miércoles, 7 de junio de 2017

Love your grammar, but don’t be obnoxious | MercatorNet | June 7, 2017 |

Love your grammar, but don’t be obnoxious

| MercatorNet |  June 7, 2017  |







Love your grammar, but don’t be obnoxious

The World Bank's chief economist recently lost his job by insisting on clear, grammatical prose
Roslyn Petelin | Jun 7 2017 | comment 


This week, the financial press reported the downfall of a high-profile grammar pedant, Professor Paul Romer, the World Bank’s chief economist, who was hoist(ed) with his own pedantic petard.
He is being replaced as head of the bank’s research arm after he demanded that his colleagues write succinct, clear, direct emails, presentations and reports in the active voice with a low proportion of “and’s”. Romer will remain the bank’s chief economist.
In fact, he had threatened not to publish the bank’s central publication, World Development Report, “if the frequency of ‘and’ exceeded 2.6 per cent”. He had also cancelled a regular publication that he believed had no clear purpose.
Why, you may ask, did the economists who work in the World Bank’s research department take exception to these strictures? Who wouldn’t want the corporate report that was a flagship publication of the bank to be narrow and “penetrate deeply like a knife”? Romer’s 600 colleagues, that’s who. But why?
It seems that, while he was encouraging his staff to avoid their customary convoluted “bankspeak” and consider their readers, he failed to follow his own advice. He was apparently curt, abrasive and combative. The troops refused to fall into line and he was ousted.
Such a shame, Professor Romer, because we need more pruning of the muddy prose that is endemic in so many institutions, particularly banks. We can only imagine how Australia’s four big banks are readying themselves to obfuscate their documents in response to the recent budget measures.
The various shades of pedantry     
There are two kinds of people in this world: pedants and everybody else. Pedantry isn’t confined to grammar, of course. Pedantry can be found in architecture, cooking (for example, Julian Barnes’s lovely little book The Pedant in the Kitchen), geometry, music, philosophy, politics and science. Think Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, the most popular show on American television.
Romer’s case, however, highlights the key dilemma of grammar pedants: how do you handle your pedantry so that you don’t lose your job? It depends on what kind of pedant you are.
Do you practise your pedantry privately by just “thinking” corrections at other people when they write “bunker” instead of “hunker” down? Or do you practise your pedantry publicly and thereby subject yourself to taunts of “peevish prescriptivist”, “nit-picking, hair-splitting pedant”, or the more arcane and colourful “pettifogging pedant”?
This sort of abuse rained on Bryan Henderson, the American software engineer who had removed 47,000 instances of “comprised of” from Wikipedia by the end of 2015.
BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman was quoted in The Guardian in 2014 as saying:
People who care about grammar are regularly characterised as pedants. I say that those who don’t care about it shouldn’t be surprised if we pay no attention to anything they say — if indeed they are aware of what they’re trying to say.
Pedants anonymous   
I am a fervent believer that grammar provides writers with analytical tools to choose and combine words felicitously into English sentences to a set of professional standards that serve utilitarian needs and provide intellectual pleasure.
However, aware from long experience that it’s rare to be thanked for pointing out a solecism that has made me wince, I attempt to shield the newly minted graduates of my grammar course at The University of Queensland from the potential consequences of sharing their knowledge with those less grammatically alert. To this end, I lead a discussion about their stance on grammar in the final class of the semester.
To counter the negative connotations evoked by the term “grammar pedant” and to celebrate their pleasure in language, they invent playful monikers such as “grammartiste”, “grammagician”, “grammardian angel”, “grammar groover”, “grammartuoso” and “grammasseur”.
Anne Curzan, a grammar maven who contributes to the Lingua Franca blog on The Chronicle of Higher Education, favours “grammando”; I prefer the much less warlike “grammond” (modelled on gourmand, “one who has a refined palate for grammar and savours it at its best”).
That “linguifier” Stephen Fry begs us to abandon our pedantry, but he confines his admonition to non-professional contexts and admits: “It’s hard not to wince when someone aspirates the word ‘aitch’ and uses the genteelism of yourself and myself instead of you and me.”
Fry says that “context, convention and circumstance are all”. And this is what Professor Romer forgot. What we need to abandon is not pedantry. After all, its etymological origins are in teaching.
It is peevish, condescending and competitive pedantry that is the culprit. We could take a lesson from the Bristol engineer who has for 13 years used his specially designed long-handled apostrophiser and step-ladder to remove aberrant apostrophes and plant missing ones on buildings in Bristol and managed to remain anonymous.
The wonderful parodist Craig Brown’s solution may be an even better choice:
It’s always pleasant to go carol-singing, or carols-singing, with the Pedants’ Association, formerly the Pedants Association, originally the Pedant’s Association. I first joined ten years ago with the long-term aim of attracting the requisite number of votes in order to change its title to The Association of Pedants, thus rendering the apostrophe redundant.
The ConversationI’ll leave the uses and abuses of “and” aside for another day.
Roslyn Petelin, Associate Professor in Writing, The University of Queensland. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.  
For further edification, please review this video 

