Give your company a voice
Our thanks to The Times’ diary for spotting embarrassing mistakes by Michael Gove’s civil servants in their first press release of 2014. It referred to the “Depaertment” for Education and put an embargo on the time of “bradcast.” The paper suggested, in jest we’re sure, that the Education Secretary should introduce compulsory weekly spelling tests. Alternatively, they could always try for a job at The Guardian.
There can no longer be any doubt about the importance of the controversial ‘Oxford comma’, placed by some before the final ‘and’ in a list. Sky News sent out a newsflash to mobile devices that read: “Obama-Castro handshake and same-sex marriage date set.” As The Times wryly noted, “Things are certainly moving very fast in that relationship.”
Lost in translation
It’s often said that the British and Americans are “two people divided by a common language” and an amusing table currently circulating on the internet shows just how true that is. Just look at what others understand by these commonly used phrases:
What the British say
What the British mean
What others understand
I hear what you say
I disagree and do not want to discuss it further
He accepts my point of view
With the greatest respect
You are an idiot
He is listening to me
That’s not bad
That’s good
That’s poor
That is a very brave proposal
You are insane
He thinks I have courage
Quite good
A bit disappointing
Quite good
I would suggest
Do it…or else! Read more »
The answer is when he or she is a ‘passenger assistant’. Both The Times and Daily Mail reported on a job advert by bus operator Go-Ahead London for a role that would suit a “good face-to-face communicator” with “customer-facing experience” and a “natural flair for going the extra mile”. Prospective candidates were also asked if they had “the kind of personality that made last year’s Olympic games makers so successful”.
As a spokesperson for the Plain English Campaign pointed out,
Our thanks to Private Eye for this example of bureaucratic gibberish from a council press release. It states: “East Renfrewshire Council is to bring forward its review of orders process and will commence immediately to assess area orders on a prioritised basis before implementing the full statutory process which the review of the orders will require.” It is believed to refer to new parking arrangements but, as the magazine wryly noted, who can say?
It had to happen. In today’s news we learn of a new phenomenon: ‘ploddledygook’, a term coined by the Plain English Campaign specifically to describe gibberish produced by police forces. The Avon & Somerset force seems to have taken its cue from corporate gobbledygook when producing a guide on how to write entries for its annual Problem Solving Awards. Their advice is so unintelligible that police officers can’t understand the instructions!
The force’s internal website includes such gems as: “Follow the problem-solving mythology as a supportive framework to work the problem through: Understand where the drivers and demand originated;
Thrilled to see in the news this morning that ‘omnishambles’ – possibly one of my favourite words of all time – has now been officially named UK Word of the Year by the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Coined by the excellent political satire (or possibly documentary) ‘The Thick of It’, to describe a collection of government blunders, it has fast evolved to describe any situation that has been utterly and comprehensively mismanaged. Not only has it spawned its own adjective –
Great to see at the weekend that Owen Paterson, rural affairs secretary, takes proper punctuation so seriously that he interrupted his preparations for the imminent badger cull to issue an edict on the subject. Paterson has insisted civil servants do not start a sentence with ‘but’, while ‘and’ should only be used once in any sentence. Refreshingly, he also advises “all sentences should be as short as possible” and jargon should be avoided. Paterson’s 10-point list instructs staff to avoid dashes and limit the use of brackets in the interests of simplicity.
People like me who care about good English are often accused of being pedantic but a court case earlier this year showed that a missing decimal point can have costly implications. A UBS commodities trader was tempted to leave his job to take up a new position at JP Morgan by an annual salary equivalent to £2m. But it transpired that JP Morgan had made a disastrous typo in the trader’s contract and, in fact,
Here’s a story that illustrates the perils of relying on the computer spellcheck function and the importance of checking work carefully – then checking it again. I share it with you as it may raise a wry smile, no small feat in a soggy May.
Penguin Group Australia was forced to pulp and reprint about 7,000 copies of its Pasta Bible cookbook after a tiny misprint was found in the ingredients for tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.
