thedanglingmodifier.co.uk

The problem with plain English, is that it’s difficult to express in plain English, how totally exasperating the lack of plain English really is.

I am an editor who works for the government. I won’t say which part of the government, but I will say that I have to read and edit loads of guff that comes out of government departments. And I am supposed to understand this stuff.

I’ve worked in business too – and it’s the same thing. As if the world has been taken over by lawyers and marketing executives, so that it swings from over-formal, never-ending sentences that leave you gasping, then swipes you round the head with a cheesy tagline, or a corporate logo converted into a meaningless, but supposedly-catchy, acronym like “eNGaGe” or “SHOUT!”.

I have decided to do what any rational neurotic in the modern world would do. I have turned to the internet. I have searched and searched for someone who might understand what I am going through, but nothing.

My desperation is turning to bitterness. Now I must tap out the frustrations that have lurked in the most repressed corners of my mind for all these years. I am joining the millions who write blogs so that I can function, so that I can off-load my dark thoughts. The internet is the perfect place for this – a virtual sewer for all the effluent that spews out of the human mind.

Some say I wouldn’t mind the language so much if I didn’t have to work with it all the time. They tell me I need a change of career – suggest that I work with numbers or animals.

But I think they’re missing the point. What if it’s a conspiracy? What if ‘those others’ are secretly laughing at editorial staff everywhere? Laughing at our efforts to make government reports and financial documents even halfway readable? What if they don’t want us to understand?

Call me paranoid, but look at what’s been going on over the past few weeks. The world has gone crazy – there’s been talk about Armageddon and headlines about ‘carnage’ and ‘bloodbaths’ in the City.

The whole world’s been trying to work out what financial terms actually mean. First it was ‘shorting’, an expression that sounded painful and turned out to mean ‘short-selling’, which was just as obscure. Some said it was about betting on shares going up and down. Others said it was something to do with derivatives. Derivatives of what? Derivatives of futures. Eh? How can anything be derived from the future? People having conversations like this in pubs up and down the country – all over the world in fact – except that in other countries they have their own nonsensical jargon in their own languages.

Then, after a few weeks of the ‘Credit Crunch’– just when you thought you were beginning to get your head round what they were actually talking about – someone comes up with ‘credit default swaps‘.

Go on, click on that link and find out what a ‘credit default swap’ is – if you think you’re hard enough.