Sometimes I think isolation is a good thing and only adds to the quality of an editorial life. At other times – surrounded by words and expressions I don’t understand and yearning for a sentence in concise, plain English – I feel lonely. So imagine my delight this week when someone dangled some bad writing at the Dangling Modifier.
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After my trip out last week, I felt that nothing and no one could harm me. My gamble on the hokey pokey ice-cream paid off and taught me a valuable lesson: all this time I’ve been worrying about understanding the words, and the truth is, I probably don’t need to. › Continue reading
Every B2B editor is familiar with jargon – it’s one of those things we live with. The buzzwords, the key phrases strung together like the lumps in a length of drool coughed up by a heavy smoker. We live with it, edit it – where possible we delete it. But what was I to do when I came across ‘sewerage undertakers’ this week?
Businessdictionary.com sent me the definition for ‘sustainability’. I was pleased. This is one of the words that I rarely, if ever, understand and yet it comes up so often in editorial work. I suspect the conspirators who laugh at editorial staff promote the words ‘sustainable’ and ‘sustainability’ just to cause confusion. They come up in almost every topic, apart that is, from plain English. › Continue reading
If you want an example of how not to write plain English, then it’s always worth taking a train. This week, my exciting life as a busy editor took me as far as my local station, where I very much enjoyed reading a notice from Network Rail about the temporary closure of my booking hall. › Continue reading
I have been considering my prospects in editorial work. Humanity will always need people who can make sense of business speak and political nonsense and rewrite it in plain English. But the trouble is I have so much trouble understanding the words, I can barely lay claim to being one of those valuable people any more. › Continue reading
Great news this week: the recession is at an end!
Phew! To think how worried we all were last October when I started this blog, about the credit crunch and what sort of impact it might have on editorial staff and standards. I know I wasn’t the only one who feared that business people – in their collective madness – might cut back on copy-editing and proofing. Fortunately, the recession is over and we can look forward to plenty of work as the number of B2B websites and publications increases. › Continue reading
This week I bought a jacket – some outdoor wear so that I can make the most of the glorious British summer without catching cold. I read the label of course, and marvelled at the quality of the copywriting without actually understanding the words. It wasn’t really written in plain English – it was more about concepts – but it certainly reassured me that I’d got value for money. › Continue reading
If you are worried about the state of plain English, or standards of English on the whole – particularly in the English-speaking country where the language originated – you had better not listen to what England’s Schools Minister said this Tuesday on the radio.
On the other hand, if you’re the sort of editor who doesn’t expect to retire for another 20 to 30 years, you may take heart from the fact that one in five of the next generation can’t write extended sentences, use punctuation, read between the lines of a story or understand the moral or message behind it. › Continue reading
It seems that they – our rulers, the people with power – have been reading my blog. Or if not, some remarkable coincidence has occurred that could change the world of editorial work and plain English out of all recognition. You my friend, and I (especially I) could be out of a job. I have it on good authority that MPs have been looking at how Government “uses and misuses language”.