The Complete Plain Words: simple versus complex

Golden rule: Simple is better than complex.

If you have an interesting message to deliver there is no need to make it sound any more complex than it actually is.

Why do so many writers prefer pudder to simplicity? Officials are far from being the only offenders. It seems to be a morbid condition contracted in early manhood. Children show no signs of it. Here, for example, is the response of a child of ten to an invitation to write an essay on a bird and a beast:

«The bird that I am going to write about is the owl. The owl cannot see at all by day and at night is as blind as a bat. I do not know much about the owl, so I will go on to the beast which I am going to choose. It is the cow. The cow is a mammal. It has six sides—right, left, an upper and below. At the back it has a tail on which hangs a brush. With this it sends the flies away so that they do not fall into the milk. The head is for the purpose of growing horns and so that the mouth can be somewhere. The horns are to butt with, and the mouth is to moo with. Under the cow hangs the milk. It is arranged for milking. When people milk, the milk comes and there is never an end to the supply. How the cow does it I have not yet realised, but it makes more and more. The cow has a fine sense of smell; one can smell it far away. This is the reason for the fresh air in the country. The man cow is called an ox. It is not a mammal. The cow does not eat much, but what it eats it eats twice, so that it gets enough. When it is hungry it moos, and when it says nothing it is because its inside is all full up with grass.»

The writer had something to say and said it as clearly as he could, and so has unconsciously achieved style. But why do we write, when we are ten, “so that the mouth can be somewhere” and perhaps when we are thirty “in order to ensure that the mouth may be appropriately positioned environmentally”? [From "The Complete Plain Words", Sir Ernest Gowers]

For some strange reason this passage reminds me of “The Catcher in the Rye”. What an interesting remark: “if you have something to say, style is achieved unconsciously“.

Filed under: Linguistics , General, Gowers, The Complete Plain Words

The Complete Plain Words: wordiness

Golden rule: less is better than more.

Here are two versions of a letter sent in reply to a telephone line request. The first version is the original, the second is the one revised by Sir Ernest Gowers.

Version A. I regret however that (1) the Survey Officer who is responsible for the preliminary investigation as to the technical possibility of installing a telephone at the address quoted by the applicant has reported that (2) owing to a shortage of spare wires to the underground cable (a pair of wires leading from the point near your house right back to the local exchange and thus a pair of wires essential for the provision of telephone service for you) is lacking and that therefore (3) it is a technical impossibility to install a telephone for you.

Version B. I am sorry to tell you that (1) we have found (2) that there is no spare pair of wires on the cable that we would have used to connect your house with the exchange. I regret therefore that (3) it is impossible to install a telephone for you. [From "The Complete Plain Words", Sir Ernest Gowers]

At first glance, it may appear that no one in his mind would ever express himself as in Version A, except perhaps the government officials to whom Gowers’ book was addressed back in 1954.

However, Version A is not as far-fetched as it may seem. It is very close to the way in which many native Italians speak and write, notably politicians, poor lecturers, and would-be professors.

Let us have a look at how the two versions differ.

1. Version B (1) has replaced the “Survey Officer”  with a more generic “we have found”. This is correct, as it is absolutely irrelevant for the person requesting the telephone line to know who is actually in charge of carrying out the investigation.
2. It has also removed a piece of information that is most certainly already present in the letter’s subject line and thus is redundant: “as to the technical possibility of installing a telephone at the address quoted by the applicant”.
3. Furthermore, Version B has replaced the tedious explanation in (2) with a more succinct one that does away with the cumbersome brackets. Once again, the abridged version is much clearer.
4. In (3) “technical impossibility” was replaced with “it is impossible to”. We can only speculate on why they used “technical impossibility” in the first place, maybe to suggest that they *did* put some effort in trying to get the job done but that for (technical) reasons beyond their control they were unable to.

The example above is especially instructive for a simultaneous interpreter since it elaborates on the apparently trivial ability of “taking away” that proves invaluable in keeping up with a fast paced speaker while producing coherent, accurate and meaningful sentences.

Here is just one other example, a classic of interpreting taken from the proceedings of a UN conference (Chernov 1994, 146):

Chairman: “And now I give the floor to the distinguished representative of the Republic of Tanzania”

Translated by the interpreter with: “Tanzania”

This example shows just how important context is in eliminating redundancies:

1. “I” – is implied, since the floor is usually given by the chairman
2. “now” – is implied, since the speech is taking place in that moment
3. “give the floor” – is standard conference terminology
4. “to the distinguished” – is just a formal embellishment
5. “representative” - is implied, since all participants at that meeting were representing their countries
6. “of the republic of” – can be omitted as it applies to all countries, with the exception of perhaps a handful of kingdoms.

Filed under: Linguistics , General, Gowers, The Complete Plain Words