Archive for the ‘Language’ Category
Plunged
Accuracy vs. Agenda — A fact is a fact and a stat is a stat, yes, but they can be ‘presented’ in ways not only misleading, they can be insulting.
Exaggerations and misleading statements by agenda-driven pundits are certainly not new, and they are everywhere, from the right and left, the read and blue, a spectrum that goes from Limbaugh and O’Reilly, to Stewart and Huffington, George Will to …… I’m staying away from the whole Limbaugh-and-college-student thing, because that was really about madness and hyperbole. I’ll also state that I am an occasional Jon Stewart viewer, a regular reader of the Huffington Post, an occasional reader of George Will occasional viewer — usually a few minutes max — of O’Reilly.
I watch Stewart because he’s funny, and I can’t find fault with his show’s approach of using news stories and current events as launch points for humorous response and reaction.
I skim the Huff Post every morning because it presents a aggregated collection of stories and news which includes lifestyle and media subjects that are of personal interest.
I would watch more of O’Reilly if he was less bombastic and if he weren’t so willing to lie and bully people (here’s a link to just what I mean: )
I don’t begrudge anyone their use of the English language to promote a particular point-of-view, but I find the use of presenting a fact in a way that makes it seem to be something it isn’t to be reprehensible. I came across just this sort of thing recently that was more local than the nationally-known examples above, and perhaps I’m overreacting to it in part because I know and like the writer. The content of the piece was no surprise because the writer’s political perspectives are obvious in every piece. What disappointed me is the blatant spin of a particular sentence. I take some solace in being able to use it as a way to show readers how to ignore a hyperbolic description and focus on what was written and why it was written in a particular way.
The piece was an editorial on the current administration’s push for increased tax rates for wealthy individuals and how that was a misguided, misinformed approach to fixing the economy. The writer included statistics in support of this point-of-view.
Statistics don’t lie; they are what they are. I’m certain this was the thought behind the writer’s approach. One set of statistics had to do with the number of millionaires in a particular year, and then what happened to that number the following year, and how that stat supported the notion that the number of wealthy tax payers was decreasing along with the tanking of the economy, and how this showed that increasing tax rates for the wealthy wouldn’t do didley for the economy…or something like that…
The insulting part was in the writer’s description of the decrease from one year to the next in tax paying millionaires: “…the actual number of millionaires plunged by 40%…”
Lawdy lawdy, those poor people, what a horrible thing!
Bite me. “Plunged?” Really?
That was it, that was all that was stated about the number of millionaires, and the rest of the piece went on its agenda-driven way.
Plunged. It’s a very evocative verb, plunged. It has a speed aspect, much stronger than the word ‘fell’ or the passive, soul-less ‘decreased’. Plunged makes you want to buckle up, hold on, get ready for a roller coaster dive.
That’s what pisses me off about it, though, is that its emotional power overshadows what a 40% decrease actually means, and in this particular case, what it may actually mean is completely hidden. Indeed, a 40% drop over the course of a year is pretty significant, but what’s left unexplained is the actual drop in the amount of money, and in the context of the writer’s ‘presentation’ of the statistic, this is an insulting omission.
If you earn $24,000 yearly and you have significant decrease in your earnings, you’re probably going to be hurting; a 25% reduction in your earnings will reduce your dough to $18,000, a pretty big hit.
If you’re annual million-dollar earnings take a 25% hit, you’re still bringing home $750,000. I’m not saying you won’t feel it, but I am saying you’re still getting by.
So what’s that mean, that plunge to below millionaire status? It don’t mean squat the way it was presented, and that’s the insult, because the writer knows that a more accurate, detailed description of that 40% plunge — people who might not be millionaires anymore but who are still bringing in a wide range of six-figure incomes — might not rev up the emotional “Yeah, look at that!” sense of agreement with the writer. That was obviously what mattered more than putting forth a reasoned, objective argument.
The word usage in that piece was right up there with phrases like job killer bill and death tax, descriptions that sacrifice accuracy for emotion.
