thedanglingmodifier.co.uk

I have been reading more about the property developer’s plans to build near my house. I found the details from “within the Application Quick Search box” on my local council’s website.

I have trawled through the documents that the council invited me to comment on. I have looked at all the plans, the mock-ups, studied the transport statements and ‘proposed elevations’.

The developers say they are going to protect the local bats. They have issued what they call a ‘Sustainability Statement’. It uses a lot of initial caps, for example “Proposed Development” and “Planning Application”. I don’t think the developers employ any subeditors. And even though I think this is an important issue, I suspect my local council won’t agree.

So I’m trying to ignore the misuse of capital letters. It’s not easy. I don’t think anyone understands unless they’ve spent days, weeks and years, weeding these sorts of things out and correcting them. These people don’t know the pain they cause. It’s like throwing a ball for a dog and then choking it on its lead when it runs to fetch.

Or may they do. May be they’re laughing.

But I’m determined to ignore all that, because I want to read the ‘Sustainability Statement’. I want to know how ‘sustainable’ the development is going to be, so I read on. It’s an interesting statement, with lots of background information on policy. It turns out that:

“The Rio Earth Summit saw the culmination of increasing global environmental and sustainability concern in the development of a number of multilateral outputs.”

I read the rest of the page on policy – international, European, national and local. I understand the other bits, the rest of the page is clear. It’s only the paragraph about international policy that is unnerving.

Could it be that those others, the conspirators, have infiltrated the very highest circles of international cooperation?

I have to grip the table as implications of this wash over me. This is not just about laughing at editorial staff. This is about something much, much bigger. How typical of me not to see the bigger picture before now, but then of course I woudn’t, would I? I’m the sort of person who checks spelling. No wonder I didn’t see it before now.

But if I’m right about this… if those others – the conspirators – infiltrated the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, what other international organisations have they got their evil talons into? How many other languages are they mucking up?

They are going to build near my house. When I say ‘they’ of course, I don’t necessarily mean the conspirators, the ones who laugh at editorial staff.

No, this is a whole other ‘they’ – a property developer. So much for the recession. I keep hearing on the radio how badly property developers and the building trade have been hit. Well not round my gaff, they haven’t.

The local council sent me a letter inviting me to comment. It used initial capitals with wild abandon, telling me to:

“Enter the Application Number within the Application Quick Search box and select ‘Search’.”

For a moment I thought I was reading German, but then I realised that I recognised the words and none of them were ‘Achtung’ ‘Nein’ or ‘Delphine’ – the only German words I know.

It was the number of capitals that confused me.

And then the way they said ‘within’ like that… Did they expect me to get inside the Application Quick Search box and enter the application number? I decided to find out and quickly typed in the web address.

As I waited for the webpage to appear, I read more of the letter.

“From within the application details you will also be given a quick way of making representations on the application and sending them directly to us.”

Within the application details? Perhaps I would be able to get into the Quick Search box after all. And if so, no wonder it had initial caps. It was a place name, the name of a wonderland in cyberspace. I assumed that this was technology moving on without me – the technological imperative, I thought – until I looked at the page and realised my mistake. It was just an ordinary online form.

I have been out in cyberspace again, trying to find meanings for some of the expressions I get stuck on.

I wasn’t going to; I was going to give up.  Then an old friend emailed me about my blog. She’s an editor too and she confessed that she doesn’t understand the words either. So I’m not the only one, I thought.

The only way to be happy, she advised me, is to “just check the spelling”. May be she’s right, I thought. She seems to be happy. But then I read on – she confessed more. She has worked for E&Y and said:

“I hope you’re not trying to edit something I originally wrote for them!”

I imagined her laughing as she said it, tossing her mane of dark hair. So, I thought. At what price happiness? Have those others got her under some spell, in their power? Has she gone over to the side of conspirators who are secretly laughing at editorial staff everywhere? The ones who invent expressions like ‘improvement levers’ and ‘technology imperative’?

I was at a low ebb. Perhaps I am all alone in this world of corporate speak. And if they’ve got my friend, how long before they get me?

I have to crack their code, understand their ways, know my enemy.

So I started by googling ‘technology imperative’. Many books have been written about this but it would take me some time to read them all.

Then I discovered this webpage, and I understood the words. It was written by some bloke at Aberystwyth University – an academic, but it’s still reasonably clear. It turns out a ‘technology imperative’ is actually a ‘technological imperative’, and it’s about technological developments being inevitable.

I was very excited. So it does mean something after all.

The recession is here. Even now Barack Obama is president of the United States, our jobs aren’t safe.

So I’ve been looking to the marketing profession for inspiration. After all, if I’m going to have to fight other editors for work, I need to know how to market myself. I decided to find out more about marketing. I even thought I might learn that ancient profession. I could write copy, couldn’t I? Professional marketers earn a lot more (a lot more) than professional editors, and seeing as I can’t understand the words I edit any way, it might be a good career move.

I decided to find out whether there was some sort of professional marketing body I could turn to. So I typed “marketing profession” into google, and – testament to how skilled these people are – the Chartered Institute of Marketing came up at the bottom of page 2.

Their courses are ‘groundbreaking’ apparently.

Which reminds me of something else I saw – it could only have been days or hours later when I happened to see the Royal Town Planning Institute website. Everybody’s at this marketing malarkey, I thought, as I read their strapline:

“Mediation of space, making of place.”

It sounded really good. I turned the words over, rolled them round my tongue and repeated them. Gosh that sounds so good, I thought to myself. I wonder what it means.

“Mediation of space, making of place”.

I wanted to linger a moment longer, but then realised that it reminded me of something I’d heard before – something that the government came up with. Yes that was it: ‘place-shaping’. I remember now – what the ‘Sun’ newspaper once took to mean “making a nice office”.

But back to this strapline: how do those clever town planners mediate space?

A friend of mine once trained in professional mediation. She worked for a while with couples who were seeking divorce. She said it was about finding common ground between people.

This couldn’t be the same thing, could it? Do town planners sit between opposing walls, hostile plots of land, listening to their grievances. Could they be the answer to the problems in the Middle East?

I was excited to think I might have discovered something important. Something that perhaps Barack Obama might want to know.

But I thought I’d better check – so I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary and looked up ‘mediation’. It said:

“1. intervene in a dispute to bring about an agreement or reconciliation.”

I started to get excited but then this caught my eye:

“2. (technical) be a medium for.”

So, it turns out the RTPI is ‘a medium for’ space, and of course, I don’t mean in the sense of getting in touch with the space that’s passed over to the other side. That would be ridiculous. I mean, ‘an agency or means of doing something’.

The town planners are a means of doing space.

May be when I know more about marketing, I’ll be able to understand big concepts like that.