THE CAIN'T BRIGADE

There’s something about bad grammar that, for many of us, is way too memorable.

University professors and columnists, especially, all cry “foul” when the basic rules and regs of English writing are violated. 

Even dating site Match, after asking 5,000 users if language mattered, discovered it did.  Big time.  Eighty-eight percent of women, 75 percent of men agreed that the proper syntax was far more important in a prospective date than confidence or good teeth.  [Gnaw on that one for a while.]

Depending on who responds, the blame goes to social media, where gaffes are as common as abbreviations like ‘soups awk’ [you guess].  On the educational system … but never aimed at a particular teacher.  On contemporary “it’s gotta be Millennial” qualities like laziness, carelessness, inaccuracy, even inconsiderateness.

Let’s stop here.  And agree:  It’s our responsibility as language gurus – communicators, brand experts, marketers – to frame the dispute.  After all, there is an informal English, one that we speak and message and tweet.  Punctuation might be absent, at times.  Abbreviations, dominant.  And dialects become noticeable. 

The other practice?  Emails, memos, presentations, and all the other accoutrements of corporate and marketing and brand communications, from annual reports to Web sites.  There, though informal lingo might be present, the rest of the grammatical snafus need to be gone.

Then there’s Oklahoma’s Ado Annie …

IN DEFENSE OF FANCYPANTS* ... SOMETIMES

The just-finished Scripps-Howard spelling bee got us thinking.

[As did the two winning words:  Feulletion and stichomythia.]

Whatever happened to big, sometimes elegant words in today’s communications … great tongue twisters like grandiloquent or right-on descriptors such as innocuous?

Is it because:

• we’re reduced to 140 characters or less,
• our attention span is split into seconds, not minutes,
• we text everything to everybody, or
• we read and talk in short bursts?

We submit it’s due to all of the above – and none.  The College Board, in its effort to make SATs more indicative of success, has dropped obscure-isms, and instead substituted words that shift definition in context (‘synthesis’ is one).   And in the mid-aughts, Princeton psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer picked a number of texts and replaced simple phrases with flowery language, using both as writing samples for 70+ students to evaluate.  The results?  No duh.  As language complexity increased, rated opinions of the authors’ intelligence decreased.

Our argument:  That there are valid times when the word nerd in us appears.  No, it’s not because we need to impress our audience.  Nor do we want to sound smarter.  It’s just that words are the basis of our business – and, because of that, we deliberately choose those phrases that nail the situation and the event.  Many of us write for the ear, so “live” and “inhabit” will resonate differently, depending on the circumstance.  And contrast the meanings (both literal and figurative) of “angry” with “furious” or “splenetic”; they’re all different, best used in different ways. 

Why not take advantage of our rich language – and our sesquipedalian instincts? 

*Tina Fey, we’re sorry.

WORDS THAT STICK

Change is our middle name.

Yet, because we began our careers as writers and journalists, words are near and dear to us.  So, from time to time, we wear our linguistic hats and probe into the nature of language.  Which, sorta, kinda, is part of change.

Lately, fellow wordsmiths (or smithies, we suppose) have wrestled with the notion of permanence, that is, which of the new lingos heard and invented will last more than Andy Warhol’s 15 seconds.  Twerking, selfie, catfish, lean in:  All have precedents and other meanings attached.  Twerking, it’s said, was a Nawlins’ figure of speech two decades ago; selfie belongs to our compatriots Down Under (and even earlier, if you believe the Princess Anastasia myth).  Mash-ups and phrases, like cronut and Boston strong, seem to have more legs than others.

What makes for word permanence?  More professorial minds than ours cite five factors, from frequency and diversity to unobtrusiveness.   Others say it takes 40 years for slang to become embedded into our dictionaries.   To avoid theorizing, the venerable American Dialect Society (yes, Virginia, there is one) votes on its Word of the Year every January; believe it or not, 2013 was the year of “because” … as in “because nachos.  Because politics.  Because science.” 

No comment.

Instead, we see two factors that count for language stick-to-it-tiveness.  One, a word that’s inextricably linked to a physical object or unforgettable event.  Think “drone” and “9/11.”  And two, an appendix that can transform any plain-Jane ordinary adjective or noun into something new and different.  After all, consider what adding “nado” and “gate” does to shark and water … among others.

Why the concern with lastingness?   Because change.  It’s what we do.

WHAT OUR ORTHODONTIST TOLD US

As much as we recoil from even the thought of teeth and the dentist, one word in particular reminds us of our not-so-beloved orthodontist … and the many times we spent in his chair straightening and tightening our braces.

[By the way, our teeth remain as charmingly crooked as they did before treatment.]

The word also calls up memories of siblings playing with trains, and their continual work to keep them running on track.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the magical nine letters spell “alignment.”  And it’s a concept we’re run across way too many times.

Actually, we have no real problem with the philosophy.  In most cases, alignment is, after all, a needed activity, linking corporate goals with project and employee goals.  It started, not surprisingly, as an IT initiative in the 1990s, then gradually morphed into an effort that gets everyone, from executives to customer care reps, on the same page. 

And it does benefit the organization:  establishing trust among different functions, developing and following processes for decision-making and control, and managing risks, among other values.

What bugs us is the indiscriminate use of the term to apply to, yup, literally anything corporate that needs to be linked to a project or initiative.  There are alignment workshops galore.  Sessions to explore our innermost connections.  Consensus reports that detail who’s bought in, who hasn’t, and who’s on the fence.  It’s a lot of paper and a lot of time that could, very easily, be diagrammed and discussed in a few regular meetings and cascaded through lunch ‘n’ learns (with, of course, continual reinforcement of the agreements). 

Save us.  Please.  The alignment we’re seeking is the familiar bond between people … using simple agreements to ensure business togetherness. 

THAT 'S' WORD

There are certain words and symbols that trigger us – and our memories.

JFK.  Mensch.  The Beatles.  Boomers.  Farmers’ markets.  [Okay, you know where we’re going …]

What comes to mind, in the last week or so, is the word “skinny,” the newly found and fawned-over marketing-ese (along with small plates and vegetable anything).  It’s being applied to cocktails, popcorn, and ice cream with aplomb; look for other iterations at your supermarket … and soon. 

Obviously, restaurants and grocers are ecstatic with the positioning:  slender beverages and foods simply encourage consumers, by their very names, to take another drink or eat another bite.  After all, low or reduced calories imply that there’s room for another.  [We have Bethenny Frankel of The Real Housewives of New York City to thank for this.]

Us?  Not so enchanted.  Those triggers we mentioned send off major alarms at the word “skinny.”   It reminds us of the emphasis placed on weight, on looks, on continual svelte-hood – especially in the ‘60s and ‘70s (yes, even when Gloria Steinem et al. were rebelling).  It gives, again, a skewed perception of ourselves, with comparisons to models, magazines, and others who seem to have no issue with eating.  Further, that low-cal shine has been justified by psychologists as “personifying food and making it more endearing … in a light-hearted manner.”

Yes, diet has a negative connotation … we’ll admit.  Which is why many of the successful weight-loss specialists have adopted healthy eating as a mantra.  Though we can’t quite get our mouths around healthy cocktails and healthy ice cream, let’s ask our marketing wizards to give slenderizing wordsmithing another try.