of. Your reader, rightly or not, will still blame the Government for the lack of a bus shelter, whether you use the clear or the foggy expression. So why head into the fog? (See Fog Index, page 75)
and, although it seems likely that the Capital Budget for shelter provision will be enhanced in the forthcoming Financial Year . . . The reader is less interested in what the bus shelter fund is called than what it will do for him, and when. So ditch the Capital Budget. And since a shelter is a shelter, provision is yet another unneeded word.
enhanced, in this context, means increased; there seems to be no reason to evade the more commonly-used word.
it is axiomatic that . . . Your dictionary will tell you that an axiom is a self-evident statement, a universally accepted principle established by experience; axiomatic here is presumably meant to convey self-evidently true. If something is that obvious, the official is wasting paper and his correspondent’s time in saying it.
residual requests in respect of prospective shelter sites identified as having priority, notably those named in earlier programmes of shelter erection . . . Thrusting the dissecting knife into the middle of this lot, we are left with shelter requests not met by earlier building programmes to which we add will take precedence in any future shelter programme. There’s not a lot to argue about here, for once – apart, perhaps, from the repetition of shelter programme.
The deskbound, wordbound Frankenstein who created our monster may be saddened, even angry, at the way we have slimmed down his offspring. But at least he – and more importantly, his correspondent – can now discover what he really meant to say.
Missives such as our bus shelter letter don’t have to be long to lose their way. Here’s a paragraph from an insurance policy, hunted down by the Plain English Campaign:
The due observance and fulfillment of the terms so far as they relate to anything to be done or complied with by the Insured and the truth of the statements and answers in the Proposal shall be conditions precendent to any liability of the Company to make any payment under this Policy.
Follow? Perhaps after five minute’s concentration you might feel that you have fully understood it. The Campaign’s recommended version would no doubt leave the insurance company gasping for words:
We will only make a payment under this policy if:
you have kept to the terms of the policy; and
the statements and answers in your Proposal are true.
Almost all officialese can be analysed, dissected and rendered into clear and readily understood English but some is so dense as to resist the sharpest and most probing of scalpel blades. Here’s an example, quoted by the Daily Telegraph, that consigns itself forever in the limbo of lost understanding:
ANY lump sum paid in accordance with Provision 7 of the Second Schedule shall be an amount equal to the Basic Nominal Fund that would be applied to calculate the Alternative Annuity under Provision 5 or Provision 12 of the Second Schedule on the assumption that the Annuitant had elected under Provision 4 of the Second Schedule that the date of his death was the Alternative Vesting Date or if greater an amount equal to the premiums received by the Society.
This is the sort of verbal hurdle that is still likely to confront average citizens at any time. Are we really expected to understand this guff? Or are we expected to hire a specialist or consultant to help us? Yet none of the sorry examples quoted here need have happened, if only the writers had held this conversation with themselves:
Q and A can save the day
| Q | What’s it all about? |
| A | It’s about when somebody is classed as disabled/the special duty of a landlord in a Housing Action Area/someone wanting a bus shelter built. |
| Q | What do we want to say? |
| A | We want to say that someone who can’t walk unaided is officially disabled; that a Housing Action Area landlord has to warn the council when there’s about to be a tenancy available; that we can’t afford the requested bus shelter just now. |
| Q | Very well. So why don’t we just SAY it! |
There is no excuse for obscurity. The English language, with its lexicon of nearly half a million words, is there to help any writer express any thought that comes into his or her head – even the virtually inexpressible. If we can’t manage this, we should give up and leave it to others. Or admit our faults and learn how to do better.
The long, long trail a-winding: Circumlocution
Bournemouth was on Monday night thrown into a state of most unusual gloom and sorrow by the sad news that the Rev A M Bennett – who for the last 34 years has had charge of St Peter’s Church and parish, and who has exercised so wonderful an influence in the district – had breathed his last, and that the voice which only about a week previously had been listened to by a huge congregation at St Peter’s was now hushed in the stillness of death . . .
Lymington Chronicle, January 22, 1880
When a writer or speaker fills you with the urge to shout ‘Get on with it!’, he or she is probably committing the sin of circumlocution – roundabout speech or writing, or using a lot of words when a few will do. In most of today’s newspapers the prose above would be a collector’s item.
Politicians, of course, are notable circumlocutionists; perhaps it’s an instinct to confuse, to prevent them from being pinned down. A few years ago a British political leader went on television to explain his attitude to the introduction of a single currency for all countries in the European Community.
Before you continue reading, you should probably find a comfortable seat . . .
No, I would not be signing up: I would have been making, and would be making now, a very strong case for real economic convergence, not the very limited version which the Conservatives are offering, so we understand, of convergence mainly of inflation rates, important though that is, but of convergence across a range of indicators – base rates, deficits and, of course, unemployemt – together with a number of indexes of what the real performance of economics are . . .
(Perhaps a brief tea-break would be in order here.)
. . . the reason I do that and the reason why that is an argument that must be won before there is any significant achievement of union is not only a British reason, although it is very important to us, it is a European Community reason: if we were to move towards an accomplished form of union over a very rapid timetable without this convergence taking place it would result in a two-speed Europe, even to a greater extent than now – fast and slow, rich and poor – and the fragmentation of the Community, which is the very opposite of what those people who most articulate the view in favour of integration and union really want; when I put that argument to my colleagues in, for instance, the Federation of Socialist Parties, many of whom form the governments in the EC, there is a real understanding and agreement with that point of view . . .
So
