Number 1
This is the first of my new weekly newsletter, Parvum Opus, about language – tips, peeves, ruminations. It will be brief, and, I hope, amusing as well as informative.
In the last couple of years I’ve run across the word “actionable” in business writing and in a nonprofit magazine, used to mean something like “to be acted on,” as in: “We create actionable plans for our clients.” “Actionable” means “liable to a lawsuit.” In other words, if you devise an actionable plan for your clients, you’re setting them up to be sued. You could look it up: This is the ONLY meaning of “actionable.” This word coinage, or, to be more precise, meaning coinage, is not merely needless, it’s disastrous. In the first place, if you have a plan, it is (or should be) redundant to say it is to be acted on. In the second place, everyone who knows the meaning of “actionable” – especially, but not only, your clients’ lawyers – will think that you are at best illiterate and at worst dangerous. Even if “actionable” becomes the hottest new buzzword by the sheer weight of ubiquity, it will always convey something negative, something that you don’t want your readers to associate with you.
General principles we may derive from this abusage* are: Don’t make assumptions about words: look them up in the dictionary. Stick to what you know -- stick to plain English; don’t think you have to get tricky. If your ideas and your business are solid, you don’t have to tart them up.
*Notice I made up a word, “abusage,” to rhyme with “usage.” It’s a very small joke, but its meaning is simple and clear.
Copyright Rhonda Keith 2002. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but it is permissible to forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.
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