Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do!

How often do you think about parts of speech? Not very often, I'd guess. Yet, I've found myself becoming increasingly aware of them recently. More than aware, actually. Approaching mad, even. It's a bit like when you have tinnitus after a loud concert. The ringing in your ears may not be very loud, but the fact that it won't go away can be maddening (especially if you are trying to go to sleep). As you lie in your bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering if you can figure out what note is ringing in your ear, you may not be angry, but you can sure see it from there!

That is how I have been feeling when I hear people trying to turn nouns into verbs and vice-versa. I actually ran across an amusing article from a fellow CU alum that summed up this habit in a wonderful word: Verbicide. The scary part is that she wrote that article almost 12 years ago! Luckily, she also pointed out this classic Calvin and Hobbes comic that gets right to the core of the issue:

Another name for this act of linguistic barbarism is verbing. However, I have recently found that a lot of people around me are going beyond simple verbing, and are over-complicating words with superfluous suffixes. I call this nasty habit "Wordification," because the name sounds as silly as the people who talk this way in public. At this point, you may be wondering what happened to me that could bring on such a wave of criticism (besides that fact that the word "bitter" is in this blog's name). In truth, there is a story to be told here.

I was sitting in a meeting, when one of my colleagues asked a teammate if he could please "notate" a document. This gave me pause.

Did he just say notate? I thought to myself.

This is a perfect example of Wordification. Let's examine it, shall we?

If you were to look up the definition of notate, you would find that it is a transitive verb that is derived from the word notation. The word notation is the noun form of the word note, which is ALSO a transitive verb. You can think of the progression as this:

Talk about taking the scenic route!

In some ways, this is even worse than plain-vanilla verbing, because you are adding complexity to your words without adding any greater meaning. In the end, we are still using a verb to say what we mean, but the verb we have chosen is based on a noun. My colleague could have just as easily said, "Please note that" and we all would have know what he was talking about. Unfortunately, since this usage of noun-derived verbs is so widespread, it is generally accepted my most people (most of whom probably don't read this blog).

As far as I'm concerned, this is like using the heel of your shoe to hammer nails into a wall. Sure, it usually works out in the end, but it just isn't as harmonious as if you would just use a hammer. That is what hammers are made for, after all. So, why do verbs deserve less courtesy than hammers?

As if this meeting was not already unpleasant enough, I was unfortunate enough to hear another wordificated word a few moments later. Of course, it came from the same wordificator as before. Apparently, there were some questions as to how the document should be (gag) "notated." Can you guess what my colleague suggested next?

He said, "Just gradiate it according to the categories."

Wait. What did he just say? Gradiate? GRADIATE?! C'mon, people...

Since this verbing pattern was becoming painfully obvious to me (the other obvious pattern was that my colleague must have not earned very good gradiates in school), I started to wonder: what makes people feel compelled to use verbs that are derived from nouns, which are derived from verbs? Is it simply that the longer word (due to the suffixes that are appended to the noun) sounds more academic? It was around this point in my internal monologue that I realized that the words were not as important as the context in which they were spoken. Or to put it simply, it wasn't what was being said, but rather who was saying it.

I remember a discussion I once had over lunch when I had just started out in my information technology career. My coworkers and I were discussing the plethora of three-letter acronyms (or TLAs, as they're called in "the biz") that we had to learn.

"Who do you think started the trend of using TLAs?" my coworker asked me.

"IBM." I replied.

Just as that quip was funny to me back when I worked in IT, this story seemed funny to me now because I am a consultant. As I thought about the horrible vocabulary being thrown about the room, I realized that I was being subjected to a never-ending stream of Consulting Grammar. Consulting Grammar isn't as widely-known as Consulting English, a dialect of buzz-words and metaphors that few outside of the top-tier consulting firms would bother wasting their time to learn. Consulting Grammar is more subtle, yet it is extremely pervasive. If you were to ask most management consultants what the most overused buzz-word is, the odds are pretty good that you would find the grand-daddy of wordificated words: Leverage.

I absolutely hate this word.

If you were to look up the word "Lever" (a transitive verb) in your old Merriam-Websters, you would see the following definition: to pry, raise, or move with or as if with a lever.

If you were to look up the noun form of "Leverage," you would find a definition that would make Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom proud:

1: the action of a lever or the mechanical advantage gained by it

2: power, effectiveness

3: the use of credit to enhance one's speculative capacity

Yet, in my world it is the verb form of "Leverage" that gets the most use: to provide (as a corporation) or supplement (as money) with leverage; also: to enhance as if by supplying with financial leverage.

This is quite possibly the most far-reaching example of verbing that I see on a regular basis, and it makes my skin crawl every time. I avoid using "leverage" as a verb, and go out of my way to use it as a noun, if only to confuse people and amuse myself. You could say that I enjoy the leverage it gives me...

So, here is my question for you dear readers: do you think that the habit of verbing and wordification is amplified in certain vocations? Do any of you non-consultants out there notice Consulting Grammar creeping into your lexicons? Feel free to comment with your best (worst?) examples. I'll even reserve judgment if you wordificate your phraseology a little...

Have a good week!
-Lee

Shea it aint so!

