Twelves Part Twelve – Bête Noire
You know those little words and phrases that seem to come from nowhere and suddenly pop up all around you like virulent pustules for where there is no known ointment? Do you have your own set of bête noires that haunt you and cause your ears to bleed and your eyeballs to pop out as you heckle the speaker regardless of whether that speaker can hear you or not?
Maybe that’s just me.
For my sins, I have written and edited in the halls of both academia and corporatus alike. Both worlds are rife with the kind of jargon, buzzwords, cant, and plain stupidity that makes one want to do something highly illegal to the perpetrators, preferably with knitting needles.
And so I present a rather surly twelve: a bête noire for every occasion. Some of these I was reacquainted with through Don Watson’s awesome and hilarious Dictionary of Weasel Words, but others are my own work and all are universally appalling.
And if you use any in the comments to my blog, I will publicly humiliate you. You’ve been warned.
- ‘Definately’
- ‘Independant’
- ‘Enhance’
- ‘De’-anything (motivate, conflict, friend)
- ‘In terms of…’
- ‘Embolden’
- ‘Pedagogy’
- ‘Aging’
- Any noun turned into a verb (‘to friend’, ‘to leverage’, ‘to service’)
- ‘Differently-abled’
- ‘Going forward’
- ‘Key’
‘Definately’, will be familiar to anyone who has read a bad blog post or an ill-informed comment to a bad blog post, or indeed three out of four Facebook status updates. My advice? It’s not a word. Stop using it.
I used to work for a place called the Independent Living Centre. The place changed its name to stop morons using the aggravating ‘independant’*. I repeat, it’s not a word! It’s not a word! Is it that hard to learn the correct spelling?
* Not actually true.
Enhance means to intensify or raise the value of. Here’s a rule of thumb: you can’t ‘enhance’ outcomes.
Demotivate will just scrape muster with me. ‘De-friend’ makes me want to reach for a rusty razor blade (mostly because it violates two of the twelve—see below).
Will somebody tell me what ‘…in terms of…’ means other than ‘[I don't know what I'm going to say next, so I'll use these nonsensical syllables to buy myself some time until I come with the right...ah...I've got it]‘?
When you say ‘embolden’, you sound like you’re about to vomit up a whole nectarine. Need I say more?
Pedagogy. Education jargon I find particularly galling. These people are teachers. Surely they know better. But no. From the world of education bureaucracy comes this little polished turd of inscrutability. It even looks ridiculous, like it should rhyme with foggy, which more than aptly describes the reader’s state of mind when they encounter the word.
True, ‘aging’ is the American spelling (which earns it a few ‘de’-merit points from the get go), but American spelling is a ‘de’ facto standard, especially online. In any case, the word has a similar effect in writing to the ‘foggy’ effect. It looks like it should be pronounced ‘agging’. It does make academic articles sound hilarious when you use the ‘agging’ pronunciation. Try it.
I suspect people who use a nouns as a verbs think they’re being kind of cool: a coinage trendsetter perhaps, who secretly hopes that you will be more likely to ‘friend’ them if they ‘appendage’ their language with something that sounds like thing kind of thing teenagers say. Teenagers do much more than mangle language, you know. Next time you hear a grownup sprouting this nonsense, let them know that they sound like they’re awfully fond of ‘pleasuring’ themselves.
I’ve worked for many years with people who have a disability and I included the next one more for the sake of clarity than anything else. I’m not going to lie, the language of disability is a minefield, not least because of the tendency for legitimate and socially acceptable words to be co-opted by snot-nose school yard brats for their next taunt (see ‘spastic’ especially). The goalposts had a tendency to move quickly in the past (see ‘handicap’), but I think things have settled quite nicely in the last twenty years or so. I can’t stress enough, if you’re writing anything to do with disability issues or about people with a disability, refer to the excellent resources from Disability Services. Alright, I’ve put the soapbox away.
