Lingua Techna

Information at Your Fingertips

Paul — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:29:00 GMT

My latest Technically Speaking column (called "Information at Your Fingertips") for IEEE Spectrum magazine is now online:

Irate Grammarians Will See YOU in Court, Mister!

Paul — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:39:00 GMT

KALAMAZOO, Michigan—A group of disgruntled grammarians calling themselves "Mad, We Are, As Hell" has filed a number of civil lawsuits over the past few weeks. The targets of these suits are writers, raconteurs, and professional man-in-the-street interviewees who, they claim, are inveterate violaters of the rules of grammar.

The group's spokesperson, Millicent Peevish, Head Shusher at the Kalamazoo District Library, said the grammarians could no longer sit back and allow "the splitting of blameless infinitives and the ending of sentences with evil, evil prepositions." A previous campaign — called Shock and Appalled — that focused on writing testy letters to the editors of various local publications, had no discernible effect.

One defendant is the essayist and dry cleaning critic Boris Langenshortevitch, whom the grammarians describe as a "monster" who "brazenly and redundantly uses 'the hoi polloi', when any fool with half a brain knows that 'hoi' is the old Greek word for 'the.' Duh!" Edna Doright, Chief Comma Officer at Scribner's, defended the suit. "Without an appreciation for ancient Greek, we as a society are lost," she said. For his part, Mr. Langenshortevitch is unrepentant. "I won't change the way I write but, to be quite honest, these grammar fundamentalists scare the crap out of me," he said.

When asked if litigation was the appropriate response to these alleged grammar violations, Harvey Earnest, president of the Center for Subject-Verb Agreement, was adamant. "My God," he said, "there are people out there wantonly dangling participles and starting sentences with conjunctions. Where will all this madness lead us if we do not do something to stop it?"

Looking for a Few Good Twitter Tips

Paul — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:14:00 GMT

I'm really excited about a new Twitter project that I'm just getting started on. I'm on the lookout for some cool, interesting, or just plain useful Twitter tips. If you've got a Twitter technique you'd like to share, please either add a comment here or send me a message via Twitter.

BONUS: When the book is published, I'll pick one commenter/Twitterer at random and ship him or her an autographed copy of the book!

The Effect Effect

Paul — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:24:00 GMT

My Technically Speaking column for the February 2009 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine is now online.

"Annoying" College Banished from Face of Earth

Paul — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:41:00 GMT

SAULT STE. MARIE, MICHIGAN—With only a few hundred unbanished words left in the language, the rest of the English-speaking world has voted to banish Lake Superior State University from the face of the earth.

The college, based in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, is famous for its annual Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness. In recent years the college has taken some heat for banning words such as "you," "donut," and "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

"Lake Superior State has become a bit too, well, superior," said adjective historian Red Black.

The list, really just a silly publicity stunt, has proved to be irresistible to an unthinking media who dutifully report the latest banned words each January 1st. The college bought into the hype and began banning words in earnest about 10 years ago. About 98 per cent of all words are currently banned.

Professional note-taker Han DiCreppit was ecstatic about the result. "Perhaps now, with that annoying college out of our lives forever, we can rebuild the English language to its former glory. I, for one, can't wait to incorporate words such as 'but' and 'kumquat' back into my work."

Trafficking in Words

Paul — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:26:00 GMT

My Technically Speaking column for the December 2008 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine is now online.

Why shouldn't we coin new words?

Paul — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:29:00 GMT

Writing in today's Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Neil Steinberg offers the following aside, which includes a wonderful neology-related story about Noah Webster:

The British had extra incentives to dislike us — we were breakaway ingrates, of course. But we also had kidnapped their language and were degrading it, creating new words and giving new meanings to solid old words, words that had served England well for centuries. (A British traveler, Capt. Basil Hall, actually confronted Noah Webster, who had the audacity to compile these American offenses into a book, a dictionary, as if it were an actual language and not a shameful Creole. The elderly Webster stood his ground, demanding: Why shouldn't Americans coin new words? "Because there are words enough already," the Brit replied, characteristically).

E-cycling E-waste

Paul — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:16:00 GMT

My Technically Speaking column for the October issue of IEEE Magazine is now online.

UN Establishes Vowel Relief Fund

Paul — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:46:00 GMT

AIEA, Hawaii—Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali and current United Nations Undersecretary for Alphabet Mobilization Yada-Yada Yada announced today the formation of the United Nations International Vowel Assistance Committee. UNIVAC's mandate is "to help the vowel-deprived wherever they may live and to fund vowel relief efforts in the hardest hit areas."

"We have a good stockpile of a's, e's, and o's," said Ng Ng, UNIVAC's Letter Distribution Officer. "We hope to have an adequate supply of i's and u's over the next six months. In the meantime, we can use our extra y's in a pinch."

