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Wasted Words

Wasted Words: The Phantom Client

July 18, 2017 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

For many editors positive client engagement is central to a project — a good work relationship, frank feedback and response, and, finally, appreciation. Such pleasures, alas, are seldom part of my grind. Often I don’t get close enough to an actual client to cultivate such a connection. Communications agencies or …

Wasted Words: A Little Learning

April 18, 2017 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

For 500 years parameter nestled in the discipline of geometry, supplying arcane and exclusive service to science. Then around the time Elvis released “Heartbreak Hotel” the outside world discovered this obscure word and everyone went gaga over it. Yes, language must advance by adding new words and new meanings to …

Wasted Words: Respectable Stoners

February 21, 2017 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

Legalizing marijuana makes it acceptable, but will it make it respectable? Jumping that second hurdle will be difficult, requiring us to forsake the vast vocabulary it has spawned. I don’t see that happening right away. While I cringe at seeing chief justices, bishops and other bigwigs described as stoners or …

Wasted Words: Channelling Orwell

November 1, 2016 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

“Insincerity,” says George Orwell in his classic commentary of 70 years ago, is the “great enemy of clear language.” Political discourse is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable…” For Orwell, insincerity was more a result of lazy writing than a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth: “…if …

Wasted Words: Surviving Overkill

August 2, 2016 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

In 1956 SC Johnson (formerly Johnson Wax) developed Raid, an apparently effective insecticide that became a marketing miracle. But most of the credit for the boom belongs to Foote, Cone & Belding (aka FCB), a global advertising agency that created the legendary slogan, Raid Kills Bugs Dead. This whimsically ironic tagline …

Wasted Words: Recasting Punctuation

June 14, 2016 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

I recall Victor Borge’s celebrated skit where he reads a story aloud while sputtering rude noises as punctuation. Borge reasoned that if such detail was vital for a reader’s grasp it was likewise for a listener’s. The Great Dane died before Cyberia’s scribbling and texting mania laid siege to orthodox punctuation, so …

Wasted Words: Quarrelling With Pronouns

April 12, 2016 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

Around the time the Great Flood started to recede I was taught to write, “Everyone must remove his shoes.” Funny how boys aren’t bothered by such preferential usage of male gender pronouns. Back then feminism was a feature of the French Revolution and the current usage of politically correct had …

Wasted Words: The Origins of Texting

February 9, 2016 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

Is digital discourse destroying the English language along with civilization? Does texting portend doom? Let’s not be so hasty: I often read letters from the past — for example, the 19th-century correspondence of Bertrand Russell’s family.1 These aristocrats (Russell’s grandfather was twice the British prime minister) habitually took shortcuts in …

Wasted Words: Don’t Meddle With Shakespeare

November 10, 2015 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

You might think that, as an editor, I would endorse a plan to rewrite Shakespeare in modern English. After all, as the advocates of this undertaking argue, Shakespeare’s language cannot be understood by contemporary audiences, and our profession is all about understanding. However, this has little to do with editing. …

Currently contemplating a vacation?

Wasted Words: Considering the Case for Verbosity

September 8, 2015 | Filed under: Wilf Popoff

Is it necessary to waste a word or two to command attention? Are people apt to disregard phrases not couched in officialese? I shudder at the very notion, but former co-worker Cam Fuller, who fulminates against misusage as The Word Nerd, got me thinking. A recent lecture reveals he is …

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