Comments on: May I have a word?

By: Serving Justice » Resume killers

Serving Justice » Resume killers — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:57:45 +0000

[...] not sure I agree with all of these, but I don’t feel strongly enough to defend them. I have posted in the past about the word police who seem hell-bent at times to slap us around for use of perfectly acceptable words and [...]

By: Textwrapper

Textwrapper — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:39:25 +0000

It's hard not to hate the use of a word like paradigm, as something worse, like modalities is sure to follow. The goal should be clear and concise communication, not a restricted vocabulary. There are words on the list that should be sent packing, but a neologism like mainstreaming is a natural abbreviation of "bringing into the mainstream," and downstream is a poetic way of describing subsequence.

By: Chris Crawford

Chris Crawford — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:51:53 +0000

I posted a comment on the Secret Scotland blog referenced in this blog and received the following comment in return …

MY COMMENT:
Please forgive the wry observations of a Yank to this silly rise of the word police.

COMMENT BY THE SECRET SCOTLAND AUTHOR:
Consider it not only forgiven, but commended. It’s great, and I suggest anyone reading this far should also follow the link to your observation.

I heartily agree with your own observation, and your won choice of example highlight the very point I was attempting to emphasise.

We do need to put an end to the use of buzzwords (oops, sorry) and contrived language to hide, or obfuscate, otherwise easily understood expressions and meanings, but the list remains deeply flawed, and contains too many perfectly acceptable and plain words.

See their original post and all other comments here:
http://secretscotland.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/local-government-authority-banned-word-list/