I understand we all have agendas, beliefs, and perspectives, I just can’t stand people who know that the reality of their unadorned point-of-view may not be able to stand on its own, so they dress it up to evoke a response in the hope of avoiding close inspection.
Plunged indeed.
Don’t know why I bother…
I just watched an interview on CNN where the anchor asked a congressman “Would you support higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations?” because what the congressman had just said before that ‘seemed’ to allude to just that sort of thing.
The congressman’s answer did not include a yes or no. In fact, his answer included “what I’m in favor of…” and then described several things, including LOWERING the tax rate.
So she asked him again: “So, would you support higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations?” and again, a yes or no was not included in his answer, and he put that “lowering the tax rate” in his answer again.
Not too long ago, the big “O” on Fox, who I assume is their highest paid mouth, excoriated a senator who had said that the anchors and pundits on Fox continued to say that “people will go to jail if they don’t have health insurance”, and the big “O” didn’t just say, “no one has said that on Fox”, he pushed back with his usual bullying, dismissive, how-can-someone-be-so-stupid style and challenged the politician to name one person on Fox who had used the phrase. It was so over the top that, unlike many professional politicians, the dude was pretty much bushwhacked into silence.
And the next night, the big “O” had comedian Dennis Miller on, and he and “O” had a great chuckle over the whole thing.
And, of course, an organization that actually cares about this sort of thing put together a video of hosts, panelists and guests on Fox talking about how people would be put in jail if they didn’t have health insurance; not just a few mentions – over four minutes worth.
Now, the usual response from one side or the other to a post like this is to take the tac of the politician mentioned above who doesn’t seem to have the capacity, or the integrity, to reply to a question with “yes” or “no”; people will jump up on their chairs and yell about the other side doing the same thing, or point out that the real issue is (whatever). This post isn’t about political ‘discourse’, which is close to dead in this country in general, and simply ridiculous on Facebook (please, everyone, stop yelling at me; I already know who’s on which side, and Facebook, for the love of youknowho, is not the place to have any kind of rational discussion about, well, anything. I’m okay with friends and associates having divergent political, societal, and philosophical views).
This post is simply for people who should know better — as LISTENERS and as SPEAKERS — who continue to capitulate to the heat of the moment, who subjugate their humanity and integrity by taking an “if I don’t look at you, you don’t exist” approach to the people and world around them.
It’s not political, it’s “is this the kind of shit you really want to establish as a foundational example for the next generation to stand on?”
Really?
Here’s the video link. As to the example about a politician who can’t answer a simple question with yes or no, just watch any news program, any time…especially now.
Dangerous territory
I work hard to post about communication issues here, and attempt to keep my personal opinions about communications from coloring the content, but, there are issues that occasionally rise up that require more than an objective observation.
News reports, the opinions voiced by both pro-union protesters and supporters, and op-eds about the protests in Wisconsin have given wide exposure to what I call a word-of-mouth promoted perspective: “The middle class was built on the backs of unions.”
Where did that come from? Good question, and I don’t have a definitive answer. I know that I didn’t learn it in history class, and I don’t think kids learn it in history class now. I’m thinking that what’s taught is how the creation of unions stopped wide-spread abuse of workers in slave or sweat-house conditions, and leveled — somewhat — the playing field of industry and the workers who kept the smokestacks smoking and the assembly lines assembling.
But, nothing exists in a vacuum and few things stay the same. The Constitution? An amazing document, and amazing concept, which has given us the ability to have everything we have…and has been amended, and amended, and amended, because the realities of life change.
No argument here that there are places, sadly, where employee protections are still necessary. Unions were formed for good reason. But while the reasons have merit, things are really, really different now, as are the unions and how they operate.
One of the ways they operate is in creating perspectives about what unions do, don’t do, and what unions are, and then work to promote and disperse those created perspectives amongst the public at large.
And for those who are already shrieking “The other side does that too!”, I know they do; I’m in the communications field, after all.
