The English language is
constantly changing and it should or we would be stuck ending sentences with
"me lord" into perpetuity.
Yet, not all change is for the better.
Recently, "news
companies" such as Yahoo began using new terminologies in their news
crawls to draw quick attention, to save valuable editorial space, and to appear
"hip" -- except these gimmicky
word-usages have the exact opposite effect for readers, leaving them perplexed,
bewildered and uninterested. Here is a
list of current grammar usages which should be considered faux pas ASAP:
1. "Epic Fail"
"Epic fail" is being
used to describe something that hasn't worked out as planned or when someone
tries to do something that doesn't fully succeed (in the estimation of the
writer). Under the conditions as implied, Edison 's
invention of the light bulb would have been described as an "epic
fail" because it took thousands of experiments in order to find the right
combination of materials which worked. Never mind that the words "epic
fail" have a negative connotation, pursuant of a value scale that isn't
impartial reporting or even makes the subject matter's resulting conclusions
true or not. Using the words "epic
fail" isn't necessarily based on facts, it's a personal opinion -- a
sloppy one at that.
I've seen these two overly-dramatic
combined words describe a divorce, a house that didn't sell for asking price, a
tv show that wasn't renewed, a politician loosing an election, about a
celebrity's nose job, and about a cat falling off the back of a couch. Epic fail?
Oh, please...
2. "Hack"
In my day, "hack" was
something bad. The word was meant as a
put-down, associated with someone who wasn't very creative in their job, whose low-luster
productivity was typically predictable.
A "hack writer" was someone who completed tasks but wasn't
particularly good at writing, let's say a "for-hire dime-store novelist",
for instance.
Coughing isn't good. A "hacking cough" is worse.
"Hacking" through a jungle is far more effort than simply "making
way through the underbrush".
"A hack" was also a
term used for a vehicle that took on passengers for a nominal fee, such as a
horse-drawn carriage or taxi. A taxi
driver would say, "I drive a hack for a living."
"Hack" is now used
instead of the word "tip" for educational information, like
"Five Hacks For Your Bathroom Remodel". What in the world? Who cooked that one
up? Some "hack" probably.
3. "Showrunner"
Having worked in show business in
some capacity pretty much my whole life, anyone I have ever known in connected
with a "show" who was a "runner" meant their job was to
fetch things like coffee, i.e. "Gophers" who would "go for
stuff", a "personal assistant to the whole of the production". Someone "high up" would say,
"Send a runner for that..." when needing something done and the
person who was the least important to continuing production was the flunky who
was appointed the task -- that was what they did.
Nowadays, articles referring to a
"showrunner" (minus the hyphen) is someone in "upper
management" or an executive-level power-that-be. Intended to encapsulate various
types of authority into a single, concise label, "showrunner" leaves
the impression for the reader, the person in question is someone who "vaguely
runs around, running the show" but who doesn't do a specific job such as what
an executive producer does. The word
looses the punch it was originally intended to convey by being
non-descript. Why bother?
4.
"Surreal"/"Unbelievable"/"Unreal"/"Insane"
The opposite of the "epic
fail" are the wildly over-blown, praise-inducing words of
"surreal", "unbelievable", "unreal", and
"insane". Like "epic
fail", these mix-and-match, interchangeable qualifiers are used liberally
at the hands of the loose-cannon writers whose discretion is questionable,
which leaves the meaning of the words little or no substance at all.
How can something be
"unreal" if it's true? If it's
"unbelievable", why should I believe the article or the writer? If
the subject is described as "surreal", are we to assume the entirety
of the article is a metaphor for something dream-like, otherworldly or bizarre? Or is the subject matter an extreme case of
real-time and space? Hard to tell.
Words are
"literal". That's why writing
is called "literature" -- actuality of thoughts expressed through
given words. Random words
free-associated in postings' titles cloud the issue at hand. The hallmark of "bad writing" is when a writer writes words and you know what they mean but it's not what is written, the words themselves don't say what the writer meant to say.
One of my favorite titles was,
"Twenty Insane Secret Facts About Disneyland You Never Knew" -- all
of which were not "insane" in the furthest reaches of the word's
definitions and none of which were provable "facts" and none of which
were, indeed, "secret".
Throwing in the "you never knew" was particularly entertaining
because most news articles are about things you never knew, that being the
reason they are telling you and you are reading about the subject -- to find
out. No context was given as to why the
writer felt it necessary to share these "secrets" or where they
originated from.
These kitsch turns-of-a-word are
used to describe anything "heightened" -- a costly real estate property, someone
beautiful, a botched operation, a daredevil's act, the exceptionally talented
and the pathetically untalented alike.
I recall when the word "killer"
was the catch-all term of the day, serving the same function. I can only guess
what the next "It" word will be but I will be "stoked" when
I find out.
5. "Rumored"
What is a rumor? It's a hear-say story told indiscriminately which may or may
not be true. Most legitimate reporters
do not deal in rumors, except in a rare case as a starting point to find a path
toward the true story behind the rumors. Otherwise, a
"rumor" is ordinary gossip.
How nice that the writer tells
you up front that what you are about to read is wholly made up and unproven
but, really, let's keep the division between fact and fiction as clear as
humanly possible, just for the hell of it. What exactly is the applicable value of
knowing a rumor as opposed to learning the fact of the matter? Isn't real life
exciting enough without supposition on the part of writer? Dude, epic fail, for sure.
CONCLUSION
It's my fault. I don't speak up nearly enough and that is
why I started writing this editorial. I am the
very reason there are scores of crappy movies, kids working behind fast food counters
with scary, over-sized face piercings, and non-sensible non-articles composed by plagiarizing cut-and-paste neo-writers on mega-conglomerate web sites. I accept less as the inevitable, the probable.
As with the power of Political
Correctness, let's all demand more of our media with their persistent
dumbing-down. Let's aspire to full
sentences that have a point, while using words in a manner that is worthy of
our time. Something well said is a gift.
The rest is bullshit.
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