July 7th, 2005
I just got back from a business trip to the US. I didn't fly this time; it was close enough to drive. So I did. One thing that I noticed one evening while walking around the neighborhood of my hotel looking for a place to eat dinner was a delivery truck for some sort of mattresses with the following large loud lettering plastered on the side:
NO HYPE !!!
Well, that's a great paradoxical statement. It violates in form what it is communicating in content. That is, the form contradicts its content. It hypes the fact that there is no hype. And thus the paradox is born, since obviously there is hype ... even if it is just the fact that there is no hype.
Well, whatever. It made me chuckle, because it reminded me of something else that's been around for a long time: "Eschew obfuscation."
Or, for simpler vocabularies: "STOP SHOUTING!"
Which triggered a further memory of something I saw at the bottom of a menu at least once (and occurring back in the days when folks could smoke inside restaurants): "Patrons are kindly asked to refrain from smoking pipes and cigars." This one bothered me, because although I am sure they meant that the act of refraining from smoking such smelly things was a kindly act, what they actually said was that the request not to smoke was a kindly request. Well, that's really up to the person being requested—isn't it?—not the person requesting it? In fact, it's kind of rude to presume that you are being kindly, isn't it?
This is just sloppy language, I'm sure; and these days that's hardly surprising.
My dad used to have two little metal plaques that hung over our fireplace: "We grow too soon old, and too late smart." (Amen!) and the other one said: "Throw Papa down the stairs his hat." It really appealed to my dad's sense of comical wordplay. He loves puns and strange rhymes, onomatopoeic expressions, odd turns of phrase, etc. And when he hears one, he delights in repeating it to everyone who will listen.
(I lie: He is happy to repeat it to people who won't listen, too.)
I know I have inherited his sense of fun that one can have with words—short stories, this blog, or alliterative personal ads ... the evidence is overwhelming: I am a word nerd.
But ours is less and less a literate society. For good or bad (or, most likely, for a little of both) we are becoming imagistic and visual people. We'll never lose our written language—just as we never lost our ability to speak and listen in the oral tradition, but our ability to produce well-written language is definitely waning.
And for people like me that's kind of a shame; it means that we have a skill which, although becoming rarer and rarer, is also becoming less and less valued. Too late smart, indeed.
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