Newsletter and Grammar Coach
MAY 2021 | Vol. 25, No. 5
Monthly information digest for EditPros clients and friends
EditPros LLC is commemorating 27 years in business
| EditPros LLC and our Book Prep service remain ready to serve you during the COVID-19 crisis. We are working with clients by phone and email, thereby avoiding the need for face-to-face contact. Thank you. We hope you stay well. |
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CONTENTS
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You’re reading this because you’re interested in communicating effectively. But why do people communicate? We do so for numerous reasons: to introduce ourselves, to make requests, to tell others if we’re in pain, to call for help, to ask others how we can help, to offer services or products for sale, to express emotions, to convey our appreciation.
Communication fulfills two functions: it is a means for people to express their thoughts, and it enables others to learn what we’re thinking — but only if what we say is purposeful and unequivocal.
Communication that is purposeful is driven by motivation: you have something to say, and you want to be recognized. To be effective, communication also must be unequivocal — that is, explicit and unambiguous — not subject to more than one interpretation.
Whether intentionally or subconsciously, however, many people erode the power of their communication by their use of “weasel words” and equivocating phrases that are intentionally ambiguous.
An online message that someone posted using a pseudonym provoked a fellow named Jason to comment, “I find it interesting that the post was written anonymously.” Other readers might wonder, “Interesting in what way?” Jason might have found the anonymity puzzling, or amusing, or irritating, or ironic — or perhaps it even made him skeptical about the credibility of the message. Jason’s interest in the letter is self-evident — that’s why he commented about it. Without clarification, though, others don’t truly know what Jason thought of the message.
Reacting in a staff meeting to a statement that Luisa made, Bill said, “I don’t know that I would say that.” Use of the qualifier “would” expresses conditional mood — indicating speculation about an imagined scenario that has not occurred yet. Bill further distanced himself from making a definitive statement by prefacing his comment with the tentative phrasing “I don’t know that.…” If he disagreed with Lisa, he should have clearly said so.
A prospective home buyer who was examining the bathroom of a house told the real estate agent, “I’m not a big fan of this tile.” The vague wording could have indicated that the buyer was ambivalent about the tile. She might not have chosen it in a store, but as long as it’s already installed, it’s OK. Rather, the buyer disliked the tile — but didn’t clearly say so until the real estate agent pointedly asked her that.
“I’m not a big fan…” is a variant of the older expression “I don’t care for that”— an evasive way of saying “I dislike that.” The expression “I don’t care for” used in that way is inherently vague because the verb “care” has several meanings. It can refer to feeling affection for someone (as in “Lester really cares for her’), desire for something (e.g., “Brenda, would you care for some cream in your coffee?”), disinterest or disdain (“I don’t care about video games”) or lack of importance to someone (“Roy doesn’t care what Todd thinks about that”). When Brenda declined the offer of cream by saying “I don’t care for cream in my coffee,” she really may have meant that she dislikes cream in her coffee. To communicate clearly, she should have said so.
When asked about the suitability of a co-worker for an assignment, Jan replied, “I don’t have much faith in Gerald.” Jan’s nebulous statement didn’t explain why, however. Her comment that she “lacks faith in him” could mean that she’s unconvinced that he has the skills needed for the assignment, or she is dubious about his commitment to complete assignments, or even worse, that she distrusts him. Unless Jan makes a more explicit statement, her reason for rejecting him remains unclear.
Commenting about a parent who attacked a student wrestler at a high school wrestling match, a school administrator told a reporter, “We do not condone his actions.” That’s a weak, guarded response. The verb “condone” means “pardon,” “overlook” or “regard as acceptable.” That’s not nearly as emphatic as saying that the school board denounces such behavior as unacceptable.
An article about psychology and morality declared, “A third of Americans told Gallup that they don’t believe in premarital sex.” Regardless of whether those poll participants believe it, premarital sexual relations do occur. The statement that “they don’t believe in” premarital sex is another feeble negation. More likely, they oppose or object to or disapprove of premarital sex. The sentence should have said so.
In a report on the economic impact of internet-based criminal activity, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported, “Evidence suggests that the U.S. loses hundreds of billions [of dollars] to cybercrime.” Notice that the agency didn’t definitively say the nation’s toll of cybercrime is in the hundreds of billions of dollars; rather, that is what evidence suggests. For reasons that the agency did not make clear, it injected the hedge word “suggests” — nothing more than a flashing neon “maybe.” Use of the word “suggests” relegates the report to the realm of conjecture.
People use equivocating language to tiptoe their way through statements, to avoid making bold declarations. But the timidity of such wording often is glaring, and self-defeating. Recurrent use of weasel words erodes confidence. Use them with caution.
