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One of my favorite things about Today, the BBC’s venerable morning radio news program, is its tradition of having the likes of Prince Harry, Angelina Jolie and Stephen Hawking guest edit it at Christmas.
Last Monday, as I was listening to the show, presenter Amol Rajan started talking about this year’s lineup. Among them were Olympic cyclist Laura Kenny and former Prime Minister Sajid Javid.
But I could barely concentrate on the rest of the names. Because I was too busy thinking and getting annoyed about the words Rajan used to introduce them.
“Every year,” he said. “The Today program invites a series of guest editors to work with us to create Today episodes about the things that interest them most.”
It was there. “Around”. Words that have come to be used in such a way that crisp, straightforward phrases somehow turn into something evasive and slippery.
If I had heard that a guest editor like Kenny would be doing an episode “about” or “about” the impact of elite sports on women’s bodies, I knew exactly what she was planning. Probably. But news that she was planning to do something “centered” on that theme suggests she could drift into non-elite sports, the men’s body, or a myriad of other fields. are.
It is no coincidence that the biggest perpetrators of the misuse of “periphery” are politicians who are experts in vague non-speech.
Two days after the Christmas Guest Editor incident, Today broadcast an interview with former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith about the need for new rules to manage disorderly students.
“The scope of change now needs to be quite broad, and there needs to be clear rules about what can’t happen,” he said.
I know there are more important things to worry about, but I obviously don’t mean to sound like a pedantic brat. But words matter, especially in a polarized world filled with misinformation. Language that obscures the truth rather than reveals it is suspect.
This is also why I object to the way “pieces” intrude into irrelevant places. Those who say they are working on a “defense piece” or a “climate piece” are saying very little. If they say they just joined a counterterrorism think tank or a carbon trading company, you know where you were. Similarly, there is no excuse for using redundant words like “space” like “defense space” when perfectly appropriate words like “industry” or “sector” would work just fine. .
If you’re under the age of 40 and reading this and thinking, “What is this sad old loser talking about?”, these are the words that will soon make the difference between getting you promoted or hired. It’s worth knowing how hard it will frustrate the old losers who may decide.
So, in the spirit of public service, think twice before you talk about your job, no matter where you work.
Also, be wary of “reaching out” to someone when in reality you’re just contacting them. It’s lazy and a waste of time. You might want to follow up on something, arrange a meeting, or spend an extra 10 seconds explaining what you actually do.
The same is true when “sharing” information that is only meant to be “conveyed.”
“Curate” is also a word that has come to be used in a disgusting and confusing way to imply that something is far more important than it actually is because it has been specially chosen. is. Usually you can delete it. A “selected collection of great reading material” is almost always the same as “a collection of great reading material.”
We know this fight is hopeless. The curators who reached out to share their linguistic works have won out in spades. Forget about the battle over “around.”
I noticed this one afternoon last week as I was going through my inbox. Over the course of 90 minutes, Hay Literary Festival told me about a book that raises “new questions about what it means to be human”, and a spokesperson mumbled about “the government’s recent announcement of an increase in boiler replacement funding”. He was talking.
One blogger said Thanksgiving was “a day when gratitude should be front and center,” and the prestigious think tank Chatham House said, “The closeness between North Korea and Russia raises questions about China’s role.” Ta. Very clearly, resistance is futile.