Many people don't know it, but I grew up in The Long Island suburbs of New York City. I've met lots of people who claim New York as home - some native, others transplants - but oddly, I never seem to really connect with these people. Someone once told me that if you live in New York City, you'll end up never leaving, because no other city can match the energy of New York. Perhaps that is true, and maybe that's why I don't seem to have too much New Yorker in me. I left New York when I was still pretty young; around age 11. Most eleven year olds from the 'burbs don't go into the city to tie one on. At least, not when I was a kid!

To be more precise, I never really left New York, because I never really knew I was from there; at least not from New York City. Growing up in Nassau County wasn't that different from other suburbs. As a kid, my world revolved around school, friends, and my neighborhood on the North Shore. I didn't even realized that my father actually commuted into the city for work until I was 8 or 9!

The city seemed like an exotic place, far removed from my daily grade school concerns. I visited the city with my parents or classmates on a few occasions, but most of my voyages into the boroughs were to catch a plane to Florida that was leaving from JFK or La Guardia.

Most of our family vacations began at La Guardia airport, and I remember passing by Flushing Meadows on the cab rides into Queens. I remember seeing Shea Stadium sitting near the airport toward the end of the cab ride - this was always much more spectacular at night, when the neon player silhouettes were lit up. In many ways, Shea Stadium is one of the few icons of New York that actually had meaning to me growing up. I didn't go to any Mets games as a kid (baseball didn't really interest me), but I still considered myself a Mets fan. You see, when you were a kid growing up near New York, you are either a Mets fan or a Yankees fan - since I had never even seen Yankee Stadium, the choice seemed very logical!

I had plenty of friends who were legitimate Mets fans. They quoted stats and watched games. I'm sure some of them even went to games at Shea. Still, I could never muster the same level of excitement and intrigue that they did.

I understood the basics of the game. I even learned some names of players that were famous at the time: Daryl Strawberry, Mookie Wilson, Lenny Dykstra, Keith Hernandez. I had Mets baseball caps and baseball cards, and a baseball signed by the 1986 World Series Champions. Still, the game itself never really interested me - not then and not now.

I've since become more attached to other stadiums...

Oddly enough, I remember playing baseball (or softball or something similar) in fourth grade, when a friend of mine got tagged out at second base. I remember one of my friends (I think his name was Brendan) running over and shouting at the second baseman. Brendan was a huge baseball fan (Yankees, unfortunately. Nobody's perfect), and I can still remember him shouting, "Tide goes to the runner! Tide goes to the runner!"

This made no sense to me, but I chalked it up as some strange "baseball-ism" and didn't pursue it further. If you are imagining this scene in your mind's eye, perhaps conjuring up images reminiscent of the Little Rascals or The Sandlot, don't linger there too long, because it's time to fast-forward twenty-four years into the future!

You see, this weekend I was reading the book On Writing, by Steven King. I learned something enlightening today, and it didn't have to do with plot, theme or character.

I learned that Brendan had it all wrong! It's TIE goes to the runner, not tide! As in, if the runner touches base at the same time the baseman catches the ball (that would be the tie part), the runner is safe.

Now it all makes sense! Pity it took twenty-four years to clean up that miscommunication.

Hope you all have a happy Presidents Day!

-Lee

A Consultant's Apology

I realize that most of my blog posts here on BG carry a judgmental or pejorative tone. For this, I feel like I owe all of you an apology, since I am only human, and am prone to the same grammatical gaffes as everyone else.

You see, while I may be a hard-hearted, pragmatic grammatical purist by night, by day, I am just another mild-mannered Professional Services consultant. In fact, on most days, I spend a lot of my time meeting with clients and talking out of my ass.
 

Sitting in Time-Out at 24,000 feet, thinking about what I did...



It is really quite easy to be critical of other people's communication challenges. Yet, we consultants (particularly those of the management consulting persuasion) often spend a great deal of time trying to say as much as possible while communicating nothing. Thus, I offer up a mea culpa to you, my grammatically gifted audience.

You may be wondering what would bring on such an outpouring of humility from your friendly neighborhood bitter grammarian. The answer is that I just spent an entire day in client meetings, and as a person who secretly hopes to elevate the art of written and verbal communication, I now feel the need for absolution. Although this post is intended to be spiritually agnostic, I ask you, my beloved readers, to hear my confession:

Today, I began a statement with "at the end of the day..."

I used the phrase "where the rubber meets the road" on at least four separate occasions.

I was too lazy or hurried to properly express my thoughts, and so I used made-up adjectives that simply don't exist in English, such as "flow chart-y."

I described PowerPoint slides using verbs in the passive voice. In fact, I even used several verbs in the passive-aggressive voice!

I used a condescending tone when needlessly spelling out words, such as referring to "the firewall for the capital I Internet," or saying that "we need to figure out the lower case R requirements for the capital R requirements."

I used air quotes. Many of them.

It was a long day, indeed.

I've heard people say that the first step in recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Since I'm only human (although some people with an aversion to consultants may argue that point), I know that I am not perfect. The fact that I can even see the error of my ways should bring me some peace and solace, yet I know that when Monday comes, I will once again have to don my black suit and face the perils of business English!

Writing at work can be more dangerous that you might think. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it can be hard to feel mighty when I am armed only with a pen and eloquent prose, while my illiterate opponents are armed with bullets and sharp sentence fragments.

Oh well. I guess, at the end of the day, I'll just have to focus on my strategic imperatives, and leverage my core competencies to create some added value. ....where the rubber meets the road, of course!

Have a good weekend everyone!

-Lee