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column If the man or woman you've been dreaming of sent you a letter (oh, all right, an e-mail) and said, ‘Give your emotions free reign – come to me, darling!’ would you reply, ‘Excuse me, but it's not reign, it’s rein?’ If he or she wrote, ‘I want to spend the next millenium with you,’ would you write back, ‘Not millenium, millennium? ‘ You would be correct, but you are suffering from Editor’s Eye and will spend the next millennium crowing over misspellings in the privacy of your own home, alone. Doctors can treat cheese washer's lung, housemaid's knee, and athlete's foot, but no one has yet discovered how to interrupt the synapse between the editor's eye and the editor's big mouth (or ready pen). Will there ever be a treatment that will enable the unhappy sufferer to be content to know about grammar and syntax without announcing it to the world, or to anyone who will still listen? (Or listen still – isn't it amazing how testy some people get when you correct them?)
BLOOPER 1, from a promotional letter from the City of Chicago: "To wet your appetite, we've enclosed a guide . . ."
Business schools hijack legalism A focus group I participated in (OK, in which I participated) several months ago was presented with a list of criteria for evaluating a ‘communication cascade’ that was being ‘rolled out’ by my company. One of the criteria was, ‘Is it actionable?’ I was momentarily startled but then realised that it was meant to be positive. This criterion (or this criteria as the leader presented it, but that's another story) could be rephrased as - is it possible to translate this ‘communication goal’ into some sort of (presumably positive) action? No-one raised an eyebrow or blinked an eye. According to Webster’s dictionary, the word actionable has only a single definition - ‘giving cause for legal action.’ But when I asked for a vote at a grammar workshop at the annual conference of the Council of Biology Editors, I found that about one-third of the 80 to 100 attendees were familiar with the new usage. ‘It comes from the business schools,’ one editor said, ‘and you can't fight it.’
BLOOPER 2, from the lips of a Public Affairs manager who no longer works for my company: "We have antidotal evidence . . ."
But who is right? I've been around forever, so the new use of actionable grates on my ears, but the whippersnappers have adopted it with ease. New products are introduced to the world with media blitzes of advertising and free samples. But new words, or new definitions of old words, are insinuated into common usage by carriers who are not afraid to change the language. Such people, it goes without saying, are not purists and do not suffer from Editor's Eye. But are they wrong?
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