Blog Jones

Skepticism Seems to Erode Europeans’ Faith in Rice - New York Times.

Problems with this headline:

1. Weak verb choice–”seems to erode” instead of the stronger “erodes”
2. Poor choice of nouns: Skepticism is roughly the same thing as a lack of faith; both terms are vague and abstract.

Of course, the story isn’t much better. It’s badly biased; since it’s marked “International,” not “Op-Ed,” I assume its supposed to be a hard-news story. Quotes like “Did anybody believe her on this continent, aroused as rarely before by a raft of reports about secret prisons, C.I.A. flights, allegations of torture and of ‘renditions,’ or transfers, of prisoners to third countries so they can be tortured there?” and “Parsing through the speech, Mr. Tyrie pointed out example after example where, he said, Ms. Rice was using surgically precise language to obfuscate and distract” tend to give it away.

And the NYTimes is the country’s top newspaper? Tsk.

Anyways, I’d reword the headline as:
“European Leaders Doubt Rice’s Testimony”

Anything with an active, strong verb and good, concrete nouns.

Catallarchy links to a quote by Benjamin Frankling on arguing:

I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such as “certainly”, “undoubtedly”, etc. I adopted instead of them “I conceive”, “I apprehend”, or “I imagine” a thing to be so or so; or “so it appears to me at present”.

When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc. I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction. I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I happened to be in the right.

– Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

It seems like good advice. I’ve noticed in some of my previous posts a tendency to word things too strongly, as in “this is the best ___ ever” or “anyone with good critical thinking skills would see that ___” or whatever. (This sort of writing is likely a by-product of my tendency to blog late at night, as I am doing now.)

Fundamentally, Franklin’s technique admits the possibility of being wrong, which I find is critical to good thinking. If you say that a thing is true and that you’ll accept no argument against it, you run the risk of being proven wrong and being unable to correct yourself later without losing face.

You ought to be very careful what you set in stone.

The other thing Franklin is advocating is respect for the opponents position. I’m glad to see that this has been the general spirit here on this site. To my knowledge, no thread has yet been reduced to a name-calling flame-war, which is unusual for a site that discusses religion, politics, and other controversial issues.

This respect goes hand-in-hand with the previous point: A respect for your opponent’s position is born out of the possibility that you might be wrong, and that he might be right.

On the other hand, even if your position is correct, if you say the opponent is stupid or immoral for holding an opposing opinion, his mind immediately closes to your argument and switches to a defensive posture. Your wisdom will fall on deaf ears.

You don’t win minds by insulting and attacking them, but by reasoning with them.

Catallarchy, one of my favorite sources of libertarian and economic commentary, has linked to an essay by George Orwell, entitled “Politics and the English Language.” As you might expect from Orwell, he calls out against the misuse and confusion of the English language.

I highly recommend reading it, especially if you plan to write anything political at all, even so much as a letter to the editor. Two of the gems in the treasure chest:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

(In addition to this article, I also highly recommend Orwell’s masterwork, 1984. I read it for myself only recently, and I found it to be both clever and insightful. I especially loved the phrase “the place where there is no darkness.” There’s a copy available for free online.)

Go read the whole thing.

A little pet peeve: Can we quit using the suffix -gate to refer to every little political spat we have? Rathergate, now Easongate… It used to be clever, now it’s cliché.

Yes, Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin and the entire cast of Little Green Footballs: I’m talking to you.

Of course, now I can hear all the keyboards a’clickin’ telling me that “Eason-gate” isn’t just a little political spat. It’s a big deal! The chief news executive at CNN slandered our entire military by claiming we deliberately targeted journalists during combat in Iraq!

Long term, is that important? Are the slanderous words of one newsman going to be more than just an obscure footnote in the history books? I don’t think so. Like virtually every other political scandal, I predict that this one will be fought over for a couple of months and forgotten.

I mean, it says a lot about CNN, but nothing we didn’t already know.

See, this is why I could never be a politician. I couldn’t fight the day to day battles over Eason Jordan and Social Security and all that. I’d get sick of it. I like big-picture politics and debates over policy, but not the down-in-the-mud fighting, saying the same things again, and again, and again, and again….

Anyway.

Even if “Eason-gate” were to become a big historical deal, leading to, say, the collapse of the big cable news networks, don’t you think we could come up with a better moniker? Our children will be very disappointed in us when they find out that we weren’t original enough to come up with a good name.

How about… The Davos Scandal, after the city in which he made the remarks. Dull, boring, but informative and unique. After all, what else happens in Davos?

Or the “Eason Jordan Slanders Our Military” scandal?

Our just the Jordan scandal?

OK, I’m not feeling creative. That’s probably because I’m up late typing instead of sleeping. But… uh… don’t use -gate. Any more. It should be Banished from the Queen’s English.

Her name is Dr. Rice or Dr. Condoleeza Rice or Secretary Rice.

Please do not refer to her as “Condi” in public discourse and press conferences. Show some respect.

Thanks.

My media writing textbook has a section about various “Grammar and Style Trouble Spots,” such as subject-verb disagreements, clichés, various misused words, etc., etc. About jargon it states, “Jargon’s main purpose is to exclude those who don’t speak the jargon. In other words, those who speak the jargon (and know what it means for a company to “right-size its human resources applications”) can exclude those who don’t.”

Our author here sounds bitter. It’s as if he at one time held dreams of becoming a businessman, but couldn’t figure out the word “right-size” and was thus scorned and rejected from management. Or perhaps he was a journalist and once had the opportunity to conduct an interview with the CEO of Ford, but misunderstood some of the buzzwords and wrote such a bad article that he was fired and forced to write textbooks for a living.

Jargon doesn’t exist to exclude people; it exists to make communication easier. It’s shorthand. Do you remember your first days on the internet? You quickly had to learn what the acronyms like BRB and AFAIK and AFK and IMHO meant. Or perhaps when you’re first introduced to blogging, and you wonder what in the world “fisking” someone is. Watch ER: You’ll see people pretending to be doctors shouting acronyms at each other.

Every topic has its jargon: business (kaizen, EOQs), religion (traducianism, hyper-Calvinism), Hollywood (key grip, gaffer), computers (bus speed, XML), statistics (standard error of the mean, z-score), and yes, even journalism (skybox, key-subject blocks structure).

The point of jargon is to speed communication; it’s specialized language. Anyone is welcome to learn the vocabulary, and it’s usually not hard if you understand the concepts behind the vocabulary.

Of course, the media does have to avoid jargon, because most readers won’t understand it. That’s fine; just don’t pass blanket judgment about the motives of all those who use a specialized language–including yourself.