Objectively, the phrase “The middle class was built on the back of unions” has no more merit than the phrase “job killer bill”, a phrase created to put a spin on something that particular groups assign to political initiatives or reforms that go against what those groups believe or want to have happen in the marketplace, commercial or private sector employers. That phrase immediately evokes passion, and that’s exactly its intention, and the people who do that sort of thing for a living — again, sadly, people in my field — get paid to find language and create perspectives that have an emotional foundation, regardless of the facts.
Those phrases and opinions parsed and nuanced as fact suddenly pop up in the popular lexicon at important junctures. No one really knows where come from, initially, and they spread like a bacteria. Happens all the time.
That’s what has happened with this “built on the back” thing. Perhaps the middle class of the ’50s, maybe the ’60s does indeed have unionization as its backbone, but the ’70s? ’80s? ’90s? Now? I don’t know, but I don’t think so.
I don’t like to see anyone lose their job, lose their benefits, go under…I don’t want to see that happen to anyone under any circumstances. But I constantly fight to keep people aware of communication manipulation, because in the heat generated by emotional discourse, especially choreographed heated discourse, no one is served by promoting inaccuracy as a fact of history.
It may be that someone reading this will be able to provide me with objective — that means data from a non-biased source, and yes, there are such databases — that will show me otherwise, but until that happens, put me on record as a communications professional who states that the “built on the backs” phrase has its origins with the parties that have the most to gain from convincing the masses that what is in fact emotionally charged spin is ‘truth’.
We must change
The problem is us. The problem is that we continue to listen. The problem is that angry words, demeaning, fiery catchphrases, and motivation by paranoia have become the money that buys exposure. These are the qualities that get people their fifteen-minutes (and more on the Web) of face-time, images and sound-bites transmitted across the world for anyone to see, to listen to, and to act upon.
It’s not a free speech issue — it’s a selfish issue. From the local news photographer at the latest protest, to the executive producers and network execs who find $40 million dollars to create and broadcast shows which regal in the froth of doomsday prophecies, down to the deeply troubled, one-person vendetta shop, where pages of unsubstantiated, twisted history and research move from computer to printer to paper to anxious hands and into the malleable minds of tortured souls, the real problem for all of us is that we refuse to accept responsibility for influencing and promoting the ideas that fuel the lives of others.
You can’t — whether you are O’Reilly, Beck, a Tea Party leader, a Republican leader, a pundit, a celebrity, an influential Democrat, a Christian, an atheist, an anti-abortion supporter, a segregationist — you can’t separate yourself from the actions of people that you otherwise wouldn’t have anything to do with but who have been influenced by what you’ve said “to them”, because that’s the whole point of your show, your platform, your speech, your meeting, to talk to “them”. You can’t use words like “target”, then merge it with a crosshair symbol, and believe that its affect on someone cannot be attributable to you because you were only giving voice to your opinion.
You can’t scream at a person, or a viewer, or a reader, warning them of some kind of impending doom that needs action taken to prevent it, and then recluse yourself from the consequences by saying that your words are expressing a point of view, and were never meant to incite someone to do something tragic.
You can’t tell someone they’re an aberration against god, that they’re not going to heaven, that they should be removed from common decent society, that they have no right to be in love with whoever they choose, that they are inferior, that they will bankrupt the country, that their presence in society will be the downfall of our nation, that the people who support those kinds of people and their beliefs must be stopped, you can’t do that and not expect someone to believe you’re right and take action based on what you said.
You can tell people you don’t agree with them. You can hate a person’s politics while still loving the person. You can eventually learn not to hate at all. It is possible.
You cannot distance yourself from your words. You cannot stand on the platform of free speech and democracy to build your own empire, whether in a church basement, an ethnic-bashing meeting over coffee, a political strategy session, or network production meeting, and remove yourself from consequences that you had encouraged your listener to strive for.
You cannot bring a gun to a public gathering and expect to be received without fanfare. If you bring a gun to a public gathering, you are doing it to further an agenda, not to keep yourself safe, and certainly not to keep those around you safe. You cannot call someone demonic and describe what they do for a living as deplorable and ignore that somewhere amongst the 20,000,000 viewers of your show, one or two people will do something to please you.
