Mind the gap

There's an old joke about a man who is told by his doctor to take one pill, twice a day. "But doctor," the patient protests, "After I've taken it once, how am I supposed to take it again?"

I am that man.

Every day as I walk to the subway I pass an apartment building with a sign that says, "Walking on the grass with dogs is prohibited." And every day I spend the next few minutes puzzling it out. Does that mean that I can walk on the grass with one dog? Does it mean that if I have more than one dog I can let them walk on the grass while I walk on the sidewalk?

At the bus terminal: "Passengers must stand on this side of the line while waiting for the bus." But how can a passenger who, by definition, is already on the bus, wait outside the bus?

On the subway there are signs showing a person stepping over that small, but not insignificant space between the station floor and the train. "Mind the gap," it reads. Someone, obviously with a mind similar to my own, had scrawled on one of them: "Not really."

If there is a way to misread a sentence, I'll probably find it. Because of this I sometimes spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure things out, but it also makes me a half-way decent editor. I've even developed it into a kind of aphorism which I try to drive home to my students: "Stupid readers make smart writers." All this really means is that a good writer will look at his work to see how it can be misinterpreted.

One of the most common problems I've noticed among my students (and a lot of the writers on the Internet) is that because they know what they mean, they aren't careful enough to ensure that the reader also knows what they mean.

During my years teaching I've collected a number of priceless examples of sentences that really could have done with a bit of the "stupid reader" check.

"To begin with, at least 14 countries have implemented cell bans while driving across the world."

A bit unclear whether the 14 countries were driving across the world as they banned cell phones, or whether they put into place a ban against driving across the world while using cell phones. Either way, it's pretty impressive.

"In November of 1973, the Québec jury acquitted Morgenataler but the Québec Court of Appeal throws out the verdict and is jailed for 18 months."

That'll teach the Quebec Court of Appeal to throw out a verdict instead of recycling it!

"Abortion is a controversial issue that exists mainly on the effects on pregnant women."

Will nobody stand up for the rights of pregnant men?

It's a simple rule, but surprisingly over-looked. Before sending in your copy or hitting the "publish post" button, make sure your sentences not only make sense, but that they do so in only one way.

I'll leave you with a few more words of wisdom taken from my students:

The agricultural technology has developed very fast in the past 50 years; and the world has produced enough food for every one on this planet by just looking at the number.

Thurber's Legacy

According to most pundits, the recent monetary crisis has dealt a devastating blow to the future of online, non-traditional advertising. “Are ‘experimental’ marketers doomed?” asks Adotas. “Credit crunch hits new ad technology” utters Utalk Marketing. “Investment in bullshit ads plummets,” gloats Gawker.

Kind of reminds me of the great High Street rout during the Ohio flood of 1913.

In March of 1913 Ohio experienced the worst natural disaster of its history when heavy rainfalls caused massive flooding of the region. The worst of it occurred along the Great Miami River, and in Dayton the flood water rose to twenty feet in the downtown core. The stress of the rushing waters ruptured gas lines causing fires that burned unchecked as the fire department watched helplessly, unable to gain access. In the end over 400 people died and more than 20,000 homes destroyed.

Although I was born and raised in Canada, I knew about the Ohio flood because it had been featured in a story by one of my favorite authors — James Thurber.

In his “The Day the Dam Broke,” Thurber tells of the teaming mass of humanity which fled down High Street in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. “‘Go east!’ was the cry that arose,” he wrote. “East away from the river, east to safety. ‘Go east! Go east! Go east!’” As the panic took hold, more and more people joined the throng. “Black streams of people flowed eastward down all the streets heading in that direction.” Before it was over, some had run more than 12 miles to escape the raging waters.

Except, of course, in Columbus there weren’t any raging waters. The entire incident had been nothing more than a massive misunderstanding. “Suddenly somebody began to run,” says Thurber, suggesting the ultimate cause. “It may be that he had simply remembered, all of a moment, an engagement to meet his wife, for which he was now frightfully late.” Under normal circumstances, one person running would have been unremarkable, but with the flood waters rising in neighboring regions, any quick movement could be interpreted as an attempted escape from impending doom. “Inside of ten minutes, everybody on High Street, from the Union Depot to the Courthouse was running. A loud mumble gradually crystallized into the dread word ‘dam.’ ‘The dam has broke!’”

In a similar fashion, the recent panic concerning “experimental” advertising has been sparked by little more than a single voice: that of Emily Steel whose recent article in the Wall Street Journal appears to have set off a stampede with more than a few similarities to that which occurred in Columbus almost 100 years ago.

“In recent years,” she writes, “marketers have set aside a portion of their ad budgets to experiment with digital technologies such as Web video, mobile phones, gaming and virtual worlds. But with broader economic turmoil reaching Madison Avenue, these ‘experimental’ budgets are among the first to hit the cutting-room floor.”

From this single source, a tidal wave of acquiescence has arisen. And while there is undoubtedly cause for concern — just as in 1913 there were some very real flood waters in Ohio — Steel’s dash for safety may possibly be just a trifle premature.

Fortunately, not everyone has joined her in flight. Adam Needles, of Propelling Brands, offers a thoughtful critique of the Wall Street Journal piece, focusing especially on the author’s neglect to differentiate between the many different forms of “experimental” media.

“She makes broad-based assumptions in her piece about marketers’ priorities and about the capabilities of digital and new-media initiatives,” he writes. “She also lumps together everything from mobile marketing to place-based media to advertising on social-media sites to embedded advertising on games and virtual environments in the same boat. She finally ignores the blurring of the lines over time between traditional non-interactive advertising, on one hand, and emerging interactive PR/social-media based digital marketing programs, on the other hand — making it harder to substantiate the reality of the exodus she predicts.”

To Needles, Steel’s biggest mistake, however, is that “she is not thinking like a marketer.” And to a marketer, “[d]igital and new-media initiatives are, in fact, just what the doctor ordered in the current environment.”

When times get tough, the real marketer begins looking for the edge, and to Needles, the edge is in the new media. Citing such advantages as low cost, two-way communication through social networking sites, and improved tracking, he puts forward a compelling argument.

As for me — what do I know? I’m merely a hack with pretensions of mediocrity. But I can tell you this much: when the crowd starts to run from the flood waters, it can be damned hard to get them to stop. In Thurber’s account, militiamen attempted to restore order by riding about in trucks with megaphones calling, “The dam has not broken.” The immediate effect, however, was “to add to the confusion and increase the panic, for many stampeders thought the soldiers were bellowing, ‘The dam has now broken!’”

Sometimes you can’t win for losing.

I'll impact you!

A search of Google News shows that in the last 24 hours there have been almost 800 articles with the phrase "impacted on." That means almost 800 news stories in one day alone have gone out of their way to irritate me.

That's a lot of irritation. And that's not counting other uses of the word "impact" as a verb, such as "will impact" (almost 5,000) and "have impacted" (almost 800).

I know, I know. There is nothing grammatically wrong with using "impact" as a verb. The American Heritage Dictionary takes great pains to point this out, noting that "[i]mpact has been used as a verb since 1601, when it meant 'to fix or pack in,' and its modern, figurative use dates from 1935." Of course, the 1601 use had a very distinct meaning and should any of these news reports be talking about dentistry or meteor strikes I'll let it go by. But they're not. Here are a few examples:

• "... and also impacted on the work of Otis Redding"
  
• "Sustainability also impacted on shoppers' choices..."
  
• "This in turn has impacted on the spending power, ..."
  
• "The results are also impacted on translation into euros at a significantly weaker rand rate"

This is nothing but bad writing with an over-inflated ego. Every sentence here would be improved simply by using "affected" instead of "impacted on."

• "... and also affected the work of Otis Redding"
  
• "Sustainability also affected shoppers' choices..."
  
• "This in turn has affected the spending power, ..."
  
• "The results affect translation into euros at a significantly weaker rand rate"

In this way, while it may not improve the writing, it at least rids it of insufferable pretentiousness. Even better, however, is to use verbs which help articulate the idea being put forth whenever possible:

• "... and also shaped the work of Otis Redding"
  
• "Sustainability also dictates shoppers' choices..."
  
• "This in turn has undermined the spending power, ..."

And in the fourth example, both "affect" and "impact on" are merely useless add-ons and can be removed altogether:

• "The results also translate into euros at a significantly weaker rand rate"

The AHD seems puzzled, almost insulted, by the fact that so many of us find this usage objectionable. "It is unclear," it says, "why this usage provokes such a strong response, but it cannot be because of novelty." But just because something has been around for 70 years, or even 400 years doesn't mean it can't be "novel." Perhaps the figurative use has been around since 1935, but it wasn't a part of every damned sentence out of speakers' mouths nor did it make its way into 800 newspaper stories every single day!

Regardless of the history they attempt to put forth for this usage, the AHD is forced to admit that even their own Usage Panel detests it. "Eighty-four percent of the Usage Panel," it says, "disapproves of the construction 'to impact on,' as in the phrase 'social pathologies, common to the inner city, that impact heavily on such a community;' fully 95 percent disapproves of the use of impact as a transitive verb in the sentence 'Companies have used disposable techniques that have a potential for impacting our health.'" Despite this almost unanimous condemnation, the dictionary still makes the prediction that because "the verbal use of impact has become so common in the working language of corporations and institutions" that "the verb will eventually become as unobjectionable as contact is now, since it will no longer betray any particular pretentiousness on the part of those who use it."

Well, they may be right. But there are a growing number of seminars, tutorials, books and websites urging speakers and writers to drop the use of the verbal "impact" in order to make their communications clearer and more understandable. A couple of decades ago it looked like the word "irregardless" was going to become an accepted part of English, but a million voices raised in condemnation relegated the bastard word to its rightful place as a marker of ignorance and illiteracy. Although "impact" may technically be a verb, its common (and unbearably constant) use can similarly be stopped if enough of us follow two simple rules:

1. Stop using it ourselves, and
2. Throw rotten vegetables at anyone else who uses it.

I'd suggest three-week-old tomatoes. They impact nicely.

The carp and shrimp kept time -- pa rum pa pum pum

Well, it's happened again. It seems female sharks really can reproduce in a manner generally reserved for sacred bulls, Egyptian gods, and Jewish messiahs. In other words, the female shark, under certain circumstances, can give birth without the help of a male.

The first confirmed instance occurred last May when a female hammerhead in Omaha, Nebraska, gave birth despite having been isolated from male sharks for over three years. The baby shark's DNA showed the mother to be the only contributor, thereby laying to rest any lingering doubts that she had somehow put aside a vial of sperm to be used only when she could be sure motherhood wouldn't interfere with her career plans. Recently another female shark, named Tidbit, died and an autopsy revealed that she was pregnant even though she'd not been near a male for about eight years.

Naturally this raises a host of questions, not the least of which is: "What the hell is a hammerhead shark doing in Nebraska?"

Another question, however, is whether this will spark a new debate on feminist-lesbian rights. If female sharks can reproduce without males, why shouldn't female humans be accorded the same privilege? Whether such rights can be accorded is a matter for the future to decide, but we can well imagine that they would be unopposed by heterosexual males who, in all probability, would be happy to see the female side of the population take over all aspects of the reproductive process and just leave the men alone to pop down to the pub with the guys and watch the Stanley Cup on the big-screen TV.

Such virgin births are not completely unheard of in certain species and are called "parthenogenesis," from the Greek words "parthen" meaning "old Greek temple now in ruins" and "genesis" meaning "progressive rock group from the '70s still kicking around pretending to be relevant." Exactly how this relates to "virgin birth" is a mystery, but, well…you know scientists. There is concern that too many virgin births could weaken the gene pool since only the mother's DNA is passed along, making it twice as likely that a baby shark would suffer from genetic disorders such as retardation, hypertension, and cleft palate. The result could be entire populations of stupid, irritable sharks unable to enunciate clearly—admittedly, a difference only a marine biologist might spot.

We have no details about the actual birth itself, but I can see the scene clearly. It would, of course, have been heralded by a host of angel fish with a starfish hovering nearby while seahorses stood around watching in wonder as he was presented with the gift of goldfish.

The little drummer boy? Well, an octopus, of course.

Steep curves with no exceptions

Maybe it's because I'm also an English teacher, but I think responsible journalists should display more than a passing degree of familiarity with the English language ─ rather than sounding like they met it at a party once, but were too drunk to remember.

Some blunders are downright embarrassing. "Irregardless," the incestuous offspring of "irrespective" and "regardless," should only be found in the Ozarks playing Dueling Banjos. Thankfully most reputable publications have essentially banned it, and its increasingly rare appearance in print is usually by way of quotes from people who couldn't be expected to know any better ─ like Nolan McCarty, professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. "The tone was going to be kind of nasty and partisan irregardless," he said of Condoleza Rice's appearance before the Congressional hearings into 911.

But as bad as the truly illiterate blunders are, it's often more subtle outrages against English that grate the worst.

Take "steep learning curve." Please.

When The Statesman.com wrote about quarterback John Chiles training as a wide receiver, they did so under the headline, "Chiles joins WRs on steep learning curve." Likewise, in a Canadian Press article about a video boxing game, the writer complained about its "steep learning curve." And New Zealand's Stratford Press praised Ben Whittington on having passed his bar exam despite the "steep learning curve." During the past 24 hours, Google reports about 632 media references to "steep learning curves," virtually all of them incorrect.

Oddly enough, the only correct use I've run across over the past five years occurred in an episode of Bones, when the director of the Jeffersonian, Dr Daniel Goodman, asks Dr. Temperance Brennan  if she is trying to manipulate him.

Goodman: Dr. Brennan, are you playing me?

Brennan: You know I'm no good at that.

Goodman: Hmm, thus far, but you have a disturbingly steep learning curve. 

While the phrase continues to befuddle our journalists, political analysts, and CEOs, the writers of a television drama manage to use it in its correct meaning, which is simply "to learn rapidly." 

Time measurements are always placed along the horizontal axis of graphs. The thing being measured is then placed on the vertical axis. So when we measure the number of skills gained over time, fast learners will have a very steep curve (learning much in a short period of time), while slow learners will have very shallow curves (learning little over a long period of time).

It's not particularly difficult, but the misuse is virtually universal. So much so that using it in its intended fashion now proves confusing. The better plan is just to scrap it. Ambiguity aside, it's become a tired cliche.

Speaking of cliches, what do you say we make a pact to rid ourselves of that ubiquitous use of the phrase, "and X is no exception"? The British Times Online begins its story on cricket in China with the line: "China is the holy grail for sports administrators and cricket is no exception." The American/Middle East publication AMEInfo quotes the manager of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai as saying, "Dubai has become a year-round destination that offers something for everyone, and Ramadan is no exception." And in an article exploring Dr. Tom Ings' experiments exploring the ability of bees to outwit enemy spiders, Science Daily tells readers that the "ongoing battle between predators and prey has fascinated ecologists for decades, and Ings is no exception."

Aside from being overused, the phrase is also pointless. All it really says is that similar things have a common feature, and this particular thing is no exception. To make matters worse, the awkward construction tends to confuse the central subject.

• "China is the holy grail for sports administrators and cricket is no exception." The subject being described as a "holy grail" is China (not sports) and there is only one holy grail ("China is the holy grail"). By saying that cricket "is no exception," we are actually equating it to China and indicating that there are several holy grails of which cricket is one.
• "Dubai has become a year-round destination that offers something for everyone, and Ramadan is no exception." The subject being described as a "year-round destination" is Dubai. But despite declaring that Ramadan "is no exception" (and is hence equivalent to Dubai) there is no actual destination called "Ramadan.
• "[The] ongoing battle between predators and prey has fascinated ecologists for decades, and Ings is no exception." The subject which is said to have "fascinated ecologists for decades" is the "ongoing battle between predators and prey." Ings, on the other hand, is not an ongoing battle. We could at least regain grammatical integrity by saying: "Ecologists have been fascinated by the ongoing battle between predators and prey, and Ings is no exception." This makes "ecologists" the central subject of which Ings is legitimately a representative.
  

Admittedly we're all going to sprinkle our prose with cliches. We generally work like dogs and often don't give a tinker's damn about the story we have to cover. But irregardless of the steep learning curve involved, newspapers and magazines should aim for something higher than a grade five essay, and journalists are no exception.

Cartoon: Editor's Sidebar - 1

Several years back I ran a website called Editor's Sidebar as a resource for Ontario journalists. Since then, advances in search engine techniques and other improvements have made it redundant and I shut it down.

Recently, however, I discovered Bitstrips.com, a rather clever way of creating your own comic strips. I decided to start up a series on the various trials and tribulations of the average editor and I've called the series "Editor's Sidebar" in honour of my old site.

This is the first installment in the series. Hope you enjoy it. (Click on it to see it full sized.)