Essential English
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Licence: the noun is confused with the verb license (not US).
Literally: Confused with metaphorically. This provides umpteen nonsense statements. We were literally flooded with books. He literally went up in smoke. He literally exploded in anger. Literally means exactness to the letter. To say he literally went up in smoke means he was burned, exploded, etc.
Livid: Confused with angry: livid means lead-coloured, but some angry people are very pale.
Loan: Confused with lend. Loan is the noun, lend the verb. The moneylender lends, and so makes you a loan.
Luxuriant: Confused with luxurious. The film star can have a luxurious car which is full of luxury, but not a luxuriant car. That means a car which is producing abundantly, growing profusely. Luxuriant refers to something that grows.
Mitigate: Confused with militate. It is said, incorrectly, that an act will mitigate against a settlement. But mitigate means to appease, to soften. It is militate which is intended – to make war or tell against. Think of military.
None: Means not one or no one and takes a singular verb (just as other distributive expressions like each, each one, everybody, everyone, many a man, nobody).
Oblivious: Confused with ignorant of. Oblivious is from the Latin oblivium, meaning forgetfulness. If you are ignorant of something, nobody told you. If you are oblivious, somebody told you but you let it slip into oblivion.
Practice: In English usage, practice is the noun, to practise, practising, practised the verb.
Principle: Confused with principal. The principal is first in rank or importance; principle is a fundamental source or moral conviction. The Principal has principles.
Protagonist: Confused with antagonist and with champion. Literally it means the leading character in a drama; it does not mean advocate or champion. Somebody can be a protagonist without advocating anything. An antagonist is an active opponent.
Quota: It means an allotted number, akin to rationing. To say New York had its full quota of rain means somebody was assigning various amounts of rain to New York.
Recrudescence: Confused with resurgence. ‘There was a resurgence of loyalty’ is right. To say ‘there was a recrudescence of loyalty’ is to misuse a good metaphor. Recrudescence means the breaking out of a sore or disease and it should be used, figuratively, for disagreeable events.
Regalia: Regal means of or by kings, and regalia means the insignia of royalty. Royal regalia is therefore tautologous and ‘the regalia of a bishop’ is contradictory. Freemasons, however, have adopted the term for their insignia.
Replica: Confused with reproduction. A replica is a duplicate or exact copy made by the original artist; anyone can attempt a reproduction.
Stationary: Confused with stationery. Stationary, adjective, is static; stationery, noun, is writing materials.
Synthetic: Is not a synonym for false as in ‘a synthetic excuse’. It means ‘placed together’, from the Greek syn, together, and tithemi, place. Think of synthetic rubber, made by placing its constituents together, rather than by extraction from a plant.
Titivate: Confused with titillate. To titivate is to adorn or smarten. The seducer may do that to himself, but he will seek to titillate the victim – to excite pleasantly.
Transpired: Wrongly used to mean something merely happened. It comes from the Latin spirare, breathe. To transpire is to emit through the lungs or skin and, figuratively, is best used for when some fact, especially a secret, oozes out.
Urbane: Confused with urban. Urban means of a city; urbane means courteous, suave. Not all people in urban areas are urbane.
Viable: Misused as a substitute for feasible or practicable. Viable means capable of independent life – a viable foetus, or seed, or, figuratively, scheme.
Vice: It would be a pity if it became a synonym for sex. There are many vices. It should be used as the opposite of virtue.
Virtually: Incorrectly used to mean nearly all, e.g. virtually all the chocolates were eaten. Virtually usefully means in essence or effect ‘as contrasted to formality’. ‘He’s virtually the manager.’ He does not have the title but he manages the business.
While: It means, strictly, during the time that; it is also tolerable as although, but. (While seeing your point, I cannot give you permission.) But it is nonsense to use while as a synonym for and or whereas. ‘Mr Jones is the president while Mr Smith is the secretary’, means Jones is president during the time that Smith is secretary. It means they must resign together. Sir Alan Herbert exposes the absurdity: ‘The curate read the first lesson while the rector read the second’.
Avoid Clichés
The first million writers (or cave painters) who told us about their ‘thorny problems’ used metaphor vividly. The prickliness of their position was plain to see. Some time after that the prickliness became less apparent; excessive use of the metaphor blunted it. The adjective had become a passenger. The cliché had been born.
To enjoin writers never to use a cliché is to anticipate a definition and to seek the impossible. Perhaps we can define a cliché as any phrase ‘so hackneyed as to be knock-kneed and spavined’.14 There are a lot of them about. There are no doubt some in this book. It is impossible to ban them, because they serve a natural inclination. At best they are a form of literary shorthand, with the attraction of economy. Is it better to say ‘he was bustling and industrious’ than ‘he was busy as a bee’? What text editors can do with clichés in copy is to ration them, and tolerate only the best. They are worst when they seek to enliven dull patches; but they do nothing of the sort. The imagery is dead. The worst are wasteful, too. ‘In deadly earnest’ says no more than ‘in earnest’, ‘to all intents and purposes’ says no more than ‘virtually’. In my list (pp. 87–90) are the commonest newspaper clichés which should all be treated with hostility.