Name me a single sentence that can justify the words ‘going forward’. We think we will be more successful going forward, rather than backward, sideways, or indeed attempting to use yogic techniques to stick our collective head up our collective rectum. That one works.
And to number twelve. Critical, essential, vital. There are three adjectives from the top of my head that render the word ‘key’ useless. ‘Strategic thinking is key.’ Somebody said that to me once, shortly before I laughed at him. Closely related to ‘key’ is the very strange word ‘turnkey’. I usually read it as ‘turkey’ and you should too: ‘This is a turkey opportunity’. See? Much better. I confess, I had to look up what ‘turnkey’ actually means (fortunately my dictionaries—even Watson’s—were no help so I turned to some godawful glossary somewhere) and the results were not particularly enlightening. I prefer to think that use of the word ‘turnkey’ reveals the author as someone afraid of being caught out as a fraud and a shyster. Take note the next time you hear this word from the mouth of a politician and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Read MoreTwelves Part Eleven – Music Videos
I promise this is the last music-related twelve (an easy promise at part eleven). I got thinking about what made me such a music tragic in the first place. For me it was Saturday mornings watching music videos—mostly on Rage, but before that on some sad Channel Nine offering called Clipz (yes, with a Zed—I guess that was still cool in the eighties). A lot of people might have also pointed to Countdown, but I was just that bit too young to see anything half decent on it.
I was eleven or twelve (don’t read too much into the numerology) when I saw Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video. It fair blew my adolescent mind. I’d never seen anything like it and I credit that one video with opening the door to some of the most beautifully intricate and emotionally deep music I’ve ever heard. That being said, I passed over Sledge for this twelve. It’s widely acknowledged as one of the best music videos of all time; it hardly needs the snotty endorsement of some obscure Australian writer. Instead I plumbed for the anti-Sledgehammer. In the place of chirpy animation, Mercy Street plays out in relentless slow motion black and white (mostly black); the perfect visual accompaniment to the song. No performer, no miming, almost no faces. The sequence (from about 1:31) of the boat being pushed out to sea and the focus on the foot digging into the sand: these images have lodged in my mind as almost unbearably sad, though I really can’t say why. No other video before or since has had quite the impact on me as this one, so it really was a simple choice.
As for the rest, I think there’s a solid mix here from visually incredible, highly polished pieces to simple, almost off-the-cuff visuals (though inevitably, ones that are beautifully thought through).
Some of the all time best videos are the ones that play out like a short story (how predictable that I should think such a thing). They are a rare commodity in the industry, which I guess is why only three of the twelve qualify as such: Karma Police, Little Wonder, and the Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (the last possibly a long shot). Each are visuals practically independent of the music and only one actually has the performers miming. Ultimately I suspect a true twelve (one that I didn’t make up from the top of my head) would contain all such videos.
- Karma Police, Radiohead
- Little Wonder, Augie March
- Pumping On Your Stereo, Supergrass
- Mercy Street, Peter Gabriel
- Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)—Eels
- The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song—The Flaming Lips
- Happiness (Rotting My Brain)—Regurgitator
- Lemon—U2
- Walk This Way—Run DMC
- Once In A Lifetime—Talking Heads
- Make You Happy—Josh Pyke
- Whip It—Devo
Good
I made the call a while back that if the Australian Commonwealth accepted the recommendations of the Productivity Commission and lifted the restriction on parallel imports in the publishing industry, that I would lift a middle digit to my home and shift my fiction behind the closed walls of the United States.
I am pleased that the Commonwealth accepted no such recommendations and no digits— middle or otherwise—need lifting.
So I was bemused to read Allan Fels, emperor of the Productivity Commission, whining that Australians are being charged 35% more for books than “similar” (read crappier) US editions (like those US editions of first time Australian authors?). Ever notice how those who bleat on about cheaper books never seem to have a problem with the taxes on said books?
Anyway, Fels follows up his gnashing of teeth with this pearler:
“If the Government can’t deliver this simply reform because of the uneducated clamour of a few authors who are driven by publisher interests then there’s little hope that the Government will be able to stand up to other pressure groups and bring about useful change for the economy and for our society.”
