The debut of the new Winnie the Pooh film reminds me of a malady that’s been striking writers—the tendency to Capitalize for Emphasis. I call this Bear of Very Little Brain Syndrome, after Winnie-the-Pooh, who says, and I quote, “For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.”
Milne uses this technique throughout the Pooh books, but he was writing for young children and creating dialogue spoken by stuffed animals, who don’t usually possess large vocabularies (as we know, even the somewhat eloquent Owl was pretty much a windbag).
But what are we to make of such lines in books for teens and twentysomethings as, “He was Such a Loser.” Meaning, he was a phenomenal loser? The supreme loser of the universe? So much a loser that words cannot describe his utter hopelessness?
Bear of Very Little Brain Syndrome can devolve into something worse: Bear. Of. Very. Little. Brain. Syndrome. Which is when the words are not only capitalized, but also separated by periods. Most often found in YA novels, e.g. “Oh. My. God.”
I have a confession to make: I like the Oxford comma. Also called the serial or series comma, it’s the last comma in a series of items, the one just before the “and” or the “or.” Many writers and editors find it superfluous, but I think it offers additional clarity. Consider the sentence “My favorite foods are mangoes, chutney, peanut butter and jelly” vs. “My favorite foods are mangoes, chutney, peanut butter, and jelly.” Adding the comma makes it clearer that we’re talking about peanut butter and jelly appreciated as separate entities rather than a combo. Although, if that were the case, the sentence should be rephrased to read “… chutney and peanut butter and jelly.”
“In that case,” said the Dodo solemnly, rising to its feet, “I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies—”
“Speak English!” said the Eaglet. “I don’t know the meaning of half those long words, and, what’s more, I don’t believe you do either!” And the Eaglet bent down its head to hide a smile: some of the other birds tittered audibly.
“What I was going to say,” said the Dodo in an offended tone, “was, that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.”
The other day I was working in-house for a company and heard cries of distress issuing from one of the offices. I rushed in to find one of the editors in a state of frustration trying to decipher web copy for a specialty software application that was, ironically, supposed to make her job easier.
“I can’t understand what they’re talking about,” she lamented. “What is a ‘solution,’ for one thing?”
I looked over the site and tried to translate as much as possible, but not only was the copy obtuse, it consisted for the most part of useless gobbledygook that failed to explain in plain English what the program actually did. Result: the company lost a potential customer.
This particular software provider had fallen victim to the trend to engage in what is kindly referred to as “business jargon,” namely, the use of nouveau terms in place of plain English.
Case in point: savvy businesspeople apparently no longer say they work in a particular industry; they now refer to a “space” or “vertical.” Technology is “deployed” as if it were a covert military operation. “Enterprise” doesn’t refer to an undertaking, rental car, or starship—it’s just another name for a corporation. How exactly do “skill sets” differ from “skills”? And when I first heard the term “thought leader,” what came to mind was the Thought Police from George Orwell’s 1984.
Before using business jargon, techno lingo, or other obscure terms, know thy audience.
Case in point, this scene from the BBC science fiction/situation comedy Red Dwarf. In it, Lister (a human), Rimmer (a hologram of a dead human), and the Cat (what results when cats evolve into humanoids), who isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, go through a stasis leak. You might want to forward one minute into the video unless you’d like to learn how to take cyanide.
Here’s the transcript:
Cat: (to Rimmer) What is it?
Rimmer: It’s a rent in the space-time continuum.
Cat: (to Lister) What is it?
Lister: The stasis room freezes time, you know, makes time stand still. So whenever you have a leak, it must preserve whatever it’s leaked into, and it’s leaked into this room.
Cat: (to Rimmer) What is it?
Rimmer: It’s singularity, a point in the universe where the normal laws of space and time don’t apply.
Cat: (to Lister) What is it?
Lister: It’s a hole back into the past.
Cat: Oh, a magic door! Well, why didn’t you say?
***
Now, there are times when it is necessary to make distinctions and specify what you’re talking about for a specialized audience. A retailer can tell other industry insiders that the store’s visual merchandising includes dump bins, waterfall displays and endcaps. IT pros aren’t just geeking out when they wax lyrical about VoIP and ERP and SAP (oh my!). But don’t go overboard, as illustrated in Monty Python’s “banter sketch”:
Here’s what they’re saying, because it’s worth the read:
Jones: Morning, Squadron Leader.
Idle: What-ho, Squiffy.
Jones: How was it?
Idle: Top-hole. Bally Jerry, pranged his kite right in the how’s-your-father; hairy blighter, dicky-birded, feathered back on his sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harpers and caught his can in the Bertie.
Jones: Er, I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you, Squadron Leader.
Idle: It’s perfectly ordinary banter, Squiffy. Bally Jerry, pranged his kite right in the how’s-your-father; hairy blighter, dicky-birded, feathered back on his sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harpers and caught his can in the Bertie.
Jones: No, I’m just not understanding banter at all well today. Give us it slower.