You can’t utter the words “I know someone, and they know it’s true…”, and follow those with Internet-fueled, unsupportable, hyperbolic stories, the kind that come from Web pages with animated waving American Flags and promote patriotism with pithy quotes, and not at least be a small part of the spark that lights an inferno.
Our problems are not pro-gun, anti-gun, easy access, too much information, or too many channels. Our problem is our reluctance to accept our own culpability, our complicity, when hideous events occur. and to remember that complicity so we can alter the course of our lives and stop being complicit.
Every person loses a treasured piece of humanity whenever another suffers at human hands, but more and more that loss occurs long before the suffering is rendered, it occurs the moment we listen to words and views which we know in our heart shouldn’t be said, which we know we should stand against.
There is no suitable “Yeah, but…”
There is only one way forward.
We must change.
My love and thoughts to those who suffer.
The Way Things Work – that decision
I’ve been really focused on several book-related issues (read: “gotta get this done”) as The Way to Communicate’s release date looms (October 14, 2010), but more than a few things that jiggle my head have appeared on my “Really?” radar and I’ve got to say something about them. So there. Or, here:
The New York Times has a good piece about yesterday’s ruling on the issue of same-sex marriage. What I like about it is the way it puts the ruling in context, and explains how the judge used the constitutional rights, state rights, and legal tests to evaluate the matter and conclude that a decision based on a state population’s majority vote to ban same-sex marriage can’t stand if the result is unconstitutional, because it treats a class of citizens differently than other citizens.
That’s really the ruling, right there, and history is replete with examples of when a people decide, usually at the prodding and misdirection of some leadership with a bad agenda, that a human being with certain characteristics, be it lineage, appearance, heritage, or philosophy, is not worthy of the inalienable right to be, well, a human being.
Last night, in a CBS News clip, an Alabama senator expressed his view that the decision was an example of judicial activism, and that the decision showed that the judge believed he knew better than the majority of the state’s residents as to the what kind of family values were acceptable…or something like that. Sorry, I’m attempting to paraphrase something that didn’t really make sense.
The explanation in the NY Times article of how the judge came to his decision demonstrates that the only way the Alabama senator could be more wrong would be to, um, well, gosh, I don’t think he could be more wrong, just wrong, um, differently.
Over the course of writing about and being involved with the legal community, I’ve come to understand much of how and why it works the way it does, including that many, many people outside of the legal community don’t have a clue as to how the judicial system actually works. It’s not anyone’s fault, really, because it is a complex, confusing, layered environment, but it’s still the best legal system in the world. Period.
Read the article and you ‘ll have some insight as to how most legal opinions are reached. Again, it ain’t a perfect system, and it doesn’t ‘always’ get things right — and there will be a few more decisions made about this situation, the final one coming from the Supreme Court at some point — but it works.
This just in from the Times: “PowerPoint makes us stupid”
"Okay, I want you to take your tank and turn right, no, left, wait...um..."
I’ve come close to saying that, in a slightly different fashion. As someone trying to help a client, and keep the client, a consultant may wish not to offend the client with direct language; instead, one helps the client understand why it might be that…
Aw, screw it. Enough with the nice-nice. Here’s the skinny: PowerPoint can, indeed, make the presenter look stupid, and make the audience feel like the presenter is stupid for making everyone sit through a bullet-laden, sentence fragment populated, “What, there’s a different way to do this?” presentation.
To all my clients, assoiciates, friends and others (?!?), you all know my views on this. Now, as quoted in today’s New York Times, there’s some muscle that supports my never-ending quest to rid the world of bullets, text-dense slides, and slide-reading presenters. The link to the story is at the bottom or this post, but here’s a sprinkling of it:
“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.
“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
For those of you who haven’t seen the alternative universe of visual, well-designed, effective PowerPoint slides, I know it can be hard to conceive of a world where PowerPoint slides make you say, “Ooo!” instead of “Oy…”. Until I can show people that world, though, it’s so good and, concurrently, so sad, that the biggest guns of the world’s best place to be have to point out how goofy it is to use PowerPoint to disseminate critical information.
Bullets don’t really mean anything. Those small circles in front of fragments or words only exist to indicate “what follows cannot stand alone to convey what I intend.” There is enough information without context in our lives; we don’t actually need software that enables us to compose nice looking incomplete sentences and short strings of words. What we need is more exposure to presentations that work.
I realize the article has ‘war’ as its focus, but the core of the story — how to effectively, successfully, convey critical information using presentation software and technology — is relevant to every industry sector.
In General McMaster’s view, PowerPoint’s worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic, which was first uncovered by NBC’s Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict’s causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. “If you divorce war from all of that, it becomes a targeting exercise,” General McMaster said.
Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic, persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in slides instead of legal briefs.
As you read the last words of the article, remember them as you put together your next presentation.
Hmm…might be time for me to put on a seminar, and call it…
Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.
The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”
How'd they like your presentation?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?th&emc=th
Usage, grammar, and punctuation for my friends
The bible for anyone who writes
It seems that many otherwise stellar professionals and career-oriented people have trouble with the correct forms of titles, and the use of the possessive apostrophe vs the plural of a word. Here’s my unsolicited guidance, to serve as a general rule, accompanied with all the usual love and respect.
Titles by themselves aren’t proper nouns and aren’t upper-case unless they are part of the full title:
She was the manager of human resources.
Pamela Goodword, Manager of Human Resources
Sam is vice president of the club. (no hyphen)
Sam Shepherd, Vice President of Western Whatever
(a related aside: the title isn’t hyphenated, but if the phrase is used as an adjective, it is, because it’s a descriptor: That task is included in his list of vice-presidential duties.)
Now, for that confusing apostrophe. If the sentence describes something that is yours (oh great, there’s one of the uses where the possessive doesn’t actually apply…give me a minute and I’ll get to the exceptions), then think of the apostrophe as a hook, to connect to its owner:
They found the robber’s wallet on the floor.
The company’s 401k match is great.
Here’s the plural: There are too many footballs on the field. (also, as demonstrated by the first word of the sentence, the apostrophe in the word “Here’s” is the contraction, “Here is…”)
Where the possessive apostrophe can be a little confusing is in the different forms of pronouns, and forms of ‘it’:
An apostrophe with ‘it’ is used only for the contraction of it is: It’s late. When the usage is referencing something that belongs to it (hold on, I know it’s close to confusing), there is no apostrophe…which is the opposite of the previous hook analogy:
That animal eats its young.
The book’s cover may be cool, but its story sucks.
And the same confusing issue occurs with forms of their and your:
It’s not mine, it’s yours.
It’s not mine, it’s theirs.
If I can get everyone to just understand the titles thing and the possessive vs plural stuff, I’ll be happy enough.
I know it’s confusing.
Everyone should own and read, at least once every couple of years, Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. That’s it; no description, no link, just go get it, order it, whatever, just go get it, read it, and you’ll be a much better communicator for it. It’s a little book, but it’s a big help.
The slow reveal
I’m doing the very last edits and proofing of my forthcoming book, The Way to Communicate, best described by its own slug, to wit: an enlightening method for effectively communicating in public speaking, presentation and conversational situations.
Well, what the heck, the jacket copy says it so well, here’s more: “This unique, entertaining, and personal guidance benefits anyone who wants to develop greater confidence and effectiveness in any kind of communication environment, from a one-on-one conversation to a presentation in front of packed auditorium. While many of the book’s examples take place within a business related environment, The Way to Communicate encourages development of greater awareness and empathy as a way to connect with anyone, in any situation.”
Although it won’t be released until later this year, I’ve posted a downloadable excerpt on Scribd, with another to come next week. The current excerpt, Be Normal, is about challenges faced by executives who, as the ‘face’ of an organization, tell the organization’s story so many times they begin a misguided effort to keep the story fresh, and end up moving away from the personal qualities and attributes that made them effective storytellers in the first place.
