When language isn't beautiful

I love language. I love new words and new ways of expressing things. I love how it changes and adapts and is alive, how we find a way to express anything we want with it, how new generations put their own slant on it. Despite having a strictly classical education - including having a degree which required me to read and write in Latin and Greek - I am not one of those people who winces at a neologism or adaptation of a word or when someone turns a noun into a verb or whatever. I think that's what language is allowed to do. I also have a tendency to prefer style to correctness, although the fundamentals must be correct if the writer is to achieve the clearest meaning and communication.

However.

I can't stand it when people hide behind absurd jargon, thinking it makes them sound clever. Management-speak and Government-speak are ugly, usually quite unnecessary, verbose, exclusive and frankly rather pathetic when you deconstruct them.

Anyway, recently I was waiting for a train and couldn't avoid listening to a woman on the phone. She was speaking loudly, presumably to a colleague, and crikey, did she think she sounded clever! I wrote down some phrases that particularly struck me. The list that follows consists only of the phrases she used more than once:

"We need a starter-for-ten agenda."
"That's the absolute drop-deadline."
"...project-specific parameters..."
"Can you lean on the time-scales?"
"..at close of playday..."
"We should microwave that one but the other one's a slow-cooker." [She didn't mean a TV dinner.]
"It's a decision in transit situation, then?"

Yeah, I know what they mean, of course. That's not the point. The point is the clubbiness, the in-speak, and the ugly pointless messing around with words, in ways which don't make meaning clearer or more beautiful.

Self-conscious, affected. Ugh.

Until Mr M managed to stop working for a certain large company - speak not its name in my presence, unless I am armed with garlic and a silver cross - he was plagued by the ugly contortions of the language. He used to come back from work with tales of weasel phrases bandied about in the usually pointless meetings that held him back from his real work (and, indeed, the company's real work). Phrases wouldn't last long because "they" always had to create new ones as soon as anyone had got used to the old ones.

One I remember: "We need to schedule his on-boarding."

There were also a whole load of abbreviations, which one was supposed to know in order to avoid withering looks.

Can you guess the meaning of these:

AGAP = eg "It's an AGAP situation here."

CAC = eg "What is the CAC for your taxi?"

And probably the best: KSOR = eg "It's a KSOR issue." 

Any suggestions?! And do you have any management-speak phrases that annoy you? Amuse you?

Why illegal downloading really does matter

I make no apologies for fighting for the rights of writers and artists to earn from their work and to be allowed to make decisions as to value and cost. So, I bring you perhaps the best, fullest, and most passionate and moving argument for why this is important.

Interesting point about fair trade coffee, too - it's why I created the idea of Fair Reading.

The end of the article goes to the heart and is worth quoting:

"Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?
Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?
Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?"

Please, parents and teachers, tell your young people. It matters. It's a moral issue.

It's theft. And there are victims.

Escalating rudeness

I propose that the London Underground escalator rule is applied to all escalators everywhere. For those of you who don't know it, it's simple: if you want to stand still, stand on the right. If you want to walk, walk on the left.

I get crabbit with the selfish behaviour of people on escalators elsewhere. Thing is, I wouldn't dream of telling anyone how fast or slowly they should move; I respect everyone's right to go at his or her desired speed, to walk or stand still as desired. So, why is it that people think it's ok to stand blocking the whole escalator and when I say, incredibly lightly and smilingly and politely, "Excuse me, please," with a "sorry" and a "thank you" thrown in for politeness, I get scowled at? And even, sometimes, refused passage? And once yesterday, argued with?

I don't know what I'm doing wrong when I ask to go past them; I try to make my voice as light as possible, so as not to seem at all cross, and I always smile, but I still get daggers almost every time.

What is it with people? Is it just me or does anyone else out there hate the thought of holding people up, getting in the way, forcing them to go at a different speed? And whatever happened to good manners? I know I'm impatient and like to walk faster than most, but I'm busy, I'm in a hurry and have no time to dawdle on escalators holding everyone up. If I'm not trying to make you go at my speed, why should others try to force me to go at theirs?

It's a very trivial matter, yes, but pffffthp!

A crabbit message to parents who boast

A serious thought for you this evening. A bit of crabbit thinking. (To offset the party tomorrow evening!)

Why do some people think it's ok to boast about their off-spring, including once they are grown-up? I mean really really boast? I mean, like telling us how much they paid for their house, what salary they are on, how many starred A grade A-levels or GCSEs they got, that they've just got a place at Cambridge (when they aren't friends, merely slight acquaintances)? Do people really think this is ok? Especially when they have no idea at all whether the person they are telling has a very different situation to deal with.

This thought is not theoretical or idle. It has been precipitated by a series of incidents in which slight acquaintances have regaled me or my husband or other members of my family with puffed-up boasts about offspring (including some in their forties!) whom we have never met, and never particularly wish to.

Mr M and I count ourselves lucky enough that our daughters are safe, healthy, and making their way through life bravely and independently. Touch wood. But we have two close sets of friends who have gone through and are going though hell, sheer hell, with unbelievably awful things happening to their children. One couple, close friends for many years, recently lost their gorgeous, talented nineteen-year-old daughter to spinal cancer. Last month we went to her memorial service. The other couple are in an ongoing hell of a different sort. None of them, the young people or the parents, did anything to deserve either of these things. It was horrible luck. And when kids have wonderful success and fortune in their lives, the parents don't necessarily deserve that either. We certainly don't deserve to boast to all and sundry. Share pleasure with close friends, perhaps, delicately, gently, just a little bit, being sensitive to friends' own situations. But not boast. Not talk salaries and figures and exam grades and prizes and Oxbridge places, without any sensitivity at all.

To parents who think it's ok to boast in this way: shut up and just be glad that your kids are alive, healthy, and can wake up each morning with every intention of hitting the day running. Just be glad and be quiet.