THINGS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, VOL. 8
(LANGUAGE ARTS EDITION)

• People who weaken their writing by using feel instead of think or believe. Yes, your dictionary and thesaurus list feel, think, and believe as synonyms. But these three words carry different shades of meaning. Look at the following example:

  I feel Jack Jackson is the best candidate for county dogcatcher.

  This sentence is weak because the verb feel can also mean to experience an emotion (or feeling), as in "I feel ashamed when you touch me there, Uncle Earl." So the sentence above implies that you made your decision about the county dogcatcher election not through considered thought, but because you find Jack Jackson handsome, or because of the burning in your loins when Jack Jackson smiles at you, or because of some similar flight of fancy. Compare to these examples:

  I think Jack Jackson is the best candidate for county dogcatcher.
  
  I believe Jack Jackson is the best candidate for county dogcatcher.

  The first example suggests that you have thought about the county dogcatcher election and have selected Jack Jackson based on the facts and the candidates' stances on the issues, like Jackson's dynamic five-point plan to reduce stray dog rates by 50%. The second example suggests that Jack Jackson's suitability for county dogcatcher has reached, in your mind, the status of a belief, which carries more weight than a feeling. Both examples gained strength by replacing the word feel.
  
  
• Coordinated use of the adjectives cold and hard to denote gritty reality, as in:

  Suddenly the cold, hard reality of Sally's murder struck him, and he collapsed sobbing on the bed.
  
  The cold, hard fact is that Jack Jackson's plan will increase the stray dog rate by 20%.

  Yuck, right? "Cold, hard" is a cliché, so don't use it. Go put on your beret and your black turtleneck and think of something original.
  
  
• Using 1000's in place of thousands, as in:

  M@ke E_Z $*$*$*$ in you're $par3 tim3!!!!! M@ke 1000's!!!!!

  Just because you're a spammer doesn't mean you can't respect the language.
  
  
• Ralph Wiley, the worst sportswriter in America. I defy anyone to read all the way through one of this man's articles without struggling to understand his cluttered prose, or wincing at his clumsy wisecracks, or frowning at his affected street slang. Consider this lead to one of his articles:

  Twenty-five years ago, when I was around 12 (wink) and a tyro on the Giants/A's beats, one of my fellow "journalists" wrote an article speculating (hoping?) "like the California condor," African-American players might soon be gone from big-league baseball (parenthetically, I felt he meant "good riddance").

  That single-sentence paragraph contains three parenthetical clauses, three phrases enclosed in quotes, one bad joke, and the word "parenthetically" enclosed in parentheses. I had to read it four times and look up "tyro" before I could move on to the next paragraph. How much better is the Kilgore Trout version?

  Twenty-five years ago, when I was a novice baseball writer, a fellow journalist wrote an article speculating that, "like the California condor," black players might soon disappear from big-league baseball. I feared he meant "good riddance."

  When Wiley writes clearly, he's even worse. Consider this idiotic and paranoid passage, from later in the same article:

  It is usually the American-born blacks' records and place that are resented instead of celebrated. For example, it's the stolen base that is denigrated as a weapon by baseball sabermaticians like Bill James, at precisely the time when a Rickey Henderson steals 130 bases in a season. There are sour grapes when a baseball man uses stats to tell you a stolen base isn't important.

  So Bill James is really a racist in statistician's clothing? You don't want to start down that path, Ralph. Bill James will be more than happy to hand you a stack of printouts and a calculator and explain, in brain-cramping detail, why the stolen base has historically been used ineffectively. Not to mention that sabermetric analyses (including those of Bill James) have consistently rated Rickey Henderson as one of the greatest baseball players in the history of the game. (For a fuller critique, see Rob Neyer's devastating response to Ralph Wiley.)
  
  To catalogue exhaustively Ralph Wiley's sins against the English language would require that I buy extra bandwidth, so I'll just refer you to his archive. But I cry when I read Ralph Wiley's writing, because he is a professional writer. He has published books. The man is a walking argument for strong atheism, because if Ralph Wiley can get paid to produce his awful, tangled prose, there is no God.
  
  
• People who claim to be Bible-reading Christians and then refer to the last book of the New Testament as Revelations. Hey, homo-hater: the book is called Revelation, because it's just one revelation, get it? It's the Revelation to John. I don't see any break in there where John wraps up and then we get bonus revelations to Carl and Harold.
  
  
• Online polls. Last night, the NHL's website had an online poll asking, "Which Western Conference team has looked strongest in the playoffs so far?" Almost thirty percent of the 51,899 respondents wisely chose the Colorado Avalanche, but in second place, with 24.18% of the vote, were the St. Louis Blues. The Blues, at the time, trailed the San Jose Sharks two games to none in their best-of-7 series. (Yes, I know that online polls don't really fit in the Language Arts Edition of Things That Need To Go Away Right Now. But I wanted to get this in while it was still current. By the way, the Blues lost again tonight.)

+posted by Lawrence @ 4/13/2004 10:11:00 PM