"Vowels of every description are badly needed," said Cwm Pffft, an activist with the group Consonant Watch. "The people in places such as Srpska Crnja and Hwlffordd are suffering horribly."

When asked to comment on the news, writer and animated film voice specialist Sarah Vowell said, "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Leave me alone."

The Comprehensibility Test

Paul — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:17:00 GMT

In a remarkably sane post about new words, editor John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun offers the following bit of wordly wisdom:

[T]he point is not whether a dictionary has conferred legitimacy on [a] word; the point is whether the word is comprehensible and appropriate in context.

Exactly.

This applies to cliched speech, as well. In the Globe and Mail op-ed piece that I mentioned in my previous post, the writer objects to phrases such as push the envelope, think out of the box, low-lying fruit, get your ducks in a row, and going forward. She instructs us, upon hearing such phrases, to "take a bold step forward and politely demand clarity." However, with the possible exception of low-lying fruit (the variation low-hanging fruit is much more common), all of these phrases are perfectly comprehensible. If someone tells you about "the guy who pushed the envelope while thinking out of the box," you might think "Dude, get some new vocabulary," but you'd know what the person was talking about.

A Corollary to McKean's Law

Paul — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:53:00 GMT

McKean’s Law (named after lexicographer Erin McKean) states that “any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error.” In the op-ed pages of yesterday's Globe and Mail, Laura Rosen Cohen wrote a tirade against buzzwords, clichés, and speech correctness that has no such errors, but it does include a distressing number of tired phrases, including mind-numbing, walking on eggshells, culture of fear, and baby steps. I therefore propose a corollary to McKean’s Law:

Any rant against clichéd speech will contain at least one cliché.

Is the English Language Full?

Paul — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:35:00 GMT

Some folks just don't get it:

The English language is a growing concern. Every year, Collins gets a pile of free publicity by publicly announcing new additions to its dictionary (last year: Facebook (as a verb), poke (as an action on Facebook) and sub-prime (adjective)). The Oxford English Dictionary does the same, just at a more leisurely, scholarly pace. On YouTube, it's a fair bet there's a new acronym coined every second, AIYDBMGAHAL. Not often, however, does anyone stop to ask whether this is a good thing, whether – to paraphrase Migrationwatch – the English language is full.

If you think the English language is “full,” this could be a sign that, like the kid in the old Gary Larson cartoon, your brain is full. Ironic, too, that in a rant against new terms, the writer coins, yup, a new term! The tongue-in-cheek initialism (not an acronym) AIYDBMGAHAL stands for “and if you don’t believe me go and have a look.” Why, I do believe I will, thanks very much.

It's Official: Teen Instant Messages Nothing But Gibberish

Paul — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:07:00 GMT

In a scathing report released today, communications experts have declared that the instant messages teenagers exchange with each other are in reality nothing but gibberish. U.S. Chatmaster General Todd Dood, with technical help from the National Security Agency, examined thousands of instant messages.

"None of it made a lick of sense" he said.

It has long been thought that teen instant messages contained abbreviations (such as LOL for "laughing out loud" and MAIBARP for "my acne is becoming a real problem"), short forms (such as L8R for "later" and R2D2 for "R2D2"), and slang (such as whassup for "what's up" and yo for "Hello, I am pleased to meet your acquaintance. Do you wish to have a conversation?"). However, the report reveals that this so-called "teenspeak" began to change so fast that kids simply could not keep up. Each teen developed his or her own lingo, and the instant messaging system devolved into anarchy.

"The crazy thing is that teen instant messaging is more popular than ever," said Dood. "They seem not to have noticed that they can't understand a word anyone is texting to them." There seems to be a prestige factor at work here. As one teen quoted in the study said, "If you say you don't understand, then you're just like so gay."

Seth Godin Coins Word

Paul — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:07:00 GMT

Seth Godin neologizes:

So, very soon, you will own a cell phone that has a very good camera and knows where you are within ten or fifteen feet.

And the web will know who you are and who your friends are. What happens? Well, when you take a photo, you can automatically send it to the clowd. The clowd can color correct and adjust the photo based on the million other photos it has seen just like this. [Debbie wonders, isn't it called a "cloud"? I guess I was subconsciously coining a new term--which I so rarely do--this time, combining crowd and cloud into something new. I think I like it, even if it is a bit artificial].

I first thought the term was an insult (because it looks like a blend of clown and clod), but it's not. Clowd combines crowd (as in crowdsourcing) and cloud (that haze of data and connections that exists "out there" on the Internet).

I'll Drink to That

Paul — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:54:00 GMT

Perhaps the folks who coined manstincts should read this:

Over the past year, there has been plenty of talk in bar and restaurant circles about wine-based cocktails. Some people in the industry have even coined the term "winetails," I guess mainly because people can't resist coining ridiculous terms.