A VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS
By Rich Trzupek
A Few Words on Words
Words are wonderful tools, but they are terribly misunderstood, especially when they are of the written variety. They�re an enemy to many people, even well-spoken people, who stare at their keyboard when forced to write a report or a letter, barely concealing their animosity. Rather than seeing the infinite possibilities in the way all of those letters can be arranged, they see 26 fiends instead, mocking them from beneath their fingers.
In some ways it�s understandable. Nobody wants to sound stupid and even less people would want to create a permanent record of it.
Ah, but did you see what I did right there (quite purposefully)? That sentence made no logical sense. If �nobody� wants to sound stupid, how can �even less people� want to document it? You can�t have negative people, unless you�re an Islamofacist terrorist, lecturing on the proper role of women, but that�s a matter for another column.
You get the point, and perhaps you got a (small) chuckle as well, even though a precise examination reveals that the statement made no sense. From a broader perspective, it made all of the sense in the world; it communicated something to you, which is kind of the idea, don�t you think?
That leads us back on topic. The reason people are frequently intimidated by words is because they often believe that words have to be precise. Not so. Words are about communicating ideas, a matter best left to your own unique form of expression. In other words, stop worrying so much about saying everything the right way�just say it already. Leave rules and precision for exercises that demand such virtues, like building bridges or figuring out 1040s.
And yes, there are times when words must be precise. Attorneys spend years in school having every last ounce of creativity beaten out of them, so that they can express themselves precisely, even though nobody can understand what the hell they�re saying. Yet, as long as we rely on courts and contracts, this is a necessary evil.
Those involved in the science suffer from much the same malady, although often with much less justification. It�s one thing if an architect is designing a building or a doctor is describing her research methods. It�s quite another when they need to communicate the flavor, not the facts, to the rest of us who haven�t had the benefit of their training.
As a chemist, I am disgusted by the quality of communication (or more properly, lack of quality) exhibited by 92.7 percent of my fellow scientists. Their ability to transfer data and hypotheses across a multi-disciplinary spectrum fails to meet minimal, generally accepted requirements. Or, in English: they communicate for crap.
A small example involves an old boss in the day job (and I collect old bosses like J-Lo collects pre-nuptial agreements). While he was a brilliant engineer, his ideas about using language illustrate everything that goes wrong when science collides with semantics.
Consider, for example, his use of the word �data.�
Data, as you are probably aware, refers to a set of facts and/or figures. A set, of facts or figures (or anything), is singular, although it is comprised of many (plural) elements. Because the set is singular, in common usage we say �data is,� not �data are.�
It�s a similar to other sets composed of individual elements, like �the United Nations.� We say �the United Nations includes (singular treatment) many sovereign states that would like the United States to each poo.� We don�t say �the United Nations include (plural treatment) many sovereign nations that would like the United States to eat poo.� Not unless we want to sound like a moron.
Being an engineer, old boss demanded�under penalty of having one�s report covered with angry crimson scribbles on Post-It notes�that all of his charges say �data are�, for he discovered that data is the Latin plural for the Latin word datum. Not only did he not know that a set is a singular, he didn�t get the memo that Latin is a dead language.
But old boss is a scientist, looking for precision in all things, even if it makes him sound retarded. By extension, his logic would demand that he construct a sentence like �the data show that the source is in compliance with applicable standards,� which would, no doubt, be most amusing to anyone who received such a report.
The point here, dear reader, is that you should not look at communication, in any form, as a thinly disguised intelligence test. Some of the smartest people in the world are some of the worst communicators in the world.
Communication is a skill all of its own. It�s not about precision, it�s about poetry, or something very like it. Many of us are capable of creating poetry in prose that speaks to thousands, even millions, just by using our own voice. It�s like music. If you find a melody that touches the soul, nobody cares if it�s form will pass muster with a professor at Julliard.
Find your voice people, and believe in it. Don�t fear that you will be judged �merely common.� Where communication is concerned, commonality is the ultimate compliment.