In “Shut Your Loophole,” Slate’s Jack Shafer goes ballistic on the word “loophole,” examining its etymology, complaining about its misuse, and calling for a ban by journalists.

He complains that “this perfectly useful term has been corrupted by rhetorical con artists to mean terrible ‘gaps’ in the law—or in the tax code—that demand ‘closing.’”

He says “It’s a loaded, partisan word, one that implies wrongdoing and scandal where none exists, and inserting it into a political argument gives the inserter the upper hand. When loophole creeps into news stories, they start to read like editorials.”

Wow. What a great word. And while the “corruption” of loophole is probably worse than Shafer describes (now used when an incomplete law fails to address behavior in violation of the intent of the law, which may explain some of the headlines he complains about), focusing on etymology misses the point.

In commenting on the Shafer article, Roger Shuy at Language Log concludes, “Geez, language is complicated, but that’s why it’s so much fun.”

The line is delivered as a humorous exit point but suggests the real issue here. Using language precisely is a constant challenge for even the most experienced writers (especially those writing under deadline). Most of us don’t have time to consult the ever-growing list of words that someone somewhere says we can’t use (Dan Santow at Word Wise has spent a lot of time on this recently), and doing so wouldn’t solve the problem anyway (Language Log introduces us to “peevology”).

Because the problem usually isn’t poor word choice – to be solved simply by choosing a different word. It’s unclear thinking. When our ideas aren’t clear, we like to choose broad, familiar, overused, imprecise words that seem to get at an idea but can’t contribute to a clear and precise statement – because there isn’t a clear and precise thought. I was asked yesterday how to avoid using the word “revolutionary” in press releases. I answered that the problem isn’t with the word “revolutionary.” It’s with thinking that something is revolutionary when it isn’t. Get the thinking right, and the word choice problem disappears.

Most readers just want useful information, not brilliant prose. They’ll forgive an overused term or a minor grammar error if the information is clear and valuable. Many terrific and popular bloggers struggle to write grammatically correct sentences, and some are obviously non-native speakers of English, but the information they impart is clear and valuable. That’s what counts.

We constantly work between the two extremes of meaninglessness and rigidity. In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, we see an egg in crisis: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” And we know what happened to Humpty. But to think that a word should have just one original meaning and never change (”loophole” should be used only for a hole in a wall used for throwing rocks or shooting arrows) denies the natural way language develops and makes rhetorical con artists of us all.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that when sentence after sentence is poorly built from twisted phrases and misapplied idioms and clichés, readers must work too hard to construct meaning. But the way to achieve clarity is not with some rigid, etymology-based precision that shifts the focus from “is it clear” to “is it correct.”

Concludes Shafer: “Once reporters understand that one man’s loophole is another man’s freedom, they’ll never use the word again. At least not outside quotation marks.” Of course they will. And as long as they are making a point clearly, they should feel free to do so.

Communication, Dan Santow, Humpty Dumpty, Jack Shafer, journalism, Language Log, Lewis Carroll, loophole, politics, Roger Shuy, Slate, Through the Looking Glass, words, Writing

Share on Facebook

John Murrell of GMSV discusses some interesting movement in online privacy. The trend is that search engines will retain information for less time and users will get more control over who stores what.

Murrell lists two possible explanations that give me hope. Better privacy policies are becoming a selling point for the search engines, and they are a sign of good faith in response to government scrutiny. But his preferred explanation is disheartening:

“Who has the biggest cache of user data? Google. Who potentially benefits the most from liberal data retention? Google. How do you whittle down Google’s advantage? Encourage strict limits and user control of data retention and force Google to respond.”

When competition sets the moral compass, there is no true north

Google, GSMV, John Murrell, online privacy, politics, search engines, Social Media, Technology, true north

Share on Facebook

As someone who has tried to explain to writing students for some 25 years that Aristotle was at his most irrational when he said “man is a rational animal,” I got a huge chuckle out of this article in the Christian Science Monitor (thanks to Seth Godin) on irrational buying habits on eBay.

After observing thousands of iPod auctions, researchers found that 45 to 50 percent of eBay auctions exceeded the “buy it now” price, the result of calor licitantis – “bidder’s heat.” The article includes other examples as well.

If you prefer to think of people as fundamentally rational, you can take comfort in the fact that people who spend a lot of time on eBay may not represent the general population. I take comfort in a different definition:

Humans are emotional animals.

Accepting this is a better formula for understanding what we can and cannot change. In most of life, including even science and technology, we spend far more time marshalling our rationality to defend what we feel than trying to reason our way toward any necessary conclusion.

Practical application: When trying to communicate, if we don’t acknowledge how we feel about the topic or readers, uncontrolled emotions shape what we say and write. Feeling intimidated by the subject matter? Think your audience isn’t very bright? If we don’t stop and say, “OK, that’s how I feel but I’m not going to let it show,” then the feelings will sit there right on the surface. If we misread how our audience feels about the topic or about us as a source of information, our attempts at an effective connection will fail.

Never underestimate the power of emotions to overwhelm reason, carry us to success against the odds, send us spinning down the wrong path, or make us pay more for something than it’s worth.

Aristotle, auctions, Authenticity, Communication, eBay, emotion, iPod, knowledge, rational animal, rationality, Seth Godin, Technology, Writing

Share on Facebook

Of course Sprint firing 1000 customers is shocking. It’s unheard of and goes against our treasured but long-dead rule that the customer is always right. Few current retailers seem ever to have heard of that one. But if you’ve ever worked retail, then you know it’s what nearly every retailer and retail employee has wanted to do at one time or another. Face it, the customer isn’t always right. Some of them are a huge pain. Some want everything free or at a discount, are never satisfied with anything, and can be horribly rude and offensive.

But as Seth Godin  comments, “Before you start firing customers, you better be committed to satisfying the rest of your customers. The giant flaw in Sprint’s logic, as many readers have pointed out, is that plenty (almost half) of their customers don’t like them. Getting rid of a nasty group of 1,000 isn’t going to change that very much.”

Good point, as a long-time Sprint customer, I’ve had some great experiences and some bad ones, and it certainly seems that customer support is headed in the wrong direction (like most phone support). I have an ongoing issue that’s taken several calls with gargantuan hold times to resolve and get a different story from each person I talk to.

It may be time for me to move on, but I got to Sprint after being seriously burned by other providers. So Sprint’s logic may not be all that bad. If customers need a mobile phone and don’t believe they have somewhere better to go (I hope all those happy iPhone buyers have a better experience with AT&T than I did), they just end up taking it.

Well, not just “taking it” exactly. I’ve now lost my temper a couple of times and shouted to speak to a manager. So maybe Sprint will fire me. Hmmm. How will it look on my resume?

AT&T, iphone, retail, Seth Godin, Sprint, Writing

Share on Facebook

After swearing off spending too much time immersed in Web 2.0 services just a few weeks ago, I did just the opposite. I signed up for Twitter, Facebook, and Second Life, and I’ve spent hours exploring dozens of wikis and how to get widgets into them.

The reason for all this and the practical benefits aside, I was truly impressed with just how bad the writing is on most of these sites. Help page after help page, wiki after wiki, I struggled with one unfortunate sentence after another.

Participation in social media is forcing us to write more, and faster, than ever. There’s copy everywhere, most of it written by unpracticed writers – which is how it should be. Social media wouldn’t be very social if only those capable of quality prose were invited. But there’s a price to pay. When sentence after sentence is poorly built from twisted phrases and misapplied idioms and clichés, readers must do all the hard work.

Over the years, we’ve become industrious readers of bad writing. We unconsciously assume, interpret, guess, fill in the gaps, and – in particularly bad cases – make up the entire meaning of a piece, unaware we have no idea what the writer actually intended. All this hard work causes massive confusion, misunderstanding, and fatigue, and often leaves little energy for the much harder task of carefully crafting our own prose.

The value of social media today (it may not always be so) is mostly tied to the value of written contributions, so the failure to communicate clearly lessens the value of social media. So? What’s the risk? Conversations that never go anywhere. We’ve all had them with family, friends, and colleagues. At parties, pubs, and workplaces. They can be fun or frustrating, entertaining or depressing. They usually don’t last very long and they usually don’t change our lives. Is that social media? A billion irrelevant conversations?

I hope not, because many contributors are clearly articulating ideas that do change the way we think. But there will be many dropouts. There will be those who say, “I used to blog but it took too much out of me and never really mattered.” I once had a tenured lit professor who stopped reading and writing completely in favor of painting. “There’s nothing left in books for me,” he said.

No real solution to this exists, except perhaps how the platforms evolve. It isn’t more writing classes (though those wouldn’t hurt), more grammarians (who too often shift the focus from substance to form), or more editors (always helpful but usually impractical). In the end, we have to remember writing is not science, as if there’s always clarity in science, and conversations are what they are: a process of getting somewhere useful, but not necessarily anywhere in particular. And in conversations, patience is always an ally when it comes to understanding.

So here are a couple of top tips for those who really want to be understood:

• The goal isn’t quantity – or shouldn’t be (no thanks to blog rankings). And it isn’t praise for musical prose. It’s simple clarity – of thought and sentence.
• Make your readers real. It’s your idea, but you’re writing to be understood by others. What do they need to know? What do they need to know first, second, and third? What words and phrases will they understand?
• Slow down. While contrary to the rhythm of our Twittered lives, nothing ripens prose like time. Write drafts to work out your ideas. Then let some time pass before editing your sentences for clarity. Get rid of unnecessary words and phrases, which make readers work harder.
• Read what you’ve written aloud, and every time you struggle to get through a sentence, considered how much harder it will be for your readers.
• If writing better means writing less, then write less.

conversations, Facebook, second life, Social Media, Twitter, Web 2.0, Writing

Share on Facebook