Use the right word, not its cousin

 

Last week, I seem to have struck a well of outrage among readers over the way some writers have been using words and phrases without paying much attention to their meaning.

Although I did it quite in passing because the main thrust of my article had everything to do with the peccadilloes of the political class, it came as a surprise that I was not alone in decrying the quite irritating misuse of language.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I wish to continue on that train of thought this week, though I am not sure anything will come of it – some linguistic bad habits are too embedded in our minds to be anything but addictions.

To start, let me pay homage to three of my readers who pointed out other linguistic misadventures that litter newspaper pages, podiums and pulpits, easily misleading innocent readers and listeners.

 One of them is Dr John Wahome of Laikipia University who accused a prominent personality (name withheld) of habitually misusing the phrase “cannot be able to” in his speeches, which the don insists is a tautology – an expression that says the same thing twice, not for emphasis, but due to slovenliness. It would be much easier to say, “I can’t” or “I am unable”, but perhaps it sounds much grander to use redundancy as a linguistic ploy.

 Corruption

 Another reader, Mr Heho Mbiru, is understandably annoyed about the use of the word “whooping” – an out-of-control yell or a dangerous cough -- instead of “whopping”, which is a synonym for “massive”, or “colossal”. An example is when a reporter writes that a certain county has “lost a whooping Sh15 billion due to corruption”. The sentence is utterly meaningless, but many readers who are by now inured to such terms may not even notice it, though some will probably whoop in consternation at such wanton wastefulness.

 Yet a third exhorts newspaper reporters to use the correct words as reliable tools of their trade. “Your input,” Fr Joseph Ngure of Kilgoris says, “promises to push younger writers to do better in the use of language, and thus our reading will be less painful in the future.” Indeed, painful is the word. Grating on the nerves is another expression meaning the same thing. Allow me to clarify something here. I am fully aware that the perfect use of a foreign language is neither a measure of academic excellence nor intelligence.

 Sounding foolish

 There are some awesome brains out there that belong to people who cannot comfortably ask for a cup of water in the language without sounding foolish, yet they are geniuses in their areas of competence.

 Others will use high-blown language merely to impress but end up confusing their listeners. University lecturers are especially prone to such conceits.

 The same thing with writing; some windbags who are fond of using five words when one will do to convey the same meaning are a trial to the spirit, for one has to strive to decipher what they mean. When in your writing you induce such boredom, who will read you to the end?

In the meantime, here are a few gems I have collected from our newspapers in the last one week. The list is by no means exhaustive, but since I am still a member of this honourable profession, I will name neither the abusers nor the medium.

 I would rather go for the sub-editors who let such things pass, but maybe not. For the longest time I have been there and done that and I should know how such mistakes occur.

Recently, while doing a crime story, the reporter copied a police report verbatim, always a dangerous thing to do. “The officer came out of his house while armed with his Scorpion riffle (sic) and managed to fatally shoot two of them dead,” the copy read.

 This was a report about an off-duty policeman who interrupted a robbery at a shop in Likoni. What struck me immediately was not that the suspects got their just deserts, but that they were fatally shot dead.

 In another publication, a reader is shocked by the possibility of schoolchildren being electrocuted: “On rainy days,” he writes, “a transformer near the school produces sparks which is a safety concern for young kids.” First of all, the word “kid” applies to the young of a goat and is banned in our newspapers, and secondly, a transformer near a school producing sparks cannot merely be a “safety concern” for children; they are in mortal danger.

 As the great Mark Twain wrote in his scorching criticism of his contemporary novelist Fenimore Cooper’s writing skills, one of the rules of great writing is that you should always “use the right word, not its second cousin”.

 Many commentators are often guilty of such offences, while others, in pursuit of excellence, have been accused of showing off while they are, in fact, looking for the word that will convey their exact meaning -- what they call in the French “le mot juste”.

It is not easy, believe me.   BY DAILY NATION