Story Sources of Wordiness
Suggestions for conciser and more human news stories have been set out in terms of words and sentences. Certain kinds of news stories throw up their own wordiness and the way these stories should be edited will be examined now.
Reported speech
Editing speeches and documents requires an adroit combination of direct and indirect reporting. Direct speech (‘Accordingly I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President’) has the advantage of accuracy and liveliness. It has the disadvantage of taking a lot more space. Reported speech (Mr Johnson said he will not run again) is the great economiser.
The reporting of official documents and other statements is best done in third-person summary: to rely on direct quotation is to miss the opportunity to render officialese into economic English which touches people’s lives. Speeches, too, require third-person reporting, but not as much. The more important the speech, the more space should be given to direct quotation. If only one section of a speech is newsworthy, it is preferable to give that whole section in quotes in original sequence and indicate in third person that other subjects were discussed. It is very frustrating for the reader to have only the third-person summary of a key passage. This is perhaps the worst defect of modern reporting of speeches, a reflection perhaps of shortage of space, lack of seriousness and the failure of the young journalist to master the basic tool of shorthand: cassette recorders are fine but with a long speech it can be maddening trying to find the exact quote you want.
Direct quotes, then, should be preferred – but when it is necessary to use third person for summarising, it is necessary to use it ruthlessly and not render into third person the speaker’s verbosity, circumlocutions, cough and all.
Third-person reporting is a skill. It demands both fidelity to the material and a determination to use indirect speech as a knife to cut through to the real content. Fidelity demands that interpretation should be scrupulously accurate. If a speaker makes a statement which is a rebuke, that will be self-evident from the context. If it is not self-evident, then there must be some doubt; but it is dangerous for text editors to resolve the d
oubt by saying so-and-so rebuked or attacked or criticised. The speaker’s words should speak for themselves.
The third-person summary should be true to the meaning and spirit of the material. If the news point is taken from a few minutes or passages at the end, that should be indicated: ‘Mr X’s comments on incomes came in the last few minutes of a speech mainly defending government policy …’
There is no doubt that on occasion clumsy reported speech can do violence to a speaker’s tone and ideas. Sometimes the articulate are rendered incoherent and a grand survey is turned into a mish-mash of unrelated thoughts. Here is a piece of reported speech which is extreme but has the virtue of encompassing most of the defects found singly elsewhere:
When the Language Commission was appointed for the purpose of considering the various steps to be taken under Article 344, Mr Subramaniam continued, the Government of Madras had to consider the whole question and give it a lead and submit a memorandum to the Commission. He pointed out that the one point which was considered by them more than once was whether they should seek a Constitutional amendment or they should take the stand that if only the safeguards in Part 17 were properly formulated and worked in the proper spirit it would be possible to meet the various problems arising out of the language problem. They came to the conclusion that it would be possible for them to have all the safeguards worked out under the provisions of the Constitution. As a matter of fact, this matter was again considered when the Language Commission had submitted its report because the Commission had almost ignored most of the major recommendations made by the State Government in their memorandum.
They again came to the conclusion that it might not be necessary to press for a Constitutional amendment if only the other authorities which might be considering the question, namely the Parliamentary Committee, which had to be constituted to consider the recommendations of the Commission, also later the President, who had to pass an order based on the recommendations of the Language Commission, and the Parliamentary Committee, took note of what they would be submitting further. It was only on that basis that the second memorandum was prepared and submitted to the Parliamentary Committee, they said. Mr Subramaniam said fortunately for them, the Parliamentary Committee had taken note of the various points they had made in their Second Memorandum and almost accepted all the recommendations they had made.
There is no place in a newspaper for the speaker’s wordiness – ‘for the purpose’; ‘as a matter of fact’; ‘came to the conclusion’; ‘recommendations they had made’; ‘arising out of’. These are understandable, if unfortunate, in speech; as written words they are glaringly superfluous. Everything in that report is preserved in this third-person version of the speech – which saves about 200 words.
Mr Subramaniam said that when the Language Commission was appointed to consider the steps necessary under Article 344, the Madras Government had to give its views. Madras debated whether it should seek a Constitutional amendment or whether the problems could be met by observing the safeguards of Part 17 in a proper spirit. They decided there were enough safeguards in the existing Constitution.
