LITTLE ROCK — It’s always best to start one of these things with a snappy quote. Here’s one from the famous philosophers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb. Yeah, the Bee Gees.
“It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away.”
Newswriters are like the Bee Gees, in that all they really have are words to interest, inform and-sometimes-captivate our readers. (We also sing falsetto, but let’s save that for another time.)
The newspaper has more tools-photos, graphics and now videos-but the basic mensch reporter or columnist must convey the news in black print on white paper.
In other words, words.
English has plenty of words. No shortage of words. Always, the task is to use the right word at the right place in a news story, while carefully avoiding what the great linguist Paula LaRocque used to call journalese.
That is, the trite, often silly and mostly awkward language found only in journalism.
My own definition of journalese is: Language you would never use to impress a pretty girl at a cocktail party. She would think you weird, fellas, and drift away.
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Are there some examples of journalese? Thanks for asking. Please, don’t use this language at home. Or anywhere else.
Beleaguered.
Really, now, who would actually utter this word in coherent conversation? No one. But newswriters employ it as a synonym for screwed, shafted or totally hosed.
A wire-service report from Europe described Greece as beleaguered, right after describing in careful detail the nation’s sovereign debt and its unfortunate consequences, including shrinkage in its economy and rioting in the streets of Athens.
Gee, thanks for the adjective. We’d never have known things were so bad.
Clash.
Did someone mention rioting? How about fighting? Nope, in the streets of Athens, police clashed with rioters.
Slash.
No sense using a sensible word like reduce, especially when writing about the so-called fiscal cliff, when we can evoke pirates and sabers with a good ol’ slashing of the deficit.
Hail.
As in praise. Or to support, or say nice things.
Go home and tell your wife this: “Darling, the boss hailed my work today.” Listen carefully for the response. Or the perplexed silence.
Now consider the possibilities. Here’s a sentence that no doubt will emanate soon from Washington: “President Barack Obama hailed an agreement to slash the federal deficit and avoid a further clash with Congress.” Girding for battle.
Really, this was in our newspaper recently, even though the practice went out with the Philistines. Pardon me while I go get my gird on.
Probe.
Journalese for investigation. Perfectly acceptable in headlines, where space is at a premium, but stinky in the body of a story. Also a medical term with many unpleasant meanings.
Inappropriate.
Not so much journalese as political euphemism. It’s employed when people are too squeamish to tell the truth.
Often the truth is wrong, criminal, insubordinate, thieving, adulterous or creepy.
Enough of this. Better to light a candle than curse the dimness. I now present to you, ladies and gentlemen, a word seldom used. Anywhere. But which appeared recently in this newspaper.
Absquatulated. Past tense of absquatulate (duh), meaning to leave abruptly.
Consider this thing now absquatulated.
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Frank Fellone is the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s deputy editor.
Editorial, Pages 11 on 12/03/2012