I am currently revising some user-facing documentation for a new client. The existing documents were prepared by a member of staff, no longer working for the company concerned, who had never had any training in technical writing skills. There’s a series of about a dozen Word documents of about 20 pages each. All the formatting has been done without the use of styles, additional white space has been added with empty paragraphs, and all the graphics are floating. Even the Table of Contents has been created manually. These are all examples of inefficient ways to use Microsoft Word, and they are typical of work produced by people who are, in terms of their documentation skills, well-meaning amateurs. (They may well excel in their own professional fields, and they are probably really nice people too!)
I can deal with all these things, and if I am asked to, I can show people how to save time and energy by doing things in different ways that allow for consistency and repeatability across document sets.
The thing that has really upset me with these particular documents is the poor quality of the writing itself. The most grating offence against accepted current usage that this writer is guilty of is the use of an apostrophe to indicate the plural of nouns. I’ve seen “operator’s”, “user’s”, “extra’s”, and “area’s” – not one of them indicating a possessive – in just a few pages. Poor Lynne Truss would be having a fit by now, and to tell you the truth, I am nearly there myself.
Tag grammar
Apostrophe overload
Why "correctness" matters
Native speakers of English – or any other language – seem to know how to use their own language, and what is correct in language use, even without formal study of the rules of grammar. People just seem to know “what sounds right”. Many very wise people have written about this at length and I wouldn’t dare try and compete with Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker or David Crystal.
Sometimes, as languages grow and develop, confusing situations occur with different meanings or different rules for similar sounding words. While recognising that language changes, we try to pass on these more sophisticated usages as they are keys to subtle yet meaningful variations in our speech and writing. Those of us who love clarity and correctness (and I count myself amongst them) can be upset when distinctions are lost, and this week Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich eloquently bewailed the apparent loss of one distinct variation in usage. The particular distinction that bothered Schmich was the difference between “lie down” and “lay down”. This is a distinction that I understood automatically, but I had to go to Michael Swan for a formal explanation. “Lay” means to put down carefully, says Swan, and takes an object. It has a regular form, but an awkward spelling in its past tense (“laid” not “layed”). “Lie”, meaning to be or become horizontal, is an irregular verb, with the past tense “lay”. It’s easy to see how this may confuse some people.
The unhappiness that people like Schmich and I feel when distinctions are lost is not due to us being “old-fashioned”, or “conservative”, but because we believe that the variety that correct usage entails enriches language, while casual and thoughtless usage makes language poorer for all of us.
Invented English: "smokefree"
In order to create publicity material to accompany the implementation of a law making it illegal to smoke in enclosed places, the UK Department of Health (DoH) have invented a new word: “smokefree”.
In fact they have an entire campaign going on about “Smokefree England“.
I am in despair about this. Not, let me explain, about the legislation. I am all in favour of banning smoking in pubs and restaurants as well as in the workplace. But I am in despair at this new word, and the way the DoH have chosen to use it.
It appears to be an adjective, and to mean “free of smoke”. But in their literature and on their web site the DoH have applied this adjective so widely as to make it meaningless. For a start, will the entire country of England be free of smoke of all kinds and in all places for 1st July? In fact, it will only be free of tobacco smoke in designated places. So “smokefree England” doesn’t make sense.
The literature prepared by the DoH refers to the “smokefree law”. Does that mean the legislation itself was free of smoke?
And don’t get me started on the new verb the DoH have introduced: “to go smokefree”!
The prepositions are fine, but…
A friend asked me today whether it was OK to use a preposition at the end of a sentence in a training manual he was writing. I was able to reassure him that his use of prepositions was fine. I even quoted the “Oxford A-Z of Grammar and Style” (Oxford University Press, 2004, p.96) which unambiguously rubbishes the “no-preposition-at-the-end-of-a-sentence” rule:
"Some people argue that you should never place a preposition at the end of a sentence...This opinion is...completely wrong. Writers have been placing prepositions at the end of sentences for centuries, for the very good reason that this is often the best place for them...So this is one "rule" that can safely be ignored."
However, as you can see below, my friend had been so concerned about this non-rule that he had blundered into some very bad referencing instead. Here’s what he originally wrote:
"COO users will not be able to view records that are sitting in the HR bucket. HR users will be able to view all records, no matter which bucket they are sitting in."
When I pointed out to him what he had actually written, he laughed and cheerfully went back to his own “bucket” to make some corrections.
Better grammar – at your local supermarket now!
According to a news item on the Plain English Campaign’s web site, the Tesco supermarket chain is to replace the signs reading “10 items or less” with new signs reading “Up to 10 items”.
Lovers of good English usage have always been infuriated by the old signs because they ignored the rule that “fewer” is used with countable nouns and “less” is only used with non-countable nouns, as in “I worked fewer hours last week and so I earned less money”.
Now I wonder when supermarkets are going to stop selling “stationary”?
(Many thanks to my friend Karen M. for pointing out this news item.)