Idle: Banter’s not the same if you say it slower, Squiffy.
Jones: Hold on then… Wingco! Bend an ear to the Squadron Leader’s banter for a sec, would you?
Chapman: Can do.
Jones: Jolly good. Fire away.
Idle: Bally Jerry, Bally Jerry, pranged his kite right in the how’s-your-father; hairy blighter, dicky-birded, feathered back on his sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harpers and caught his can in the Bertie.
Chapman: No, I don’t understand that banter at all.
Idle: Something up with my banter, chaps?
GRAMS: AIR RAID SIRENS
(Enter Palin, out of breath)
Palin: Bunch of monkeys on the ceiling, sir! Grab your egg-and-fours and let’s get the bacon delivered!
Chapman (to Idle): Do *you* understand that?
Idle: No, I didn’t get a word of it.
Chapman: Sorry, old man, we don’t understand your banter.
Palin: You know, bally tenpenny ones dropping in the custard!
(no reaction)
Palin: Um… Charlie choppers chucking a handful!
Chapman: No no, sorry.
Jones: Say it slower, old chap.
Palin: Slower *banter*, sir?
Chapman: Ra-ther.
Palin: Um… sausage squad up the blue end?
Idle: No, still don’t get it.
Palin: Um… cabbage crates coming over the briny?
The others: No, no.
(Film of air-raid)
Idle (voice-over): But by then it was too late. The first cabbage crates hit London on July the 7th. That was just the beginning.
***
Moral of the story: There’s nothing wrong with plain English, especially if you want to communicate a message rather than sound pretentious. As we can see, excessive use of banter, i.e. business jargon, can lead to death by cabbage.
But don’t take it from me. In his essay ”Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell himself states: “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”
I recently found myself in a familiar scenario: editing a book that was filled with em dashes. It made me remember a piece I’d written a few years ago:
Attack of the Mad Dashes
All was not well in Editorial Land. The em dashes were taking over. This seemingly innocuous piece of punctuation was having a field day amongst a multitude of submissions. No other punctuation stood a chance against them.
The dashes had skewered the semicolons. Clobbered the commas. Eradicated the ellipses. And were, in general, inserting themselves ad nauseum into poetry and prose that didn’t even need the extra punctuation.
“Nobody remembers me anymore,” whispered the ellipsis
“No wonder,” said the semicolon. “You always were so wishy-washy. On the other hand, I am an extremely relevant mark, and I’m going to waste. Writers rarely use me, even when I’m needed. The number of sentence fragments and comma splices is ridiculous.”
“Now don’t go insulting me,” said the comma. “I’m easy to understand, and, besides, you don’t need a ridiculous keyboard shortcut to type any of us.”
Back at the computer, one valiant editor was cracking under the relentless dash barrage. “Here’s a hyphen that’s obviously meant to be an em dash,” she said. “Here’s one story that must have a dash in every other sentence. Surely there must be another way to emphasize a word or phrase. Stop! Stop!”
But the dashes kept coming.
Not only are dashes still tres chic, but ellipses are no longer sitting in the corner and sighing over how no one remembers them. Dashes and ellipses are everywhere, while the colon and semicolon have been sent into semiretirement. The New York Times even ran a wonderful article on the semicolon called “Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location.”
I think people like dashes and ellipses because they can be used in place of a comma, semicolon, or colon, and while they might not be the best choice, they’re usually not technically incorrect, either. They’re sort of like non-rule-based punctuation. Although many writers are apparently unable to understand the simple concept that the em dash is used to indicate an abrupt stop or interruption, while ellipses are for trailing speech or thoughts.
But don’t get me started on the en dash…. (Note use of four-point ellipsis for trailing thoughts that are a complete sentence.)
I’ve been aware of the differences between British and American English from about the time I started reading. For some reason we had a number of British children’s books, mostly those written by E. Nesbit, when I was little. I remember being very indignant one time when my second-grade teacher marked “colour” and “favour” wrong on my spelling test. I knew those words were right, after all, I had seen them in books! You’d think the teacher would have had enough of a brain to say, Hmm, apparently this child has come across some British spellings! But apparently not.
Anyway, the latest book I was editing had to be Americanized. I have to say that I liked some of the Briticisms better than their American counterparts. Here are some of my favorites. Feel free to add to your vocabulary:
Alice band: headband
chat-up line: pickup line
chinwag: conversation
dustbin: garbage can
bobbly: those bally things that form on sweaters
bun fight: formal party (lots of women with hair in buns)
double-barrelled surname: hyphenated last name
made redundant: fired
winkle: draw out with effort
Yes, you have to hand it to the Brits for actually having a noun to describe sweater balls (for lack of an American term) or to coin “winkle,” referring to prying a winkle from its shell. And being “made redundant” sounds much less insulting than being “fired” (although you can also be “sacked”). I think it’s a shame that we don’t say “whilst” and have removed the s from forwards, backwards, and towards. However, I must admit I find “zits” more fitting than “spots.”
