Why can't you write/speak proper?

People in the corporate world seem to love making themselves sound important. Often they do this by dropping names, inserting large (often inappropriate) words into their sentences, or just behaving like a knob. Alas, they also seem to do this by making up new, ludicrous, but pseudo-important-sounding phrases. If you’ve ever been in a corporate meeting or presentation and played the old game of “Bullshit Bingo”, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The current phrase-of-the-day that seems to be making the rounds of the corporate world these days makes me cringe and scream every time I hear it. One of these days I’m just going to be forced to punch someone out.

“Going forward” (aka “Moving forward”)

Here’s an example: “This will be a critical strategy going forward.”

Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!

One – it means NOTHING!

Two – it adds NOTHING!

Three – 99 times out of 100 it is TOTALLY REDUNDANT!!

That sentence above would have had just as much impact and meant just as much either without the extra wordage, or with something as simple and far more meaningful as “for our future”. Alas, I’m hearing it several times a day lately, and I fear any reaction on my part now will risk the ongoing viability of my employment.

So please help me: If you hear this phrase, if you are witness to it in a meeting or presentation, then COUGH LOUDLY, or SNEEZE LOUDLY, and under that distracting sound mutter “BINGO!” Hopefully, together, we will eradicate this latest lunacy from our language!

If we’re going to improve the standard of spoken english, especially in Australia, then possibly the first place to start is with that vernacular affectionately referred to as ‘bogan’. In my opinion, it’s just plain lazy. Here are two classic examples.

“I seen him coming.”

“I knew that when I come here.”

Strange. Unnecessary. Lazy. These are so easy to fix, and there is no excuse. Pity no one conjugates in school anymore, as that simple exercise would probably solve this growing problem.

The correct phrases are easy, and anyone with an ounce of understanding of the language can see the errors a mile away.

The first one should be “saw” – “I saw him coming.” Say it bogans. Now say it again.

And for the second one, the correct past tense is “came” – “when I came here”.

Kill the bogans, and revive the language people.

Some politicians never fail to amaze when they insist on trying to appear smarter than they are. One of the biggest tricks in the politician’s book – apart from taking a long time to say nothing – is to use lots of big words. Sometimes they even know what they mean! But one of their funniest (and most infuriating) habits is when they make up words.

Bush is famous for it (take “newkewlar” for example), but that’s not quite what this post is about. His are just bouts of idiocy and ignorance.

My favourite is the “incentivise” family of made-up words. When politicians were looking for a way to say “this policy will really motivate people into action”, some smart little darling came up with “this policy will incentivise people”. Okay, let’s make this clear, gumdrop – there is no such word as “incentivise”. The word you want is “motivate”.

It soon got to the point of the ridiculous when they needed a noun for their policy. And if the word they made up is “incentivise”, then the logical extension is “incentivisation”. Yes, I’m serious, politicians began speaking of generating the necessary “incentivisation”. People, if the first word is “motivate”, then the noun is “motivation”.

I know it all began because “motive” can be a spurious word in political circles, and “incentive” can sound much better. But really guys, you’re just compounding the error here.

Try using english instead.

[Update: From an english television show I was watching tonight I was presented with the “intensitivity”!! This from an english broadcaster??? The word is “intensive” guys – and you should know that!]

It seems even the ‘bastion’ of good english in this country can’t quite get it right.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ‘aunty’) employs many professional writers (including scores of journalists), and to ensure they all uphold the best traditions of the english language, the ‘aunty’ also has an internal Standing Committee on Spoken English’, affectionately and collectively called SCOSE. Now generally, this body is a very valuable resource within the national broadcaster, and I will probably include a number of excerpts from their reports in this blog in the future. But, alas, even SCOSE gets it wrong.

In one of their recent bulletins to staff, SCOSE made the following comment:

‘A group of agricultural experts believes there may be other options for farmers who might be considering leaving the land.’

This is another example of the same mistake. The head noun is experts (plural). So the verb should be plural believe, not singular believes.

Sorry aunty, that’s wrong. The word ‘group’ modifies the noun ‘experts’ so that the subject becomes a singular – in this case, a group. The test for this sort of sentence is to remove the noun that is being modified. If the sentence were to read just ‘A group believes…’ then we wouldn’t complain. But saying ‘A group believe …’ as SCOSE suggests is wrong. Without the word ‘group’ in there, SCOSE may be correct – in that case it would be ‘Experts believe…’ which would be right. But now we’re talking about a singular ‘group’, not the plural ‘experts’.

The original sentence is correct, and SCOSE is wrong. Unfortunately, this is an error SCOSE has repeated in a couple of their monthly bulletins.

Another example of SCOSE’s occassional misjudgement comes from a much earlier bulletin, and deals with the possessive form of proper nouns that end in the letter ‘s’. In one report, a journalist was berated for referring (as I recall) to “Ben Cousins’ lawyer”. The journalist was told that they should have said (or written) “Ben Cousins’s lawyer”. Bzzzzt. Wrong. It has always been the case in English, that where a person’s name ends in an ‘s’ (such as ‘Cousins’), then it is INCORRECT to add another ‘s’ after the name when turning it into the possessive form. We might say “Ben’s lawyer” (because ‘Ben’ does not end in an ‘s’, so we can add a possessive ‘s’ to it), but it is WRONG to say “Cousins’s lawyer”. Just listen to the buzzing sound it creates – CUZZ-enz-ez!!

We never heard about “Jesus’s disciples”, it was always “Jesus’ disciples”. 

When the name has an ‘s’ on the end and we need to turn it into the possessive form, we DO NOT add an extra ‘s’, just an apostrophe – as the journalist originally and correctly did when he/she used “Ben Cousins’ lawyer”.

Admittedly, there is still something of a grey area when the name ends in an ‘s’ sound, but not necessarily in the letter – such as Louise, Prudence, or Maurice. Purists will argue that here, too, an extra ‘s’ is incorrect (that it should be “Louise’ book”, “Prudence’ teacher” and “Maurice’ lawyer”) , though support here seems to have been waning in recent years.