Hope you find something in it that resonates for you, clients, or friends.
More to come.
Sinks or swims right out of the gate
I grabbed that mixed metaphor from a page on a blog about becoming an effective copywriter.
Great. We’re doomed.
The post’s title is (I’m paraphrasing here) An Introduction to Copywriting. Here are the first two sentences of the first paragraph below the header, Writing Headlines: The Most Important Copywriting Skill -
“Most writing designed to persuade sinks or swims right out of the gate. Whether the title of an article or the headline of a sales page, readers make snap decisions based on a quick scan of the top of the page…”
Who knew that a reader could be a title or a headline. I guess you really can learn something every day… or unlearn something…
I’ll go on record right here as stating that, yes, in the earliest phases of my career (when I was writing headlines on cave walls), I had a few goofs, but I wasn’t using my goofs as examples of how to write great copy.
The site’s design is nicely done; the content, not so much. I stumbled across it as I was looking around some agency sites. I was stumbling, reeling from what I’d read in one of the PDFs on the site of a long-standing, successful firm with highly recognizable clients. It was helpful, all right, but probably not in the way they conceived it.
I do have a habit of not adhering to the rules of sentence punctuation in my personal emails. I don’t upper case anything in my personal email correspondence, but that’s not a trait I would include in anything of a formal nature or in anything related to work. Because of this, I was willing to accept that someone else might find the all lower case use worthy of a ‘style’. What stunned me though, what smacked me around, was the goofy use of sentence fragments, known to many of us as “market speak”. Here’s a sampling from this well-established, we-do-it-all agency, lifted without any alteration from the file:
“consider content. not a very sexy or glamorous word. but in many ways, content is the never-ending mandate of marketing these days. advertising content. business content. user-generated content. rich content.
SEO, SEM, blogs, podcasts, online campaigns, video, social networking, emails and more. You name it, we’re doing it. Both the strategic and creative plan for it and the technology that will enable it.”
It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder why I even bother to stay in this business. This was the most abrasive use of market speak I’d read since last year’s Microsoft two-page advertisement in many major newspapers. I don’t know exactly when market speak gained wide acceptance, but my personal belief is that it was born of the bullet points on a slide family.
I know that I can’t stop the continuing use of market speak, and I’m bummed that people of otherwise great intelligence either don’t think it’s a big deal or, worse, don’t know how silly it sounds. (What, you don’t think it sounds silly? Try reading it out loud, and no fair substituting a comma pause instead of a period stop.)
I guess the most I can ask, as a personal favor to me, is that you stop the market speak creep in your own communications and presentations.
Please. So important. Livelihoods at stake. Really.
Really?
Really? This is what we need, the word “monetizable”?
Um, what happened to sentences like, “We need to start building a business that makes money?”
That is what Mr. Williams means, right?
Hey, maybe not. It’s debatablizeable.
Maybe monetizable is some kind of code word, or maybe it doesn’t have to do with money at all. Maybe what it means is that we must always seek to invent words that will make the user of the word sound like he or she has given great, continuous thought to a situation that’s a source of neverending thorniness — like conjurring up things to put on the Web that are occasionally interesting, grab everyone’s attention, and eventually brings all the world’s people together as one massive bullseye for advertisers developing some revenue-generating widgit, something futuristic, targeted, like reach-right-into-your-head advertising.
And, having pondered said situation, when asked a question about it, the user of such a word believes he must respond with something that sounds mighty, mighty educatedzable, something like, “We need to start building a monetizable business.”
Because if the answer was something clearer, like, “We need to start building a business that makes money”, someone might feel compelled to say, “Gee, isn’t that whole point of building a business in the first place?”
Now, all of my conjecturizabling is suspect, because perhaps ‘makes money’ isn’t what Mr. Williams meant at all, so I guess I’ve been assumizeable in my perspective on what monetizable actually means.
So, if I’m wrong, I guess I have to be apologizable.