The scholarly distinctions of food scientist John C. Bruhn are well documented. During an academic career that spanned nearly four decades, Bruhn was a University of California Cooperative Extension specialist and director of the UC Davis Dairy Research and Information Center, through which he oversaw educational programs for the dairy foods industry and conducted research. Beginning in 1969, he published his findings in more than 140 reports and scholarly journal articles. But while his academic life has been well chronicled, little had been written about his personal life, and his childhood experiences that ushered him toward a career in dairy food science.
Inspired by the memoirs that his wife, Christine, produced with the assistance of EditPros' Book Prep service, John Bruhn set about writing his autobiography, which he titled The Journey: A Memoir. The resultant charming narrative recounts his early childhood years in a Cleveland suburb, in the rural Ohio community of Willoughby and in the Euclid neighborhood, when he discovered how to make colorful creations by melting crayons on the home's heating radiators, and when he operated his Lionel model trains in an attic that overlooked Lake Erie. He recalled his family taking a "farm vacation" on a family farm in West Virginia, giving him his first exposure to agrarian practices. In 1954, when John was in junior high school, he and his family relocated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which at that time had not yet become a "spring break" destination. His school had been converted from a shuttered U.S. Naval air station that had been erected during World War II.
As John progressed to high school, he learned to play the trombone and joined the marching band, which issued wool uniforms to the band members, despite the steamy tropical climate. John's growing interest in nutrition and food production prompted him to enroll at Michigan State University, where he majored in food science, a discipline that he pursued in graduate school beginning in 1962 at UC Davis. That is where he would meet his future wife, fellow graduate student Christine Mattson. Both became faculty members at UC Davis and built their lives together in the Northern California college town, as John's autobiography, The Journey: A Memoir, recounts. The book is illustrated with selected color and grayscale photographs.
Bruhn is intentionally restricting distribution of the 108-page printed book, making it accessible only to colleagues, family members and friends, an option available with Book Prep. This is the 32nd book that Book Prep has produced for authors during the past four years.
As part of the Book Prep package, EditPros professionally formatted the interior pages of The Journey: A Memoir, designed its cover, and readied it for print publication.
For other authors who wanted to sell their books commercially, EditPros not only prepared print editions but also formatted manuscripts into e-book formats for sale through Amazon (Kindle), Apple (iBooks), Barnes & Noble (Nook), and Kobo, by means of submission to IngramSpark’s e-book service.
With Book Prep, authors retain all rights to their books, and collect 100 percent of sales royalties.
LEARN MORE about the EditPros Book Prep service.
Roland C. wrote:
I just noticed an article referring to “the experiences of Hispanic women business executives.” In news reports and government announcements, I consistently see references to “women athletes,” “women physicians” and “women scholars.” The word “women” is a noun. Shouldn’t those instances use the adjective “female” instead?
The grammar coach replies:
From a technical standpoint, you’re correct, Roland. Even though a noun can function as an adjective that modifies another noun (as the noun “hair” does in “hair color”), adjectival use of the noun “woman” or “women” is questionable because of the existence of the adjective “female.”
The counterparts “man,” “men” and “male” illustrate why. References to “men business executives,” “men athletes,” “men physicians” and “men scholars” would sound odd; the phrasing “male business executives” appears more natural.
Likewise, use of the adjective “female” as a noun would raise an eyebrow in many instances. Saying, for example, that three females founded a company — rather than three women founded a company — sounds clinical, even dehumanizing.
Opinion is divided, though. The Associated Press Stylebook “woman, women” entry says, “Use female as an adjective, not woman,” with this example: “She is the first female governor of North Carolina.”
Despite the traditional grammatical distinction, however, the noun “woman” has gained some acceptance for use adjectivally.
The Chicago Manual of Style, for example, contains a “sex-specific labels as adjectives” entry that says, “When gender is relevant, it’s acceptable to use the noun woman as a modifier (woman judge). In recent decades, woman has been rapidly replacing lady in such constructions. The adjective female is also often used unobjectionably. In isolated contexts it may strike some readers as being dismissive or derogatory (perhaps because it’s a biological term used for animals as well as humans), but when parallel references to both sexes are required, the adjectives male and female are typically the most serviceable choices (the police force has 834 male and 635 female officers).
But a skeptic might wonder, “If history scholars study history, what do women scholars study?”
Webster’s New World College Dictionary accepts the use of “woman” as an adjective, while the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, the Macmillan Dictionary, the Collins Dictionary and the Cambridge Dictionary (both U.S. and U.K. versions) do not. We at EditPros avoid use of “woman” as an adjective, rephrasing where possible. For your first example, we would have written “the experiences of Hispanic women who are business executives.”
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