Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Random Notes from a Crank



The other day we were at the store checking out board games. Mrs. Nasty said she liked the board game Life. I never liked that game. It's depressing.

I'm an avid observer of doublespeak, academese, bureaucratese--what Richard Lanham calls "The Official Style." Another type of The Official Style is what I like to call administrative-speak. One word I've noticed quite a bit lately is "operationalize," which is long hand for "implement" or "get something done." So much for clear verbs. 

In contrast, this review of Billig's Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences has a slightly different take on excessive nominalizations, prepositional phrases, Latinate terms, and other markers of academese. One could argue that such obtuse and crappy prose is a consequence of code grooming, but I still think it stinks and makes the reader work too hard. I'm for plainer language. 

4 comments:

travolta said...

Life is boring because there are no interesting choices to make.

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the game, not Life, I hope....

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

Exactly, my friend.

Dr. K said...

8I can't decide whether Life is all about luck or privilege.

(I will be passing along the term "code grooming," which seems very useful for writing center work.)

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

That term is used a lot in Heinrichs' books.