Tag: plain english

pedantry

I should probably start this post by saying that I know my grammar and punctuation aren’t perfect. However, I’m not usually writing about politically and emotionally delicate matters; and I’m not writing on an international news site which is read by millions worldwide.

It bothers me when I see phrases like this on the BBC website:

“I absolutely condemn sexual tourism [and] I condemn paedophilia in which I have never in any way participated, and all the people who accuse me of that type of thing should be ashamed,” Mr Mitterrand said.

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ho hum

According to the BBC news Magazine, the phrase “hey-ho” is set to make a comeback: it is included in the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary where it is defined as “an exclamation of weariness, disappointment, surprise, or happiness.”

Duncan Black, an editor for the dictionary, is quoted as saying “It’s the verbal equivalent of a shrug; you say ‘hey-ho’ or ‘that’s the way it goes’ or ‘c’est la vie.'” (He doesn’t mention the Spanish ‘es lo que hay’ – ‘that’s what there is’ – which is one of my personal favourites.)
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tick if you do…

…tick if you don’t.

tick the box
tick the box

My mother has asked me to fill in a form for her. With options like the above, I’m not at all surprised she’s confused.

Much as I’d like to suggest the organisation investigate the Plain English Campaign, I fear that the real reason for the bad phrasing is to confuse people into unintentionally giving permission for their friends and family to be included on junk mail lists.

a flask of wine

A couple of people have suggested I should write a post about wine. Well, perhaps not about wine – I’m no expert and am happy with the vino honesto and no muy peleón that I can get in the local supermarket for 0.99€ a bottle – but about the language that is used to talk about it, particularly on wine labels.

I think it might have been Miles Kington (there’s an archive of his Independent column here) who said that if you were at a loss for words at a wine tasting, just look around the room and describe one of the other people present: big nose, full-bodied, fruity…
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the good news or the bad news?

More quibbling of headlines, this time in English news. Today, the BBC website leads with WHO raises pandemic alert level.

Which is all very well, but I glimpsed just the headline on another site and had to go and read the story to clarify if this meant more doom and gloom, or if it meant that things were getting better.

After all, if you advertise a product that “raises spirits”, it would do exactly the same as a product that “lifts spirits”. But “raising the alert level” is pretty much the opposite of “lifting the alert”.
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