Author: Wilf Popoff

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: Professionalism

August 27, 2019 by Wilf Popoff | 8 Comments on Wasted Words: Professionalism

My phone chimes. It’s one of President Donald Trump’s people. Desperate Donald has written a book he hopes will cinch his re-election next year. But it needs a good editing. Can I do this? Of course I can. The question is, will I? The Donald is not my favourite politician. Far from it. The very […]

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Wasted Words: The Risks of Reading

May 21, 2019 by Wilf Popoff | 3 Comments on Wasted Words: The Risks of Reading

Because I was a confirmed reading addict when television appeared, it failed to dislodge my teenage obsession. Like Groucho Marx I found the idiot box “very educating”:­ “Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” It’s been a relentless dependency. I still find it difficult to […]

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Wasted Words: The Torments of Editing

March 19, 2019 by Wilf Popoff | 3 Comments on Wasted Words: The Torments of Editing

When I began writing this article I knew, like most of you, that editing is an unhealthy occupation. It’s so fraught with hazards it’s a wonder anyone will sell us health or life insurance. We sit long hours, our work is mentally taxing, we stare at monitors, our physical effort amounts to repetitive flexing of […]

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Wasted Words: The Rebound of Christmas

December 11, 2018 by Wilf Popoff | 4 Comments on Wasted Words: The Rebound of Christmas

Have you noticed how Christmas is sneaking back into respectability? Three decades ago school Christmas concerts and office Christmas parties began to disappear in apparent deference to multiculturalism. Even the word for this feast was proscribed. I promptly fell into line. Everyone should feel welcome, and I acknowledged that Christianity’s celebration of the winter solstice […]

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Wasted Words: Sows’ Ears as Silk Purses

October 30, 2018 by Wilf Popoff | 3 Comments on Wasted Words: Sows’ Ears as Silk Purses

I was amused to read that some Hamilton landlords, faced with a public relations crisis, want to rebrand themselves as rental housing providers. They feel landlord has too many negative connotations, imputable to its medieval traditions; landlord also suggests a “callous and wealthy man collecting cheques each month and doing little else.” Rental housing provider, […]

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Wasted Words: A Paean to Poetry

August 14, 2018 by Wilf Popoff | 3 Comments on Wasted Words: A Paean to Poetry

Good poetry, I believe, projects the essence of culture. It conveys profound concepts and articulates observations while captivating the listener with its beauty and power. It does this with a matchless performance of words that blend language with wisdom. The listener is both enlightened and entertained. Bad poetry, on the other hand, has little effect […]

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Wasted Words: Exploration or Exploitation?

May 15, 2018 by Wilf Popoff | 9 Comments on Wasted Words: Exploration or Exploitation?

At times this blog can set off a chain reaction. When Anna Williams wrote about childhood reading, I began exploring my fading cranial archive. Anita Jenkins focused my search with her comments on Grey Owl’s cultural appropriation. I must confess that a lot of the books of my youth would be, in today’s climate, politically […]

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Wasted Words: Salvaging a Thesis

March 20, 2018 by Wilf Popoff | 18 Comments on Wasted Words: Salvaging a Thesis

In the past I refused students seeking a thesis editor — mainly for ethical reasons. The preamble to the Editors Canada “Guidelines for Ethical Editing of Theses / Dissertations” states: “In part, academia uses theses as a way of testing the ability of students, especially graduate students, to use written words for communicating ideas and […]

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Wasted Words: On the PC Front

December 5, 2017 by Wilf Popoff | 38 Comments on Wasted Words: On the PC Front

The Grey Cup eluded the Edmonton Eskimos again this year, but that’s not the worst of the team’s troubles: the political correctness refs want it to lose its name as well. The club chose its regrettable label in 1949, but it had been widely used by other Edmonton football squads for more than 50 years. […]

