Why I'm fussy about language...

[milktree]

It bugs me to read the writing of people who confuse its, and it's, their and there, bring and take, lay and lie; it rubs me the wrong way when people improperly use the subjunctive ("If I would have known", or "If you would have been there", &c.) and it's frustrating to discuss anything to do with time with people who don't understand the difference between "had" and "have" and "was". They're different tenses, and they mean distinctly different things. When I hear "me" and "I", or "he" and "him" (she and her) used nearly interchangeably it's one of those clues that I can't really trust what the person is *actually* saying, I have to figure out what they probably mean, because it's not what they're saying. (Yes, I know it should be "he", but I've given up that battle.) I immediately think someone has no idea what they're talking about when they add extra words - ones they clearly don't know what they mean - to sentences, because they think it makes them sound smart.

This:

http://www.theweeklymeat.com/the_weekly_meat/2008/07/doublespeak.html

has a good summary of why I think it's important to use the right words, tenses, cases, &c.

From the article:

In his great essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell argues convincingly that sloppy language allows us to have foolish thoughts.

That about sums it up.


How did I come to this today? Someone on a mailing list attributed "doublespeak" to George Carlin. "No no.." I thought, "George Orwell." But it wasn't either. It doesn't appear anywhere in 1984. It was coined sometime in the 50's out of "newspeak", "oldspeak", and "doublethink", which do.