Oh hai - I can has cats in my blog. Read plz!

Lawyers have it, doctors have it, “gangstas” have it, and yep, so do Creative Communications staff and students.

I’m talking about jargon, slang, speak, or any special words or expressions used by a certain group of people that makes sense to them, but is difficult for others outside the group to understand.

If you get accepted into the wonderful world of Creative Communications, or CreComm, you’ll soon pick up on a slew of terms and phrases known only to those special enough to be a part of the “CreComm mafia” – like “streeter”, “auto fail”, “live hit derby”, and “IPP”.

But probably the biggest group of people with their own language are those who text or use the Internet. Both can be convenient, time-savers, and entertaining, especially when used tongue in cheek.

LOLCATS thrives on combining Internet speak with user-submitted cat photos.

But the problem comes when people ignore the usual confines of a particular jargon or “speak” and use it where is it neither appropriate, nor a place where everyone can decipher the code.

In my last post, I mentioned that some people think this less-than-proper use of English is a sign that the language is “evolving”, not “dumbing down”. I beg to differ: when you take jargon and grammatical habits from one environment and use them across the board, it’s just plain inconsiderate.

Over the past few years, for instance, there have been reports from educators of students using text speak and other short hand in formal papers. How about this for an example?:

"My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." Translation here.

Sound extreme? In some schools, it’s becoming so pervasive that New Zealand had to explicitly remind students not to do it, while in the Scotland, other teachers are bowing down to the pressure.

But enough picking on the students. Here’s a news release I used in an assignment for my editing course where we re-wrote bad headlines. (Click to enlarge photo.)

After some serious searching on Google, I think the normal person’s translation should read something like this: “Nortel makes fastest cell phone call with new high speed tech”.

In CreComm (Creative Communications for you other people!) we’re constantly told to think of our audience and the context in which the message will be received, then communicate appropriately. After all, what’s more important than your audience? Whether it’s a professor, a customer, the media, etc., they’re the ones you’re trying to please, so why not speak properly.

To apostrophe, or not to apostrophe:

It shouldn’t be a question, but some grammar unenthusiasts out there are trying to make it a legal one.

Last Thursday, Lindor Reynolds’ column in the Winnipeg Free Press attacked the misuse of apostrophes, and the backlash (as to be expected) was swift.

In the letters to the editor the following Saturday, a picture of the sign in front of St. Paul’s Square (note the unoffending apostrophe) was printed along with this caption:

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“A sign in Birmingham, England, reflects a recent decision to ban apostrophes in street signs because they are considered confusing, old-fashioned and interfere with GPS systems.”

Interesting, I thought. Confusing? Only to those who’ve yet to master grammar. Old-fashioned? So is most of the English language – doesn’t mean we should ban it. Interferes with GPS? (note for the editors: putting ‘system’ after GPS is unnecessary. GPS means global positioning system.)

That last point stopped me. Maybe the Birmingham city council did have a valid argument after all.

Not so, a spokesperson for TomTom, a satellite navigation equipment manufacturer quoted by CBS News said:

If someone preferred to use a street name – with or without an apostrophe – punctuation wouldn't be an issue. By the time the first few letters of the street were entered, a list of matching choices would pop up and the user would choose the destination.

In other words, not only is the GPS excuse wrong, but if this so-called interference did – hypothetically – occur, it would be because of user error, ie. someone misusing the apostrophe in the name they’re trying to search.

The justification I’ve come across the most in researching this story is that this isn’t a cop out, it’s not our education system dumbing down, it’s the English language evolving. There’s a euphemism if I ever saw one.

However you want to say it, it all comes back to the human in the equation who doesn’t understand grammar. And that’s okay: grammar is a challenge – but that’s not a reason to give up.

Pick up a grammar book; go online; or take a class with Chris Petty – and get cracking.

P.S. For the record, our province isn’t immune to dropping apostrophes either: Birds Hill (named after Dr. Curtis Bird) should be Bird’s Hill.

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Editor= omnipotent?

How much say should an editor have in correcting another person’s work?

That’s the question I’ve been mulling over for the past week which, ironically, was triggered by my work in the Canadian literature course I’m taking this spring (and not the Editing Print and Online Media course I’m also taking, for which this blog is an assignment).

This course has us analysing text written pre-1914 – many of them pre-Canada – and I’ve been introduced to the shocking amounts of liberties editors and publishers back then took with early Canadian explorers’ journals.

Take, for example, Paul Kane: an artist who spent three years travelling what is now Western Canada to capture the lives of the Aboriginals peoples in the area through a series of paintings, sketches, and careful note taking.

Artist he was; wordsmith he was not. Much of the editor’s work seems to have been putting Kane’s scribblings into actual words, sentences, and paragraphs, but where it gets interesting is that his editor/publisher also took consideration to transform Kane from the uneducated, wild, adventure-man that he was into a prim and proper European gentleman.

Kane’s original text (in all its grammatical glory) about his first buffalo sighting reads as follows:

“I saw a band of about 40 cows and they hunters in full chase they ware they first Buffalo I had ever seene I was not long in turning my horses hed in the derection of thy chase after running about 3 miles I came nere up to a cow my hors became afrade after beating for about 2 Miles more I came close enuff for a shot when I found I had no ball I fired shot but without afect.”

Compare that with the published version, and it’s obvious that not only does Kane become a true gent, but in doing so, the course of events change entirely:

“Next day I was gratified with the sight of a band of about forty buffalo cows in the distance, and our hunters in full chase; they were the first I had seen, but were too far off for me to join in the sport.”

Unlike the real Kane, who in his excitement chases after the buffalo only to discover he didn’t load his gun, the published version of Kane never goes near the buffalo at all. Ian MacLaren, the scholar who studies these discrepancies notes that “this droll event is edited out of the book: presumably, no sportsman worthy of the name would have been so careless” (Creating Travel Literature, 90).

Kane's Assiniboine Chasing Buffalo (courtesy of Google Images)

As MacLaren elaborates further, editors and publishers at the time were very conscious of their readers and what their expectations were. Many of them believed in the four-stages theory which put Europeans like themselves at the highest point of civilization and “primitive” indigenous cultures at the lowest.

Because of this, editors worked hard to both elevate the civilized, gentleman-like qualities of the explorers whose work they were editing, and exaggerate (in some cases, fabricate) the uncivilized, barbaric behaviour of the native peoples these explorers encountered (like cannibalism, which MacLaren also discusses).

It doesn’t seem fair, but then again, they were doing exactly what editors (and students taking editing courses) are being told today: make corrections to the text that are appropriate for the target audience.

But when have they crossed the line? Is there a line, or does it fluctuate depending on the editor and the context? How much power can or should an editor wield over your written word?