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Wasted Words: Verbal Abuse

September 19, 2017 by Wilf Popoff | 2 Comments on Wasted Words: Verbal Abuse

There are many writers and, apparently, more than a few editors who think that to be and some of its conjugations are not actual verbs. I regularly encounter headings like this: Blabworth is Picked to be Next Publisher. This grammatical confusion is exposed in titles using the conventional upper and lowercase system that calls for […]

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Wasted Words: The Phantom Client

July 18, 2017 by Wilf Popoff | 2 Comments on Wasted Words: The Phantom Client

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 consulting engineers who outsource projects […]

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Wasted Words: A Little Learning

April 18, 2017 by Wilf Popoff | 2 Comments on Wasted Words: A Little Learning

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 existing ones, but I never […]

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Wasted Words: Respectable Stoners

February 21, 2017 by Wilf Popoff | 1 Comment on Wasted Words: Respectable Stoners

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 potheads, if they come out […]

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Wasted Words: Channelling Orwell

November 1, 2016 by Wilf Popoff | 2 Comments on Wasted Words: Channelling Orwell

“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 thought corrupts language, language can […]

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Wasted Words: Surviving Overkill

August 2, 2016 by Wilf Popoff | 4 Comments on Wasted Words: Surviving Overkill

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 burst into our cultural lexicon […]

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Wasted Words: Recasting Punctuation

June 14, 2016 by Wilf Popoff | 3 Comments on Wasted Words: Recasting Punctuation

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 today his skit would bewilder […]

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Wasted Words: Quarrelling With Pronouns

April 12, 2016 by Wilf Popoff | 8 Comments on Wasted Words: Quarrelling With Pronouns

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 yet to surface. Mostly the […]

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Wasted Words: The Origins of Texting

February 9, 2016 by Wilf Popoff | 6 Comments on Wasted Words: The Origins of Texting

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 their numerous epistles, presumably to […]

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Wasted Words: Don’t Meddle With Shakespeare

November 10, 2015 by Wilf Popoff | 4 Comments on Wasted Words: Don’t Meddle With Shakespeare

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. If Shakespeare’s writing comes across […]

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Wasted Words: Considering the Case for Verbosity

September 8, 2015 by Wilf Popoff | 2 Comments on Wasted Words: Considering the Case for Verbosity

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 currently contemplating a vacation. After […]

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Wasted Words: How Language Sometimes Evolves

July 7, 2015 by Wilf Popoff | 5 Comments on Wasted Words: How Language Sometimes Evolves

I’m aware of the organic nature of living languages and their need to adapt. If I forget, a glimpse of Chaucer brings me up short. His poetry shows just how much a language can change in six centuries. The remarkable capacity of English to absorb fresh concepts and to express new ideas and technology enables […]

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Wasted Words: A Compulsion to Exaggerate

February 24, 2015 by Wilf Popoff | Leave a Comment

Frank McKenna, a San Diego photographer, complains that all photos displayed on the web are described as stunning. “What’s going on here?” he asks. “When did every picture become stunning?” McKenna sees this as word inflation. I agree to a point. Certainly it’s almost insulting nowadays to simply say something is delightful or charming; we […]

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Wasted Words: The Elements and Style

December 2, 2014 by Wilf Popoff | 1 Comment on Wasted Words: The Elements and Style

It’s the time of year when heeding weather reports is a good idea: setting out with meagre insulation can be foolhardy. (News flash: “Hypothermia Blamed When Editor Vanishes.”) I glean data from all sources and sally forth properly kitted, but meteorological claptrap can be irritating. A local CBC station announces that temperatures overnight will go […]

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Getting Rid of Death

September 23, 2014 by Wilf Popoff | 6 Comments on Getting Rid of Death

Okay, I understand. Most of us simply do not want to die. And over the last two centuries the western world has managed to postpone the occasion: we’ve doubled our lifespan. Postponement, however, is not eradication. Die we must, eventually, although there now appears to be a workaround. Many people are attempting to defeat mortality […]

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