Rarely do I comment on the disappointing quality of professional journalism, but I couldn’t help myself on this occasion after reading an article on CNN that did all but trumpet itself as a product of either laziness or poor training in rhetoric and the literary arts. Sentences without verbs issued in groups of threes, a good writer does not use.
Too often, an appeal to “style” is exploited as an excuse for poor grammar or clumsily recycled platitudes. As a self-taught writer with negligible formal training in writing, I don’t claim to be an expert in the art, but I don’t think it’s too controversial a statement to define “style” as that which is the result of a conscious decision, not that which stems from the refusal to expend brainpower in the act of using colons, semicolons, and en and em-dashes, as well as words and phrases beyond those exhaustively and consistently misapplied by the offender since his or her exiting the fifth grade.
More importantly for me, however, than my own personal distaste for works that I can only describe as violence towards the English language is the fact that these pieces then become stencils for new generations of writers who blindly copy the worst qualities to continue an endless cycle of vitiation. It isn’t often said that there is too little discrimination in the world, but this is one area that would unquestionably benefit from a sharp increase in it.
My own attempts at improvement have largely been inspired by the late Christopher Hitchens, whose words on borrowed phrases have haunted me to this day.
If there is suspicion that this is pedantry of the highest order designed purely for effect, I wish to quell those thoughts. I don’t fancy myself a bel esprit, but I do find the tendency of many writers’ need for grammatical and phraseological hypocorism insulting to their respective audiences; more often than not, longer words are shunned for the sake of simplicity of expression rather than simplicity of comprehension, malapropisms are embarrassingly masqueraded as puns, and clichés outright flaunted as if they were grand allusions. Incorrect and oversimplified usage of language not only reduces our ability to write — it diminishes our capacity to think.
Consider the use of the word “incredible,” which in today’s vernacular, means that which is surprising-yet-believable, rather than that which is impossible to believe. While this may say more about the credulity of our species rather than our willingness to misuse words to the point of creating auto-antonyms (words with more than one definition that contradict each other), this trend suggests a point of near-absolute convergence sometime in the future that prevents the formulation of complex ideas. “Incredible” has its synonyms, so this phenomenon seems relatively benign, but it is not coincidence that “doublespeak”, of Orwell’s 1984, takes advantage of the ability to limit thought through words to its logical extremes.
Of course, I don’t suggest that the destruction of “literal” as a meaningful word is by itself a slippery slope to totalitarianism. However, I do think that the same dangers do exist, regardless, to a lesser extent – despite not being guided by an absolute authority – and it is my firm belief that clear expression is a means of preventing intellectual suicide. Surely, if humans believe most animals to be mentally inferior due to their seemingly limited and simplistic means of communication, it is at least conceivable that ignoring language as not just the vehicle but also the driver of thought comes with the possibility of the degeneration of mental faculties.
In writing, we should not appeal to the least common denominator in a race to the bottom, but bid to drive each other to the limits of what can be achieved. Just as we don’t accept microwaved food from what we expect to be decent restaurant establishments, lack of freshness or quality from any professional author is simply inexcusable. In the words of my favorite writer, Christopher Hitchens,
Make a resolution that you will not use obvious or easy words and phrases…If you want to be any good at all as a writer you simply MUST throw aside the crap idioms that pass for speech these days. Purify the well of your English: there is no other way.
Social acceptance of mediocrity should not serve as a roof for those without the willingness or the foresight to bring their own umbrellas to shield them from the heavy rain that is literary criticism.
Filed under: Editorial, Auto-antonyms, Christopher Hitchens, Cliche, Hitchens, Journalism, Poor Writing, Style, Writing
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