Tag Archives: English

Toward an Inoffensive English Language

The Association Promoting Rational Improvement of Language just revealed its Focus On Offensive Language initiative, and I’m a fan.

Linguists have long asserted that language determines thought. The Association intends to change our language so speakers and writers can’t convey an offensive word or sentence. In time, it would then become impossible to think an offensive thought.

The Association has made progress toward this goal. They’ve persuaded all major publishers of English dictionaries to remove offensive words from their lexica, beginning this year.

Just today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 0401, which calls for starting the process of language improvement early next fiscal year, with full implementation occurring in early April 2025. The prospects for the bill’s passage in the Senate and becoming law look promising.

According to Sue Donim, a spokesperson for the Association Promoting Rational Improvement of Language, “Our new Focus On Offensive Language initiative plans to change present-day English into ‘Inoffensive English.’ We’ll begin by eliminating seven categories of offensive words from the dictionary so such words will fall out of usage.”

  1. Swear words. Eradicating profanity will greatly reduce the chance of offending others.
  2. Mental condition words. Words like insane, cuckoo, fool, and their many synonyms will vanish from dictionaries so they no longer offend.
  3. Gender words. Gender-based pronouns are already on the way out, and this initiative will hasten that. Also marked for elimination are nouns such as man, woman, boy, girl, etc. This will also include all words containing these gender-based words, such as mental and manatee.
  4. Racial words. Any words used to separate people by race will vanish from dictionaries and from common usage. In time, this will include all colors describing human skin hues. That sector of the color wheel will not contain names for those tones.
  5. Sexual words. All words having anything to do with intercourse or reproduction, or sexual orientation, must go, as these often cause offense.
  6. Age words. Since words like codger and whipper-snapper can be offensive, all words relating to human age will be stricken.
  7. Negative words. Words expressing negativity, like hate, detest, abhor, loathe, dislike, despise, disagree, etc. will go away. No longer will English speakers be able to use these to cause offense.

One exception to number 7 will be the word offensive itself. It must be allowed to linger on for a time, if only to mark additional words for eventual deletion from the language. By 2025, offensive, too, will depart the dictionary since that adjective will describe a state of being that no longer exists, or can even be imagined.

Aside from the obvious benefit of weeding offensive words from the language and rendering future English-speakers incapable of thinking offensive thoughts, consider that the dictionary will be smaller and the language easier to learn.

Detractors of this initiative wonder about past texts written in, or translated into, English. They question what will happen when future readers come across quotes like:

  • “I’ve never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.”
  • “Hate cannot drive out hate—only love can do that.”
  • “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
  • “Familiarity breeds contempt.”
  • “Ignorance is bliss.”
  • “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”

To speakers of Inoffensive English, these quotes contain words they won’t understand. So what? Most of us can’t read Chaucer, either.

Further, it will be impossible even to translate these quotes into Inoffensive English. The point is, future English speakers won’t even be capable of thinking the thoughts those quotes convey.

A better world, I say. Bring it on. Kudos to the Association Promoting Rational Improvement of Language and its Focus On Offensive Language initiative. If there’s one writer who wouldn’t dream of offending anyone, it’s—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 1, 2022Permalink

International Pronouns Day

Oh, English. You’re an interesting language, but you’re burdened with some old baggage. Maybe it’s time you changed.

logo for International Pronouns Day

Today is International Pronouns Day (IPD). A day to recognize your acquaintances might choose different pronouns than you expect, and it’s only polite to use the ones they want.

You might meet a stranger who says, “Hi. I’m Jessica and I go by the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him.’ Since Jessica told you that, it would be impolite if you said to someone else, “I just met Jessica, and she…”

The discussion of pronouns interests me as a writer. As English changes, I’d like to keep up with it.

In general, pronouns serve as a naming shorthand, enabling us to refer to a person repeatedly without stating the person’s name each time. In a traditional written story, when a female character is speaking with a male character, the author need only write ‘she said’ or ‘he said’ and the reader can follow the dialogue with ease.

Although English does not divide all nouns into feminine and masculine genders as some other languages do, present-day English does include gender-specific pronouns such as ‘she,’ ‘her,’ ‘he,’ and ‘him.’  Although many people seem happy with that arrangement, some prefer to be thought of as an individual, not as a member of one or the other gender.

