Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Proactively efforting impactful resolutions

"Will the impact negatively impact Mars? We're efforting more information"
- TV news anchor -


Well, it's another new year and time for those resolutions, but this time it's going to be different. I've had enough with the "lose ten pounds, clean up the garage nonsense."

So, enter the caped crusader, the masked avenger, the diabolical Doctor Syntax; scourge of the illiterate and the savior of the tongue. No, I'm not the only one that would prefer to have people speak plain English rather than hide their flimsy educations behind meaningless, redundant, inappropriate, misused cliche, jargon and worn out metaphor, but I'm the only one willing to do more than compose lists that only the literate will read. This time it's going to be different. This time I resolve to kill.

  • The next person I hear using "efforting" as a verb as in "I'm efforting information" is a dead man. If you are unaware of participles like attempting, trying or even endeavoring, I'm going to make an effort to see how many slugs I can put through you before you hit the ground.
  • If you insist on using words like "impactful" or "impactify" or think it's cute and witty to continually and relentlessly substitute the stale and mawkishly metaphorical "impact" for effect, I'm going to think it's cute and witty to put a hollow point between your eyes. How's that for proactive impactification, bozo?
  • Same goes for those who think "having a negative impact on" sounds more educated than hurt or harmed or damaged. If an impact is a collision, a negative impact must be an explosion - like the one that propels a 9mm slug through your empty skull - impactfuly, of course.
  • I don't care what your excuse is, waiting for someone is very different than waiting on someone. Think otherwise? Here, hold these two wires.
  • The verb to invite doesn't turn into an invitation by stressing the first syllable, even if you're on Jeff Foxworthy's list. I invite you to have some of this Kool Aid - it's delicious.
  • You angry folks who write about "mute" points and use "haft to" and "tow the line" and expect me to take your arguments seriously: I'm not going to, I'm going to kill you instead.
  • You upper middle class suburbanites who think it's cute to appropriate stale inner city slang - it's jewelry, not "bling" and the next sound you hear is not going to be bling either - it'll be BANG! Badunkadunk? Sounds like this UZI blowing your head off, now get back in your Lexus and go back to Palm Beach.
  • "Could of?" "Try and?" "the reason why I did it?" " The reason was because?" Up against the wall.
You'll have to guess at the rest, I'm not going to help you too much and it will do you good to think twice about your obsession with redundant 1980's academic neologisms and political buzz words, like empowerment and proactive -- or those just plain annoying Deconstructionist affectations like Verisimilitude. Think Kindergarten portmanteau words like "Ginormous" make you sound erudite? Think twice, because I just may be lurking around the corner somewhere. Doctor Syntax is listening to you.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good stuff, Cap. The misuse of the English language here in Singapore drives me so crazy that I have set up a new part of my company just to do proofreading and copy editing.
Happy New Year!

Capt. Fogg said...

It's forgivable for non-natives, but it's funny to hear people wailing about English being an official language when they speak it so poorly.

d.K. said...

Be afraid. Be very afraid...

Crankyboy said...

Don't forget "true facts" or "past history" or even "jumbo shrimp."

Capt. Fogg said...

Actually Jumbo shrimp is neither an oxymoron nor contradiction. Jumbo is probably derived from the Swahili greeting mambo jambo used to name Jumbo the famous PT Barnum Circus elephant. Using Jumbo to metaphorically connote big is not the same as making it into a synonym for big - it's just a metaphor too stale to be remembered by most people.

The same, obviously goes for shrimp. The name of the animal is not synonymous with small - some use it that way because it's a small animal. Hence, since Jumbo doesn't mean big and shrimp doesn't mean small, it's only a contradiction if you think the metaphorical use of Jumbo requires a metaphorical use of shrimp - which it does not. It's no less correct and not much different from saying large crustacean.

Use of this term does not require execution.

As for True facts or past history - I think both have some legitimate use in political parlance. True facts can be used to denote a separate entity from Fox facts and past history can mean the story they used to sell before the current, operational history.

d.K. said...

"Use of this term does not require execution."

Priceless.