarely meets expectations.

Overcoming stage fright

The fear of giving a speech in public is the greatest of our fears, they say. Here's a way to cope, from J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, in her commencement address at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in June 2008:

"Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

"You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement."

Forget about imagining the audience members sitting in their underwear. Just realize they won't remember a thing you say.

Writing our way to subliteracy

"One could draw reassurance from today’s vibrant Web culture if the general surfing public, which is becoming more at home in this new medium, displayed a growing propensity for literate, critical thought. But take a careful look at the many blogs, post comments, MySpace pages, and online conversations that characterize today’s Web 2.0 environment. One need not have a degree in communications (or anthropology) to see that the back-and-forth communication that typifies the Internet is only nominally text-based. Some of today’s Web content is indeed innovative and compelling in its use of language, but none of it shares any real commonality with traditionally published, edited, and researched printed material.

"This type of content generation, this method of “writing,” is not only subliterate, it may actually undermine the literary impulse. As early as 1984, the late linguist Walter Ong observed that teletype writing displayed speech patterns more common to ancient aural cultures than to print cultures (a fact well documented by Alex Wright in his book Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages). The tone and character of the electronic communication, he observed, was also significantly different from that of printed material. It was more conversational, more adolescent, and very little of it conformed to basic rules of syntax and grammar. Ong argued compellingly that the two modes of writing are fundamentally different. Hours spent texting and e-mailing, according to this view, do not translate into improved writing or reading skills. New evidence bares this out. A recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that text messaging use among teenagers in Ireland was having a highly negative effect on their writing and reading skills."

-- Patrick Tucker

This is inappropriate

Edward Skidelsky is a lecturer in philosophy at Exeter University. His book Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture is published by Princeton University Press.

"No words are more typical of our moral culture than “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.” They seem bland, gentle even, yet they carry the full force of official power. When you hear them, you feel that you are being tied up with little pieces of soft string.

"Inappropriate and unacceptable began their modern careers in the 1980s as part of the jargon of political correctness. They have more or less replaced a number of older, more exact terms: coarse, tactless, vulgar, lewd. They encompass most of what would formerly have been called “improper” or “indecent.” An affair between a teacher and a pupil that was once improper is now inappropriate; a once indecent joke is now unacceptable.

"This linguistic shift is revealing. Improper and indecent express moral judgements, whereas inappropriate and unacceptable suggest breaches of some purely social or professional convention. Such “non-judgemental” forms of speech are tailored to a society wary of explicit moral language. As liberal pluralists, we seek only adherence to rules of the game, not agreement on fundamentals. What was once an offence against decency must be recast as something akin to a faux pas."

-- Prospect  

A crude humor tool

slapstick / slæp-stik/ noun

1. Two flat paddles used by Vaudeville comedians, one hinged to the other so that when something (or someone) is hit with it, one slaps against the other delivering a much louder bang than expected. 

2. [Noun, mass] The kind of crude humor based on knockabout melodrama and farce, with or without slapsticks.

Dr. Goodword:

Slapstick came to us be way of synecdoche. Synecdoche [si-nek-dê-kee] is a type of metaphor in which a part of something represents the whole. If your pal asks if you have wheels, meaning a car, he is guilty of synecdoche—a poet who doesn't know it! A slapstick was once a prop so tightly identified with broad humor that it became our word for that type of humor itself.

 Wikipedia enslightens:

The phrase comes from the battacchio—called the 'slap stick' in English—a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte. When struck, the battacchio produces a loud smacking noise, though little force is transferred from the object to the person being struck. Actors may thus hit one another repeatedly with great audible effect while causing very little actual physical damage. Along with the inflatable bladder (of which the whoopee cushion is a modern variant), it was among the earliest forms of special effects that could be carried on one's person.