At the moment, the English language hasn’t settled on an agreed set of non-gender-specific pronouns for people. ‘It,’ ‘Its,’ and ‘Itself’ seem too dehumanizing. While many candidate pronouns vie for the honor, that leaves us in a period of flux until winners emerge through widespread use.

In the meantime, you may choose your own preferred pronoun, and—according to the promoters of International Pronouns Day—inform your friends and new acquaintances. They, in turn, should respect your wishes.

Still, I find it difficult to change at my age. I grew up in a time when you couldn’t choose your own pronouns. Language and biology chose them for you. I now have enough problems remembering people’s names, and if all my acquaintances chose different pronouns, I’d go around mis-pronouning them all the time.

In my fiction, I stand a chance of abiding by the IPD guidance. I just finished reading a novel where characters introduced themselves by stating their name and preferred pronouns. For my stories set in the world of today or the near future, I could do the same thing. Depending on how appropriate it might be for a given character, I’ll try it.

In the meantime, I wish you a happy International Pronouns Day. Delighted to meet you. I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe (he/him)

October 20, 2021Permalink

Do You Know the Ropes?

For any job, there’s a body of knowledge and a skillset you must acquire before you can do it well. Having that knowledge is called “knowing the ropes,” ever since the time when sailors aboard tall ships had to know which line trimmed which sail.

know the ropesYou want to be a writer? You’ll have to know the ropes of that profession, at least to some extent. Just as a sailing ship’s ropes seem confusing at first and more understandable after time spent studying, so the ‘ropes’ of writing can be learned. Specifically, I want to address those tricky English language rules you learned long ago in grade school and have since forgotten.

Why is it important for you to re-learn those rules? If you send your story to a publishing house, and the editor sees you haven’t mastered the basics of English, it won’t matter how compelling your story is. It’s just not worth the editor’s time, so your story gets rejected. If you self-publish, your lack of knowledge will be out there for readers to see. Your story might be captivating, but readers get tripped up when you demonstrate an ignorance of English. You’ll get bad reviews.

Here are a few of those rules your Language Arts teacher tried to instill:

  • Affect and Effect. Usually, ‘affect’ is a verb meaning influence, while ‘effect’ is a noun meaning result, as in: Adding salt affected the taste, which produced a satisfying effect on her palate.
  • Farther vs. Further. ‘Farther’ refers to linear distance only. ‘Further’ refers to types of extent other than distance, as in: As he watched her run farther in the marathon, his excitement increased further.
  • Its vs. It’s. “It’s” is an exception to the rule about apostrophe-s indicating possession. In this one case, “It’s” is a contraction for ‘it is.’ Use ‘its’ for possession, as in: The dog gnawed its bone.
  • Lie and Lay. This one’s complicated, but in present tense, use ‘lie’ when there’s no direct object, and use ‘lay’ when there is (when you lay an object down). I’ll lay this pillow here, and then you can lie down on it.
  • Punctuation inside or outside quotes. Commas and periods go inside quotation marks; semicolons and colons go outside; exclamation and question marks go inside if part of the quotation, and outside if not.
  • That and Which. ‘That’ introduces restrictive clauses and ‘which’ introduces nonrestrictive clauses as in: The blogpost that elicited the most comments was the one about English rules, which can be confusing. The clause after ‘that’ restricts the sentence’s meaning; the clause after ‘which’ doesn’t.
  • Very Unique.   ‘Unique’ means one of a kind. Therefore nothing can very unique, or quite unique.
  • Was vs. Were. Use ‘was’ for verbs in the indicative mood, where you’re stating something that is or could be true, as in: If I was to go to your place this afternoon, we could watch the game. Use ‘were’ for verbs in the subjunctive mood, where you’re stating opinions, wishes, etc., as in: If you were a player on the team, you’d get me free tickets to every game.

These are just some of the tricky English rules you need to know. I know it seems confusing, and you might be tempted to give up writing. But if the story’s in you and wants to get out, you won’t give up.

You can learn the ropes by any or all of these methods:

  1. Join a critique group, and benefit from the knowledge of other amateur writers
  2. Take an adult English class at a local community college
  3. Use a word processor that highlights grammatical mistakes and poor word choices
  4. As you write, if you’re unsure of the proper usage or phrasing, mark the sentence for later review, and look up the answer on a trusted website.

You don’t have to know all the ropes, but enough so your editor doesn’t gag while reading your manuscript. As for me, I’m no English teacher, I’m just—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 18, 2014Permalink