Someone sent me a note the other day that they were working on ramping up a new model for their agency. I remarked that I've spent my entire adult life attempting to ramp up a model.
I mean c'mon. WTF does ramp up a new model mean? Could you please speak English? Or as my Yiddishe mama would say, 'spik hanglish.' Those who write for the web or who work for web-focused agencies are usually the worst offenders. First off, they're usually tech-heads, so they're used to using complicated words like 'interface,' and second, they work in a medium that always seems to accommodate more words (they would say verbiage.) The discipline of print, where you pare, pare, pare is missing. So writing becomes lax, lazy and long.
I don't think saying words like modality, paradigm, etc. makes people sound smart. At one agency I worked at, a whole new language was created. There were mentors and mentees. Mentee is not a word. Protege is. I understand the English language is a mutable beast. But that does not mean it is an ever-expanding catch-basin for bullshit.
Being Swedlish i've set out to change not only the verbiage of the Anglish language but also the grammar.Right now i'm in HK and is learning to speak in sentences completely abbreviated. would work beautifully on the web with it's limited space for ands, ofs, withs, etc.
ReplyDeleteYou take baloon, as one kid said to his mother.
Here they don't pass the salt please, they "give salt".
Or cannotlah.
More seriously to your point; I'm flabbergasted by the lack of paring skills when it comes to "web-writing". Wasn't the first thing we were supposed to learn about writing for the small screen to write short and distinct?
I think the problem is that the web is still a domain, excuse the pun, dominated by people who still do their very best to keep the mystery of the medium alive, Humans do not need to apply.
thankfully it seems, according to recent surveys, that even the cyborgs like to sink into a deep and comfy armchair armed with a good old paper publication. Let's hope the advertisers won't be the ones killing magazines and papers. without ads the paper will die even if there are willing readers.
And hey, have you noticed that the most visited web pages are nothing else than TV on a computer, albeit far too often of an inferior quality to the dumb-box. keep writing. keep it succinct. not like this blabber. cheerio/t.
Being Swedlish i've set out to change not only the verbiage of the Anglish language but also the grammar.Right now i'm in HK and is learning to speak in sentences completely abbreviated. would work beautifully on the web with it's limited space for ands, ofs, withs, etc.
ReplyDeleteYou take baloon, as one kid said to his mother.
Here they don't pass the salt please, they "give salt".
Or cannotlah.
More seriously to your point; I'm flabbergasted by the lack of paring skills when it comes to "web-writing". Wasn't the first thing we were supposed to learn about writing for the small screen to write short and distinct?
I think the problem is that the web is still a domain, excuse the pun, dominated by people who still do their very best to keep the mystery of the medium alive, Humans do not need to apply.
thankfully it seems, according to recent surveys, that even the cyborgs like to sink into a deep and comfy armchair armed with a good old paper publication. Let's hope the advertisers won't be the ones killing magazines and papers. without ads the paper will die even if there are willing readers.
And hey, have you noticed that the most visited web pages are nothing else than TV on a computer, albeit far too often of an inferior quality to the dumb-box. keep writing. keep it succinct. not like this blabber. cheerio/t.
Sometimes, when I'm sitting in a meeting and realize I've been dozing off and not paying attention, I'll chime in with "What we're trying to do here is effect a paradigm shift in our concepting model." Then I doze off again with a smug look on my face. It's useful.
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