Screen shot of Sky News story on 10 March 2010

Do you, as I did, look at the image first then let your eye travel up to the headline? How many people don’t look at the headline? You could easily think this chap is Jon Venables – when the entire point of the article is to say he isn’t.

Words are important but visually they’re not as strong as a photo or image on the page.

It’s an obvious choice to put these two photos together but it doesn’t tell the user what the story is. In fact, it actually leads the user to an assumption that is completely wrong.

I think I would have kept the two images apart and had the image of David Calvert first, then further down the page had the image of Jon Venables. Would you place them differently? I’d be interested to think if you think I’m being over-sensitive or I’m right to be on my high horse on this one.

Bob writes regularly for Hospital Doctor online on communication and time management and by special request he’s writing a series of blogs for the Crocstar website on the English language. Take it away Bob…

Did you know the game of football was played at Eton School before 1750? Ten years later they were playing similar games at Westminster, Charterhouse and Harrow. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that most of the rules we understand today came into operation. Crucially, while all this developing and changing was going on, schools couldn’t play each other because they didn’t have a common set of rules. For example, Rugby and Marlborough used hands and feet whereas Winchester and Shrewsbury allowed ‘dribbling’.

So it is with language. We know language develops and changes all the time but, hey, we still need a recognisable structure and a set of rules otherwise some of us will keep putting our feet into our mouths while others will be ‘drivelling’. Let’s agree that grammar rules are not a bad thing dreamed up by teachers to bore us. There is a fashion these days to decry grammar and ‘correct’ usage. It cuts across the grain of our freedom to do anything we want. As we see with the football example, you can do your own thing if you want but it limits you in the end.

The next question is ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ or, to paraphrase who is in charge of protecting the language and its structure, if not our teachers? It’s down to all of us to try to use it in ways that help us understand and be understood. Now there’s a revolutionary idea. That, I think, is its greatest protection. You can change it, maul it to pieces and create all the secret little exclusive languages you like but if fewer and fewer people understand you, you’ll have shot yourself in the foot – to use yet another footballing analogy.

So what linguistic misdemeanors are annoying me this week? How about tautology – the pointless use of words or phrases that say the same thing, e.g, ‘Let’s re-do that again once more’. It’s tiring having to read or listen to it. And it’s not just people who didn’t study grammar who come out with it.

How about this, heard last December from someone described as an expert on the Afghan situation on radio: “…this governing council, the composition of which is made up of different elements…” Uhm, why don’t you try ‘composed of different elements’? It saves six of your ten words and doesn’t make you sound inexpert (or stupid).

And here’s a little gem from a politics lecturer at St. John’s Oxford in a Radio 5 interview earlier this month: “Let’s not overblow that too much.” You don’t have to be a fascist to detest poor language skills. You just need to love language and dislike people pretending to be clever while demonstrating that their thought processes don’t quite match up to their self-publicity. It’s like lying on your CV; good people don’t do it.

Now before I escalate this matter upwards I’m just going to return back to where we were in the first place before this happened…

There’s this recent news story about job losses at British retailer, Marks and Spencer. Take a look at the different ways this story has been told in the British media – and pay special attention to the words used in the headlines:

Sky News: “Over 1,000 To Go In M&S Job Cull”

(Heartless M&S – ‘culling’ their staff, like a herd of poor defenceless lambs or baby deer)

The Sun: “M&S To Slash 1200 Jobs”

(Evil M&S slashes jobs, like it is slashing the throats of the loyal workers who have given it their lives)

The Independent: “M&S to cut 1,230 jobs and close 27 stores”

(Poor M&S – underperforming in business, and having to lose staff and stores)

See what difference a few words makes. This is what the newspapers trade on, of course – they can spin the news to say whatever they want, however, they want to say it.

Recently I’ve been hearing of more and more people telling me they don’t read newspapers and they don’t watch the news on TV – they still know what is going on, but they’re rejecting the way they are told. Perhaps it’s up to us to start telling the story more objectively.

Easier said than done, of course, moderate language rarely makes for exciting headlines (and when the truth is – as always – fairly moderate, it’s less exciting to write and less exciting to read). It’s worth remembering these things when you read – or write – the news. Words can kill (or cull, or slash), so use them responsibly.

This post was originally published by Helia on Mon, 01/12/2009