Quiet Dignity and Grace

I don't pretend to know how hard it is to be a CEO, and to have to announce layoffs.

But as a former journalist and tech writer, I recognize boilerplate when I see it.

Inc. Magazine screamed this headline Jan. 19:

 

Empathy is a good thing. We need more of it, to be sure.

However, here are the words Inc. praised so loudly:

To their credit, Microsoft is indeed being pretty kind to the laid-off workers, per the article linked above. Six months of severance, six months of extended health care benefits, and extended options on company stock. The actions deserve high praise.

The words, however . . .

Thoughtful and transparent.

What do they mean, exactly in this context? Surely, they're not revealing to everyone who is being laid off by name, nor are they likely to be explicit in their candor on why the layoffs had to occur in the first place.

The actions are exemplary, as pointed out by Inc's columnist, and should be lauded.

The words, however, are boilerplate and give the warmth of a wintertime sun. They're likely to be emulated, as other buzzy buzzwords have been in the same space.

Praise the actions, but beware the praise of words.

There is quiet dignity and grace. Lovely words indeed.

Then there are these three words:

Annihilator of Words

Call it political correctness, call it Big Brother-ish, or call it a lame-o topic for articles (and blog posts, how meta), there is much to be said for the annihilation of words.

Or not. But at least this comic strip about the concept is funny.

What words would I choose to annihilate, or, at least through the Otterloop Conundrum, render meaningless through endless repetition? Annihilate seems to be a good candidate. First of all, do you pronounce the H or not? Do those who pronounce the H sound pretentions, thus inciting the listener to wish they would be annihilated? Would the annihiliation of annihilate, uh, annihilate the unclear antecedent from the previous sentence, where we’re not sure whose annihilation we’re meant to celebrate? Or should I forget the whole thing and start over?

Pants. That is All.

For your viewing pleasure, an animated history of "pants" from a fourth-century saint to Edgar Allan Poe.

I Hate These Words! Stay Away from these Words!

I present, for your perusal, a list of words I hate:

Poultry. As with most of the words I hate, the hate has no basis in rationality. Really, I should love this word, as it is closely related to poltroon, a word I highly favor. But there's something about poultry that bugs me. It's a catch-all word that just isn't descriptive enough. Talk about ducks. Or chickens. Or whatever. Just don't talk about poultry. Leaves me cold.



Appreciative. This is a perfectly acceptable noun. But why do I have to be a noun when I can express a verb? I appreciate what you did, versus I'm appreciative of what you did. The noun form, even worse than poultry, leaves me clammy. Appreciative sounds like a man falling down the stairs.

Bully. Used in the proper Teddy Roosevelt sense, I'm fine with this word. But used in the schoolyard sense, well, makes me hate the user's tiny little guts. Why? It's overused. It's the latest buzzword and has gone from meaning the effectual cvreep in the school playground to anyone and everything you don't happen to agree with. Some kid in England, for example, was called a bully for berating -- on Twitter, no less -- an Olympic athlete's performance. Every time I hear the word now, all I can think is of another tempest in a teapot. Once you've co-opted a word that meant something specific to mean everything under the sun, you've diluted the value and impact of that word.

Progressive. Progressive for whom, I have to ask.

Interesting Rhetoric

After the California Supreme Court upheld a ban on gay marriage yesterday, I'v espent a few fascinating hours reading the rhetoric spinning around this unexpected ruling. It's telling, but not surprising, to find that the majority of media voices out there are fimrly in the anti-Proposition 8 camp. Take, for example, this lede from the Washington Post:

The ruling Tuesday by California's Supreme Court upholding a ban on same-sex
marriages shows that, despite a year of successes for gay activists, the road
toward full marriage rights remains difficult -- particularly when voters are
given a direct say.

Those pesky voters. Always throwing up obstacles. Funny how the voters are blamed for this, when "the voters" also elected Barack Obama, in which instance the press praises "the voters" beyond all measure.

