Plain Words (17 page)

In the last at any rate, the word has become jargon, given a meaning not known to the dictionaries. What the writer meant in the last one was, ‘you are high on our waiting list'.

In its ordinary sense also,
essential
is frequently used unsuitably. Government departments have to issue so many instructions to all and sundry nowadays that those who draft them get tired of saying that people should or must do things, and misguidedly seek to introduce the relief of variety by saying, for instance, that it is necessary or that it is important that things should be done. And from that it is only a step to work oneself up into saying that it is ‘essential' or ‘vital' or even ‘of paramount importance'. Here is an extract from a wartime departmental circular:

In view of the national situation on the supply of textiles and buttons it is of paramount importance that these withdrawn garments shall be put to useful purposes …

To say that a thing is of paramount importance can only mean that it transcends in importance all other subjects. I cannot believe that anything to do with buttons can ever have been in that class.

Legal diction, as I have said, is necessarily a class apart, and an explanation of the provisions of a legal document must therefore be translated into familiar words simply arranged:

With reference to your letter of the 12th August, I have to state in answer to question 1 thereof that where particulars of a partnership are disclosed to the Executive Council the remuneration of the individual partner for superannuation purposes will be deemed to be such proportion of the total remuneration of such practitioners as the proportion of his share in the partnership profits bears to the total proportion of the shares of such practitioner in those profits.

This is a good example of how not to explain. I think it means merely, ‘Your income will be taken to be the same proportion of the firm's remuneration as you used to get of its profits'. I may be wrong, but even so I cannot believe that language is unequal
to any clearer explanation than the one that the unfortunate correspondent received.

Here is another example of the failure to shake off the shackles of legal language:

Separate departments in the same premises are treated as separate premises for this purpose where separate branches of work which are commonly carried on as separate businesses in separate premises are carried on in separate departments in the same premises.

This sentence is constructed with just that mathematical arrangement of words that lawyers adopt to make their meaning unambiguous. Worked out as one would work out an equation, the sentence serves its purpose. As literature, it is balderdash. The explanation could easily have been given in some such way as this:

If branches of work commonly carried on as separate businesses are carried on in separate departments of the same premises, those departments will be treated as separate premises.

This shows how easily an unruly sentence like this can be reduced to order by turning part of it into an
if
clause.

Even without the corrupting influence of jargon or legal diction, a careless explanation may leave the thing explained even more obscure than it was before. The
New Yorker
, in August 1948, quoted from a publication called
Systems Magazine
:

Let us paraphrase it and define Work Simplification as ‘that method of accomplishing a necessary purpose omitting nothing necessary to that purpose in the simplest fashion is best.' This definition is important for it takes the mystery out of Work Simplification and leaves the essentials clearly outlined and succinctly stated.

The
New Yorker
's comment was: ‘It does indeed'.

Note
. There are several warnings in this book against the use of chilly formalities. Happily, the most extreme examples that Gowers cited in 1954 have since become risible (
This document is forwarded herewith for the favour of your utilisation
…
The Minister cannot conceal from himself that X
…
AB
per pro
CD
…
The per stipes beneficiaries Y
, etc.). No civil servant today could pepper a document with writing of this kind unaware of the remarkable effect it must have on its reader.

But the decline of such phrases is balanced by other changes for the worse. Gowers felt in the 1950s that official writing (by contrast with commercial and academic prose) played ‘a comparatively small part' in promulgating jargon. If that was really true then, it is not true now. A report recently put forward for public notice on the ‘Peri-operative Care of the Higher Risk Surgical Patient' contains an obscure sentence that is representative of innumerable other obscure sentences in today's official documents:

The adoption of an escalation strategy which incorporates defined time points and the early involvement of senior staff when necessary are strongly advised.

What is the ordinary person to make of this? It means something along the lines of, ‘We strongly advise this: that hospital staff should follow a set timetable of checks, and when any results are worrying, should swiftly seek help from a doctor qualified to deal with the problem'. In a later version, the word ‘are' in the original has helpfully been changed to ‘is'; but the jargon remains, so that to a member of the public, the sentence must remain largely meaningless.

Another example of modern jargon is provided by the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills in a document investigating the merits of ‘skills conditionality'. Because this phrase has no
conventional meaning, the authors go to the trouble of providing a gloss: it means, they explain, ‘mandating claimants with skills needs to training' (also referred to as ‘work activity'), with ‘potential benefit sanctions for non-participation', though not where this would interfere with ‘automatic passporting' to housing benefits. In more understandable English this means ‘insisting that those who are jobless and who are deemed to need training should submit to being trained, under threat of having their welfare payments docked if they refuse, though without threat to their housing benefits'. Many ordinary speakers were gravely unimpressed by what ‘skills conditionality' turned out to mean in practice, with public protests by those who interpreted training or ‘work activity' as
work
, who found the phrase ‘benefit sanction' incongruous, and who accused the Government of supplying forced labour to private business.

Jargon may lead to obscurity, but the patterns of ordinary speech can be equally defeating. A leaflet issued by Oxfordshire County Council to explain its parking scheme to residents states idly that ‘Permits may be renewed fourteen days before expiry on production of all documents the same as a new application'. The concerned resident is forced to struggle after the meaning here, which in the end appears to be this: ‘You may renew your permit fourteen days before it runs out (and thereafter, presumably). To do so you will need the same supporting documents that we ask for with a new application'.

Despite the evidence of this parking notice, and of a wider trend towards informality in many public documents, jargon and elevated language remain greater threats to clarity than the overdoing of what Gowers called ‘simple diction'. Stock phrases such as
herewith for the favour of your notice
may have gone, but an excess of dignity can often come down to a single word. The
Guardian
's online garden centre, for example, advertises ‘bulbs, bedding, perennials, annuals, shrubs and trees', then adds:

With every order you'll receive comprehensive cultural instructions and we promise that if you aren't delighted with your order we'll replace your order or give you your money back.

What, the humble gardener wonders bleakly, are these ‘comprehensive cultural instructions', and why would a passing interest in crocuses make it seem as though one needed them?
Growing
would do perfectly well the job that ‘comprehensive cultural' is supposed to do, where the use of
cultural
for
growing
will bring most readers to a momentary halt.

Gowers ended this chapter with a column of seductive or ‘showy' words that he thought were overworked in official documents. Though he accepted that they all had their proper uses, he warned against the temptation to use them in preference to other words that ‘would convey better the meaning you want to express'. His advice to avoid using
moiety
for
half
is probably now obsolete, but the rest of his list still stands. Of the hundred or so words given below, roughly fifty are modern examples that have come into vogue since. (It should be added that one or two of these more recent examples barely qualify as having ‘proper' uses.) The right-hand column, meanwhile, gives other words, not necessarily synonyms, that might perhaps be used instead, ‘if only, in some cases,' as Gowers put it, ‘as useful change-bowlers'. ~