The Controlled Verbiage Act

I'm a word person, and it bothers me when words are misused, over-used, used to obscure the speaker's intent, or otherwise abused. Here in the United States, we have a Controlled Substances Act, which classifies various drugs according to their medical uses and potential for addictiveness or abuse. Perhaps we need a Controlled Verbiage Act to regulate the use of certain words with a high potential for abuse.

The lowest level of enforcement would be reserved for words that are often misused, but you more or less know what the speaker meant. Examples would be the interchangeable use of "lay" and "lie", "effect" and "affect", "flaunt" and "flaut". These are the Schedule IV words. They may be used by lay people without a prescription, but word processing programs should come equipped with directions for usage and warnings of the potential side effects when these words are not used as directed.

Moving on up the list, we have the Schedule III words. These can be used to convey a thought, but they have a high potential for overuse, even addiction. In addition, their misuse may do damage to the rest of the language by setting precedents for sloppiness and fuzzy thinking. Business writing is rife with Schedule III words and phrases. "At the end of the day", "at this point in time", "capturing value", you know the genre. Language-damaging words include such "verbed" nouns as "resulted", "impacted", and the abominable "architected". Throw in such commonly used, but unhelpful, words as "utilize". These words should be kept behind the counter at the editor's shop, and those wishing to use them should present some form of identification and sign a statement that these words are being used in a satirical fashion, as dialogue in a work of fiction or a stage play, as a direct quotation in a news story or documentary, or in professionally-written linguistic performance art.

Schedule II words have legitimate linguistic uses, but they are almost universally misused when placed in the hands of amateurs. These words include "enormity", "comprise", "quantum", and other impressive-sounding but poorly understood terms. When these words are misused, the reader can be left wondering whether the author meant to say that the new shopping mall is a disgrace and an abomination, or merely that it is very large.

Schedule I words have no use other than to demean, disgrace, or belittle other people or to suggest acts of violence or subjugation. You know what these words are. I'm not going to repeat them here.

Sound Bites and Still Pix

On October 18, The Washington Post published a very brief comment I made about a photograph in one of their Metro section articles. The comment appeared on their Saturday "Free For All" page, which is where they publish readers' grammatical nitpicks, complaints about coverage (or lack thereof), and comments on the appropriateness of photos. Here's what my comment looked like after the editors got through with it:

Packing Them In
Megan Greenwell's article on churches in Prince George's County ["Still Flocking to Prince George's," Religion, Oct. 11] was accompanied by a large photo of First Baptist Church of Glenarden's sanctuary filled with people. Clearly visible was a bright pink slide on one of the projection screens, with the message "Let's talk about Sex." Humorous, yes, but irrelevant to the focus of the story. Was this the best shot your photographer could come up with?
[end]

I thought that captured it pretty well, since the article itself was about people who had moved away from Prince George's County, but still attended their old churches out of a continued sense of connection to their community. The photo made it look as though the church was using sensational topics to draw people in.

In today's Post Free For All section, Robert Braxton of Fairfax writes:
Sects in the Church

In my opinion, Post readers go overboard in second-guessing the selection of photographs to print. The latest example was the letter from Nancy McGuire ["Packing Them In," Free for All, Oct. 18]. In a culture where unplanned pregnancy among teenagers remains a problem, I fail to see humor in a screen projecting the words "Let's talk about sex." And anyone bothered by that in a church must be unfamiliar with the biblical directive "know thy wife."

Besides, have not churches always dealt in sects?
[end]

I actually agree with Mr. Braxton's point about the need for such conversations, but that wasn't really the point I was making. Did Mr. Braxton not read carefully, was he just using my comment as a springboard for his own, or was my point really not clear?