So it’s the “uneducated clamour” of “a few authors” has momentarily tripped up the blinkered ideology of a handful of economic goons?
Good.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/11/2739736.htm
Read MoreFiction vs Non-Fiction
Accepted wisdom in the publishing world states that sales of non-fiction titles routinely pulverise their fiction counterparts. At times it seems like fiction is only maintained by publishers out of habit, tradition, and, sometimes, charity.
So I found the headline of this article from the UK’s Bookseller.com an intriguing development. Dig a little deeper and you realise their sample size is tiny and the statistics more than a little soft. One report before the Christmas season begins does not a trend make.
So the entire thing may be a beat up. But still, look at that title. For a fiction writer used to charity, that’s one interesting set of words (and numbers) to see together:
Non-fiction slumps as fiction sales soar 90% | theBookseller.com.
As an aside, check out the individual titles they’re referring to. Peter Kay (who the hell is that anyway?), Ant and Dec (some disposable duo I vaguely remember from my London tour of duty), and Jeremy Clarkson (the Top Gear bloke). And Guinness World Records and cookbooks.
Christ, no wonder sales are slumping. I could barely get through that paragraph without falling asleep.
Read MoreTwelves Part Ten – Book Covers
Surely by now we all know the adage to never judge a book by its cover is complete bullshit, right? A book can and often should be judged by its cover. When you’re standing in a bookshop what else do you have to go on? The cover contains all the relevant information: title, author, graphic, and on the back some kind of blurb.
As an aside this blurb from Douglas Adams’ first Dirk Gently novel deserves its own mention:
A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic. — The Author
Charming. And strangely accurate.
But, back to the topic at hand. Sometimes I like covers for the way they accurately illustrate what happens inside, but mostly, I like these ones below simply for aesthetics. I love trawling sites like the Book Cover Archive and I’ve pulled a few ofthe examples below from there. Although there are some beautiful and ridiculously creative cover designs that I’m sure outweigh the ones in my list, I’ve tended to go for covers I actually own or at least ones from books I’ve read. Anything less I fear would be cheating.
If I have a rule about covers it’s this: never buy a book with the author’s picture on the cover. I have broken this rule I think exactly twice and both books have been dire. N=2, rule proven.
I’m a big fan of breathing space on a book cover, swathes of black or white or minimalist text. I don’t know if this list really reflects that or not. Probably not. This is probably a list of exceptions.
- The Second Plane (The UK hardcover, not the more celebrated US cover)
- A Clockwork Orange
- The Volcano (Original hardcover…much cooler than the subsequent paperback)
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Original paperback edition)
- Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
- If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller (First edition…wish I had one of those)
- Zigzag Street (Original paperback edition, not the godawful covers on later editions)
- Death Sentence (You can’t tell from the image, but the black cockatoo is trapped in a cage of embossed buzzwords…beautiful, but better without the review blurbs in white. Too much!)
- The Day We Had Hitler Home (Awesome composite image)
- The Catcher In The Rye (Little Brown US paperback edition: Is there anything simpler than this? What more needs to be said? You cant tell, but it’s also in the tiniest format, smaller than a standard A format, like a pocket book.)
- Diamonds Are Forever (Contemporary designs for all the Bond books, but I like this one best. Maybe I just think this one has the hottest model.)
- True History Of The Kelly Gang (First edition)
A close examination of The Second Plane reveals the image to be not (necessarily) an image from 9/11. There are no twin towers and the image could simply be one of a plane taken through a window. Given the title and the post 9/11 climate though, this innocuous image takes on a much darker tone.
I was fortunate enough to have been given a first edition copy of True History Of The Kelly Gang—one the last copies around before it won the Booker and went into a million subsequent print runs. Pictures don’t really do it justice. UQP went to town on a lavish leather spine and rough-cut pages. It’s an object that wants to be touched. As much as I approve of the digital world, I hope we continue to make books like that one.
The Books