“Now that you’re here …  we’ve got a small favour to ask. More people are reading MercatorNet, but far fewer are donating. Unlike many online magazine, we haven’t put up a paywall and we don't have lots of obtrusive advertising. So you can see why we need to ask for your help.
MercatorNet’s independent, vibrant and informative articles take a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our views on human dignity matter – and because they might be your views as well.

If every fan of MercatorNet donated just $10, our future would be much more secure.
    Donate Now   
- See more at: https://www.mercatornet.com/features/view/love-your-grammar-but-dont-be-obnoxious/19930#sthash.PkNAZjf7.dpuf



MercatorNet

June 7, 2017

I always feel guilty when I catch myself complaining about mobile phones. Whenever I take a train, it’s comical to look down the platform and see heads of all ages tethered by long drooping white wires to metal and glass rectangles. On board everyone is busy playing game, adjusting play lists or reading Facebook. Occasionally you do see someone reading a book. There’s almost no community, no conversation, no interaction.
But then I reflect that MercatorNet’s job is to keep as many people as possible glued to those screens and I realise that it’s not so bad after all. They are probably all reading MercatorNet.
Joking aside, phone attachment is a serious problem, especially for teenagers. In today’s line-up of articles, Washington DC headmaster Alvaro de Vicente gives some very sound advice to parents about how to talk to their kids about smartphones. 


Michael Cook 
Editor 
MERCATORNET





Should smart teens have smartphones?
By Alvaro de Vicente
An experienced high school headmaster tackles one of parents' biggest headaches
Read the full article
 
Love your grammar, but don’t be obnoxious
By Roslyn Petelin
The World Bank's chief economist recently lost his job by insisting on clear, grammatical prose
Read the full article
 
After 50 years, the magic of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band wears off
By Campbell Markham
It was a fabulous album, but it ushered in an era of spiritual vacuity and crass materialism
Read the full article
 
What’s wrong with prisoner euthanasia?
By Michael Cook
A US law journal investigates "the last frontier in prison reform"
Read the full article
 
Behind the homelessness trend: broken homes
By Carolyn Moynihan
An Australian study finds boys are the biggest losers.
Read the full article
 
Middle Eastern Christians feel betrayed by American Christians
By Luma Simms
An Iraqi Christian asks that for compassion for the plight of Christians in the lands where Christianity began
Read the full article
 
If you have the ‘why’ of living, you can find the ‘how’
By Margaret Somerville
Insights for the euthanasia debate from unpacking the concept of dignity
Read the full article
 
Tried in the court of Twitter
By Michael Cook
Tennis legend Margaret Court is being pilloried for opposing same-sex marriage
Read the full article


MERCATORNET | New Media Foundation 
Suite 12A, Level 2, 5 George Street, North Strathfied NSW 2137, Australia 

Designed by elleston

No hay comentarios: