In my previous post, I talked about the Plain Writing Act passed by Congress in 2010. I often conduct writing workshops for government employees who are all for clear, direct, timesaving writing. “Down with gobbledygook and jargon,” they’ll say. “We want clarity and simplicity.”

But when I ask them to do some writing, what I get are sentences like “The fluid supply in my writing implement is exhausted.” (Translation: “My pen is out of ink.”) And when I insist on simple sentences, the room resounds with protests, arguments, and yelps of pain.

Why are fancy words and tangled sentences so popular? There’s a reason, and it’s embedded in the history of England.

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The British Isles have been invaded again and again. With each conquest, the victorious army brought its own language, such as Latin (under the Roman invasion), and French (during the Norman Conquest). Workers soon discovered that the best jobs went to the people who were willing to learn the conquerors’ language.

That’s why – more than a thousand years later – words derived from Latin and French sound elegant and sophisticated to us. Attorneys talk about juvenile offenders (derived from French and Latin) rather than young people who break the law (English). A physician will say, “She’s experiencing respiratory distress” (French and Latin) rather than “She’s having a hard time breathing” (English).

The problems are obvious. Picture frantic parents trying to find a doctor for their sick child. They stand in front of a sign that says “Pediatrics Department.” Wouldn’t it be more helpful to have a sign that says “Children’s Health”? (The word pediatrics, incidentally, goes back to a time when most wealthy Britons studied Greek in school.)

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Now I want to return to the topic of resistance – readers and listeners fighting back when we try to win them over to an idea. In my previous post I suggested a way to overcome that resistance: drill down into an idea to uncover its complexity.

It’s a strategy I’ve used in my own Plain Language workshops. Here’s how it works:

If you ask most people the purpose of language, the likely answer is “communication.” Simple enough!

But when you think more deeply about language, you realize that that speech and writing have many other uses. We often – especially in the workplace – use language as a badge, a test, and a gatekeeper.

Think about these four situations. What purposes does language serve in each one? Is it just communication – or something else as well?

1. A physician is telling a worried mother how to help her son get well.
2. An engineer is interviewing for a research position.
3. An exclusive country club is hosting a meet-and-greet event for prospective new members.
4. Two scholars are exchanging small talk at a wine-and-cheese reception.

Here are my answers. (Let me hasten to assure you that yours may be different!)

1. A physician is telling a worried mother how to help her son get well. I would call this pure communication. The physician doesn’t need to prove anything; she just wants to help the boy recover from his illness.
2. An engineer is interviewing for a research position. The interviewers may be using language to test the engineer’s knowledge. Does he understand engineering vocabulary? Is he familiar with new terms that other engineers are talking about?
3. An exclusive country club is hosting a meet-and-greet event for prospective new members. In this situation, language might serve as a gatekeeper. The screening committee might be watching for language habits that don’t match the ideal candidates they’re looking for. The committee might also use sophisticated terms for jewelry, investments, boats, and automobiles to make unsuitable candidates feel uncomfortable and decide to withdraw their applications.
4. Two scholars are exchanging small talk at a wine-and-cheese reception. Here language is likely to serve as a badge. The scholars can instantly tell that they have similar backgrounds and interests. All is well! A bond develops between them.

The point here isn’t whether my answers are right or wrong. When I use this activity at a workshop, I’m encouraging participants to think about language in a more complicated way. Words can have hidden agendas.

Let’s go back to that physician in the first example. She doesn’t need to use language as a badge: “Trust me, I’m a doctor!” But many physicians really do display that language badge with every patient. It never occurs to them that ordinary language would serve them better.

I’m going to give one more example that came up at the Shaw conference I attended last week (where I had a marvelous time, incidentally!). We had a lively debate about the word “Shavian” (an adjective describing the works and thinking of Bernard Shaw).

Tim Carroll, director of the Shaw Festival where our group met, has taken the word “Shavian” off the Festival’s website. He feels that it sometimes functions as a gatekeeper or a test. On the other hand, some members of our group felt that “Shavian” is a useful badge. And still others think it’s an effective communications tool and nothing more.

I’m not going to take a stand on this. My big point today is that something that seems quite simple and obvious can have hidden layers of meaning and complexity – solid gold for successful writers!

Earlier this month I edited three sentences from a wonderful short story by William Trevor. I invited visitors to this blog to offer feedback and edits of their own. One particularly impressive response came from my friend Margaret Swanson. I asked Margaret to write a guest post about the story, and I’m very pleased that she agreed:

A Good Muse is Hard to Find
R.I.P. William Trevor                                                       by Margaret Swanson

The Piano Teacher’s Pupil was found on William Trevor’s desk after his death in 2016. It’s his “swan song,” his final work of art, and can be seen as a review of his life through the eyes of Miss Elizabeth Nightingale, the piano teacher. Trevor probably considered it finished.  As the story’s last line says, “it is enough.”

The title has a double meaning: pupil=student and pupil=the eye. The minimal action is confined to the room where “all of her life, she often thought,” had been. We are inside Nightingale’s head. With the arrival of her new pupil, she starts to view things from a new perspective. She reassesses her relationships – with her father, her lover, her student. Her contemplation is triggered by the “genius” of her flawed new pupil, “the boy.”

When the boy plays for her the first time, she is stunned, managing only a gentle, innocuous critique. She sizes him up, slowly, thoroughly: “His dark hair, not too short, was in a fringe….” The sentence is awkward, slowing us down in sync with her thoughts. She goes on for a paragraph appraising him. He waits, smiling. He knows she’s impressed. And he knows he’s going to steal from her, as he has from previous teachers. No doubt they praised his prowess, but didn’t value it enough to put up with him. When she later discovers his theft, Nightingale agonizes, but decides to overlook it.  She leads him to the front door after each lesson, her back turned, while he slips something into his bag.

At last she has a worthy pupil. Nightingale sits, surrounded by her lifetime of treasures, inventoried as she sips her sherry on the April evening after the boy’s lesson. “Daffodils in vases were on the sofa table and on the corner shelf near the door.” It goes without saying that they’re beautiful, just as it goes without saying that the boy’s playing is inspired. Nightingale decides “She would say nothing to the mother if the mother telephoned to ask how the boy was getting on.” Repeating “the mother” emphasizes Nightingale’s contempt for the “foolish” woman who “rattled on.” The “if” shows doubt that she will even ask. The mother is also a bird, a long-beaked one, feeding her young on the emblem – ugly in Nightingale’s opinion – repeated on the boy’s school uniform.

Is Nightingale a muse? In poetry, nightingales represent art, beauty, creativity, yearning, and sometimes the Muses, the Greek goddesses of the arts. Nightingales sing their sweetest where the Muses buried Orpheus. In psychological terms, the muse is the female, creative part of the mind. Nightingale’s beauty is deepening even in her fifties. She’s unmarried, like the Muses; their “children” are artists, like Orpheus. Nightingale was the inspiration for her father’s chocolates; she evoked her lover’s passion; she motivates the boy. She never teaches or praises him. The only way “the boy” (Trevor?) knows she approves of his work is that she doesn’t throw him out for stealing. As an artist, he has to settle for that.

The boy’s thefts cause Nightingale to doubt her prior relationships and question whether she has deluded herself. She muses: Did her father use her? Did her lover deceive her? Has she been gullible? (Is Trevor also the unnamed father and lover?) In the years after the boy’s lessons end, time “quieted her unease.” She becomes again content with her memories, but something still nags.

When the boy returns to play for her, she sees that the mystery of life’s pleasures is all that counts. She can’t bemoan the price paid or question origins. How beauty comes via a rough, coarse, ungainly adolescent thief cannot be fathomed. “The mystery there was in the music was in his smile when he finished, while he sat waiting for her approval.”

She is silent. Her appreciation of his art was a “secret… to be taken for granted between them, not to be gone on about.” William Trevor ‘gets it;’ hence the story. “There was a balance struck.” But he’s never satisfied with his work. At heart he’s still the ungainly adolescent craving praise from his muse.

Margaret Swanson says she had fun getting her bachelor’s degree in English Literature. Now, retired from community planning, she can spend all the time she wants reading.

One of my ballroom teachers is at risk for osteoporosis. During her last physical, her doctor told her to walk for 30 minutes every day to strengthen her bones.

She patiently reminded him that she was a dance instructor who was already doing the equivalent of many hours of walking every day.

“But you need weight-bearing exercise to protect your bones,” he said. “Make sure you get in that 30 minutes of walking.”

She found another doctor – one who made a practice of thinking rather than just disseminating medical advice by rote.

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Success in any field – including writing – requires thinking skills. Alas, many ambitious writers don’t bother to evaluate the advice they’ve picked up over the years. My husband once had an editor who believed that because was a bad word. Every time because crept into one of his columns, she made him change it.

Obviously there’s nothing wrong with because: you see it in print all the time. So what was that editor’s problem?

We’ll never know, but I think I can reconstruct what happened. She probably had a teacher who warned the class – quite properly – that because can be a confusing word. Consider this sentence:

Don’t make friends with Carole because of the people she knows.

That sentence can be read two ways. Carole hangs around with a bad crowd, so you should avoid her. OR Carole hangs around with some desirable people, but that’s not a sufficient reason to make friends with her: something else is wrong.

Here’s another one:

It’s a mistake to take that supplement because it’s reported to have a high concentration of phylidicoids.

Should you avoid phylidicoids because they’re harmful? (Incidentally, I made that term up.) Or are phylidicoids wonderful substances that might fool you into buying a worthless supplement?

That doesn’t mean because is a bad word! You just have to word your sentences carefully. In the sentences below, it’s easier to figure out the meaning:

 Because Carole hangs around with a bad crowd, you should avoid making friends with her.

Because Carole knows some important people, you might not notice how toxic she is.

Because that supplement has a high concentration of phylidicoids, I don’t recommend it.

Even though it’s rich in phylidicoids, you shouldn’t take that supplement.

Did you notice that I didn’t use because in the last sentence? After several tries, I gave up: it just gummed up the sentence. But that doesn’t mean because is always a bad word! (Sigh.)

Let’s try one more example. This time I’m going to talk about a word that you really should avoid most of the time: affect. Why? Because (ha!) it’s ambiguous. Try this sentence:

The decision he made that morning affected his chance at the scholarship.

Was he more or less likely to win the scholarship? You can’t tell.

I used to circle affect and affected whenever they appeared on students’ essays. I would patiently explain why they were bad word choices and insist on a revision. Use harm, or weaken, or improve, or strengthen – something definite! Please! And here’s what I would get:

The decision he made that morning changed his chance at the scholarship.

Think! Think! That’s all I’m asking you to do!