[mea] Recent National Post article
- From: Gaylene Dempsey <gaylene@xxxxxxx>
- To: <mea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:40:33 -0500
From Money section of the National Post (July 24, 2004)
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EDITED
When freelance editors complain about the sorry state of the language, we're
also bemoaning the business not landed
By Antonia Morton
When our professional association had lunch at a tony restaurant recently, a
group of us sat around afterwards deconstructing menu items: "Hand-torn
arugula salad topped with chevre and oven-grilled red peppers, complemented
by a vinaigrette of walnut oil and balsamic vinegar."
Elegantly phrased -- but not the original version. We had inserted a couple
of missing hyphens; corrected the accent on chevre from aigue to grave;
sighed wearily as we changed "compliment" to "complement"; removed an
excessive letter "l" from "walnut"; and lower-cased "arugula" and
"balsamic," which some inconsistently Germanic hand had capitalized.
That's what happens when a bunch of editors get together: we amuse ourselves
by nitpicking minor things, in between debating hot usage topics.
Perversely, what we enjoy most is talking about the deep pain we feel at the
state of language in the modern world -- and the fact that once-sacred
concepts such as structure and grammar are now viewed as fuddy-duddy and
pass.
Oddly enough, many of the worst offenders are businesses. Not just Joe's
Shoe Repair, either, where hand-lettered signs offer "Heel's fixed and Seude
cleaning." Even big companies with deep pockets still manage to foist bad
writing onto the world. Their menus and mission statements, web sites and
wall signs, brochures and ad copy -- even their job postings -- can all make
sensitive readers cringe.
This is puzzling, because surely the commercial community has a lively
incentive to look as good as possible. After all, language cues allow us to
accurately judge others; so one might guess that a company with carelessly
written promotional material might be equally lackadaisical with its
software code or its shipping schedule. Ideally, organizations that
communicate well would succeed over incoherent ones -- a classic Darwinian
example of economic natural selection.
A cynic might wonder why editors don't rejoice at this situation: surely
consultants who earn their living tidying up messy prose are happy to see a
lot of it. When fewer and fewer business people can write well themselves
any more, the obvious assumption is that they'd call in the experts to make
good the lack.
Ideally, we language pros should reap the benefits. We'd scrutinize all the
catalogues, billboards, advertising banners and magazine inserts --
eliminating the wonky syntax, punctuation errors and spelling bloopers that
might embarrass our clients. We'd get fat contracts, and the satisfying
sense of being useful.
Sadly, that's not the way it seems to work. Freelance editors are finding
that the general lack of interest in good writing doesn't make us more
sought-after. Quite the opposite: it renders our skills irrelevant. As many
people get less and less adept with the proper use of language, and as
respect for even basic literacy (never mind elegance) dwindles -- so too
dwindles any perception of this being a problem.
In today's corporate viewpoint, having material edited seems to make all the
economic sense of having it embossed with gold leaf: so few people will
appreciate it that the extra expense can't rationally be justified.
So we're faced with the depressing task of persuading potential clients to
delve into already tight budgets for the sake of an arcane nicety. If an
organization can trim a few hundred or thousand dollars off a project budget
by letting its text go forth naked and blemished, then why not? Few readers
are likely to care.
Aware that we're fighting a losing battle, we editors use black humour to
cope with our impotence. We share the most wince-making of the solecisms we
come across, and laugh heartily at the poor barbarians. But behind our
mockery is disgruntlement: if only these people would pay us to edit their
stuff! All that incompetent prose around, and yet many of us struggle to
find enough work -- we're starving in the midst of plenty.
Some of us adopt a missionary attitude: whenever we see writing that could
stand improvement, we contact the people responsible, gently pointing out
the flaws and offering our services. Unfortunately, such enterprising
efforts usually have an almost zero success rate. You can see why: like all
other businesses, peddling editing services hinges on the customer's
perception of "need." So for a potential client, getting such an unsolicited
tutorial is like having an interior decorator sashay uninvited into your
living room and exclaim: "My, this place looks just awful -- the wallpaper,
that couch, those paintings! Tell you what: pay me $50 an hour, and I'll
come and fix the place up for you."
The problem seems to be feedback: either customers don't notice bad business
writing, or they just wearily accept it as an unavoidable evil. And with
nobody to set them straight, there's no incentive for businesses to get
things right.
What can be done? I like to think wistfully that public opinion could force
corporations to smarten up. Perhaps the entire body of the Editors'
Association of Canada, supported by an army of annoyed readers and consumers
across the nation, could fire off snippy letters to offending presidents and
CEOs: "I was shocked by your misspellings, your frequent subject-verb
disagreements, and the complete lack of structural coherence in your text. I
will never buy your products again unless you hire a decent editor."
Then perhaps our society would no longer (as George Orwell griped more than
half a century ago) view the struggle against the abuse of language as "a
sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom
cabs to aeroplanes."
And not only would big business rediscover its grammatical self-respect, we
editors would rediscover ours; and we'd be vaulted to our proper place as
guardians of linguistic propriety. We'd occupy positions of power,
privilege -- and wealth: clutching our style guides all the way to the bank.
Other related posts:
- » [mea] Recent National Post article