The Language Commission ‘almost ignored’ most of the major recommendations of the State Government, said Mr Subramaniam, but Madras again decided it might not be necessary to press for a Constitutional amendment if only their recommendations would be heeded by the Parliamentary Committee and by the President who had to act on the report of both the Language Commission and the Parliamentary Committee.
Fortunately the Parliamentary Committee had accepted most of the State Government’s recommendations.
It is possible, of course, to boil this down even further:
Mr Subramaniam recalled that Madras had decided to put its trust in Part 17. They had stuck to this view even when the Language Commission ‘almost ignored’ them because they knew they would get a hearing from the Parliamentary Committee on the Language Commission’s report. They did and the Parliamentary Committee had accepted almost all the points Madras made.
Here is an example from a South African newspaper. No doubt Dr Donges did say what was reported, but it would have done no violence to his meaning for the text editor to put into print the version on the right:
Dr Donges said he was pleased to say it could not be denied that South Africa had made important progress in the economic sphere.
Dr Donges said South Africa had made important economic progress.
Where a speaker or report changes subject the reporter often strives for continuity by using clumsy transition phrases: ‘Turning to the question of …’, ‘Dealing with the subject of …’ or ‘Referring to the …’. It is far better to deal briskly with changes of subject, especially lower in a report, with simple phrases: ‘On sterling, Mr Hague said …’ And again, ‘Of President Clinton, Tony Blair said …’ Alternatively, in tighter editing, the text editor can mark separate paragraphs on the copy in this style:
These were the report’s other comments:
KOSOVO: ‘We must continue to support Nato’.
OVERSEAS AID: The time had not arrived for reductions.
Similarly where text editors are dealing with a complicated bill or White Paper, they should seek to enumerate key points, listing items 1, 2, 3 and so on in separate paragraphs.
A speaker should always be identified early in the story by name and status (Mr J. Bloggs, of the Meat Grinders’ Guild) and later by location (speaking at a mass rally at the Albert Hall, London). Where there is more than one speaker, each new speaker should have a new paragraph – beginning with the name. There is no other way. If the name comes anywhere other than in the first line the reader will assume that the previous speaker is still on his feet.
Direct quotation
Good quotes are the lifeblood of the news columns. In ordinary news stories when people are interviewed they do not normally come out with a series of neat, colourful sentences which sum up the whole action. A few of their quotes have to be woven into a story in reported speech. But the good quotes must be treasured; they have the pungency of personal experience. The reporter back from the fire weakened the story by the third-person summary, ‘The merchant foresaw the prospect of ruin’, which was inferior to (and longer than) what the man actually said: ‘This could ruin me’.
The set speech should provide a higher proportion of salvageable quotations than the casual interview, and higher still than the official report. Quotations from speeches should be given to:
Support statements given in the intro in reported speech
Capture the subtleties of important or controversial statements, or ones that show a speaker’s richness of language
Report lively exchanges between speaker and heckler, judge and lawyer, and so on
Change the pace in a long section of third-person reporting
Here is the first category in practice:
Mr Sidney Silverman, the veteran left-winger, who has been in trouble with his party chiefs more than once, yesterday condemned as undemocratic Mr Wilson’s discipline speech to back-benchers.
Mr Silverman, in a letter to the chief whip, said Mr Wilson’s doctrine on the submission of Labour back-benchers was ‘the most dangerous attack on social democracy in this country in my time’.
The quote there is vital to support the intro: indeed it ought to have been in the intro. But what is rarely necessary is to give the reader in quotes in the body of the story the identical statement that has already been offered in third-person reporting; or vice-versa:
Canon L. John Collins, Precentor at St. Paul’s Cathedral, said in his sermon yesterday: ‘I cannot refrain from commenting upon the extraordinary service of thanksgiving which took place in St. Vedast’s in the City, on Thursday, attended by the Board of Courtaulds and a hundred or so of their employees’.
He asked what connection the service could have with the Christian gospel which condemned outright the system which made possible the fight between ICI and Courtaulds.
‘One must as
k what connection the service can have with the Christian gospel which condemns outright the whole system which makes possible such a fight’.
Once is enough, twice is a feast, three times a felony.
Mickey Mantle, the New York Yankees’ 100,000-dollar-a-year outfielder with the dime store legs said yesterday – the eve of the World Series opener – that he may be forced into a post-session operation on his left leg.
‘If it doesn’t get any better’, said Mantle before taking a workout at Yankee Stadium, ‘it’ll have to be operated on. It’s been getting stronger day by day, but as it stands now, we think it’s going to be operated on’.
Here is an example which uses both direct quotation and reported speech wastefully:
Plans call for the construction of a one-storey ambulance headquarters building, for which materials and labour will be donated by contractors, Gates Police Chief William Stauber said.
‘Several sites, I’m happy to say, have been offered free of charge for the headquarters structure and we are now in the process of determining which would be the best location’.