CNN.com fares little better. They write:

The same court, dominated by Republican appointees, ruled in May 2008 that the
state constitution guaranteed gay and lesbian couples the "basic civil right" to
marry. Voters responded in November by approving the marriage ban by a margin of 52 to 48 percent.

Now, back in May 2008 when the court rules in favor of gay marriage, I didn't read anything about how the court was dominated by Republicans. But it's the same court now that upheld the Constitutionality of Proposition 8, and now, suddenly, they're Republicans.

And it goes on. Nearly every story I read shows a bias towards those making the "struggle" or the "fight" for gay marriage, without thinking of those who oppose gay marriage. A surprising stance for the press, which ought to be able to maintain neutrality. Neutrality isn't hard to do.

Zaftig

Learning something new every day is, by all appearances, a good thing. But it's not without risk.

Today,l while reading a National Geographic article on a healthcare program in rural India, I cam across this sentence: "She is often accompanied by Babai Sathe, an exuberant woman of 47, a bit zaftig, with a toothy smile."

Zaftig. I had to look it up, anticipating it would mean something along the lines of loony, high-spirited, or exuberant (given that the author qualified this lady's zaftigness with the phrase "a bit").

Alas.

With the delicate, exacting gusto typical of most dictionaries, Houghton Mifflin's American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines zaftig thusly:

1. Full-bosomed. 2. Having a comfortably ample figure.

Using such a word is fraught with risk. One, you have to explain it. Two, given the two definitions, it's clear that the word is unisex, though a male described as zaftig might take offense at the primary definition. A zaftig followed by a zap or a zinger would not be pleasant.

Additionally, it's my experience that you're either zaftig or not, and that there ought not to be any qualifying statements to define one's state of zaftigness, so the author threw me on this. But I did indeed learn something. Now I just have to figure out how to use the word in polite conversation. Outside of a Scrabble game.

Twenty-Seven Below Zero

It's cold outside, folks. When I left for work this morning, it was 27 below zero (That's 32 below, for you people on the Celcius scale). Fortunately, the truck started, though it asked "You're kidding, right," when I first cranked. The sun shines through the window, but it's one of those suns that says, "Truly, I am 93 million miles away today, where it's warmer."

It's cold all over. From Montana to Maine, it's below zero. Add to that the butt-puckering panic over worldwide stock market losses, and you've got a lot of people wandering around, whimpering like the radiation victims in "The Day After." Of course, these are paper losses. No one has come to anyone's house to pull money from piggy banks because the stock markets said whaa. It's not fun, mind you. Getting those end of the year statements showing losses in what paltry stocks my wife and I own was not entertaining. And it's likely to be worse come April. But we still have food. A woodpile to feed the basement fireplace. Gas for the furnace. To quote Gloria Gaynor, "We will survive."

I've been reading a lot about reading this week, mainly in this Frank Smith text for my, uh, which class is it now? Reading Theory and Document Design. A general mish-mash of a title if I've ever heard one. A nugget from this weeks' reading: "Written language (like speech) is transparent -- we look through the actual words for the meaning beyond, and unless there are noticable anomalies of meaning, or unless we have trouble comprehending, we are not aware of the words themselves." Pretty tricky thinking. We like to think we're aware of words, especialy those of us in the trade of wordsmithing. But perhaps, keeping in mind that people use words to get to the meaning behind them, I can become a better technical writer, if not a better blogger.

Just this week we've had a debate here at work on two procedures that I and another tech writer are working. We've spent a good two days tinkering with one step in both procedures, trying to get the wording just right. I tinkered with it a bit yesterday, and thought I had it worked out. Then I took it to our criticality safety guy, whose job it is to ensure that we writers retain the meaning in the words. I struck out. He explained the meaning, and I went back to work. Second time around, the wording got across the meaning intended -- which is good, because it's a pretty important safety requirement we have to meet. What I'ev enjoyed the most about this process the last few days is how collaborative it's been. We've had two people from crit safety, two tech writers and a safety analyst poking and prodding these steps. With each of us taking the meaning we had in our heads, tinkering with words, we were able to come to an agreement on what words to use to get the meaning across. And then I got hit on the head and forgot where I was going.