Writing

Choosing your usage battles

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Words have specific meanings. Words change. These are both true.

If people start using a word in a way that doesn’t match its established meanings, how should you react? You can say it’s wrong, but eventually it could become so well-established that fighting it is senseless. Sometimes people need a word for a new concept and appropriate an existing one because it’s a good analogy. When vehicles pushed through the air by motors were developed, they needed a name, and people called them “airships” even though they aren’t ships in the usual sense. Before the end of the 19th century, “spaceship” was coined by a similar process.

At the other end, words sometimes get new meanings for stupid or dishonest reasons. For instance, people of certain political persuasions call anyone they disagree with a “fascist,” without reference to the word’s actual, historical meaning. That’s just a smear tactic, and anyone who values precise communication should reject it. “Grooming” is another example of a word that should have a definite meaning but has turned into an undefined smear.
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303 Creative LLC: A win for free expression from SCOTUS 2

This entry was posted in Writing as business and tagged Internet law liberty on by

The first article I came across on the Supreme Court’s 303 Creative LLC decision was an outright lie, claiming the Court had ruled businesses can now refuse service to same-sex couples. Creating panic is what a lot of news sites do best, and lots of people on social media are helping to spread the misinformation. What it actually ruled was this:

The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado
seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance. In the
past, other States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have similarly tested the First Amendment’s boundaries by seeking to compel speech they
thought vital at the time. But abiding the Constitution’s commitment to the freedom of speech means all will encounter ideas that are “misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Colorado cannot deny that promise consistent with the First Amendment.

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More words that don’t mean what people think they mean 1

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged usage vocabulary on by

The other day I was talking with a friend about words that people use in ways that show they don’t understand their meaning. I’ve talked about some before, such as “phobia” and “exponential.” Here are some more.

Inigo Montoya with text: You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.ballistic: A ballistic course is one followed by an object that isn’t under acceleration except by gravity. The laws of physics say it follows a parabola, moving horizontally at a constant rate and being vertically affected by a constant force (assuming it doesn’t go so high that gravity significantly weakens). Someone who “goes ballistic” is enraged and suddenly follows a different course. A truly ballistic person would coast along and follow a smooth course, eventually coming back down to earth.

quantum: Quantum effects occur at a sub-microscopic scale. A quantum leap, properly, is the smallest change a particle or system can undergo, yet people use “quantum leap” to mean a huge, sudden change.
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Smashwords adding Kobo Plus

This entry was posted in Publishing Writing as business and tagged DRM kobo smashwords on by

The ebook publishing site Smashwords is adding Kobo Plus to its options for self-publishing authors. Smashwords already has Kobo as one of its publishing channels. The difference is that regular Kobo lets people buy books individually, while Kobo Plus is a subscription service letting users view as many books as they want.

Smashwords’ emailed notice says:
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Penguin Random House announces unbowdlerized Dahl books

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Penguin Random House, which holds the publishing rights to Roald Dahl’s books, had replaced Dahl’s texts with bowdlerized versions. They wanted to “make the books suitable for modern readers,” who evidently have reverted to the Victorian era. They discovered, though, that a lot of people today aren’t “modern readers” and can stand to read what an author actually wrote. As a result, Random Penguin has announced it will issue editions with the original text along with the sanitized versions.Stack of Roald Dahl books. Source: Wikimedia

Perhaps I should mention I’m not a fan of Dahl as a person. His reaction to Khomeini’s murder contract on Salman Rushdie was “This kind of sensationalism does indeed get an indifferent book on the top of the best-seller list — but to my mind it is a cheap way of doing so.” He characterized himself as antisemitic and said, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity.” The portrayal of the Oompa Loompas is creepy, no matter how movie makers dress it up. For that matter, the punishments inflicted on the “bad” children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are rather horrible. They didn’t do anything that bad!
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CBP grabs Nigerian science fiction author

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Mike Glyer reports on File 770:

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki was reportedly detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection authorities at the Los Angeles Airport on February 23. LA author Woody Dismukes has been asking people to signal boost this message:

 
Thursday afternoon @naacpimageaward nominee @Penprince_ was detained by @CBPLosAngeles at @flyLAXairport . He has not been heard from in 48 hours and we are concerned for his safety. Please share this message widely so we can ensure his safe release.

— Woody Dismukes (@WoodyDismukes) February 25, 2023

 
Jason Sanford noted on Twitter: “Ekpeki has a valid visa and was on his way to a high-profile award ceremony where the Africa Risen anthology was being honored.”

As of my writing this, there are several comments expressing concern, but none of them have any information about what his current situation might be.

Update: A new post says he was reportedly sent back to Nigeria, probably for exceeding his visa limits. We don’t have to like this, but at least he isn’t locked away somewhere.

“The right side of history” 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged language usage writing on by

Once again, let’s look at an expression which is loaded with meaning that most people don’t think about. Some writers use it without thinking, others because they’re promoting their particular philosophy. The expression is “being on the right side of history.” If you don’t support a certain cause, you supposedly aren’t on the right side of history.

What does that mean, though, and why do you want to be on that side? It’s an idea that comes from the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and its two bastard children, Marxism and Fascism. This idea, called historicism, holds that history inexorably follows a certain path. Your only choice is to go with the tide or against it.

If you put the phrase into your writing without thinking about it, you could be lending support to historicism without knowing it.
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On book-burning 1

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Very recently I came upon a discussion in a Reddit atheist forum in which people talked about what to do with Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms. Suggestions included throwing them in a dumpster, defacing them, and using them as toilet paper. A minority objected, but the dominant sentiment was that it’s fine to do those things. The book-burning mentality is distressingly common in America. A few years ago there was a book-burning campaign against J. K. Rowling, different only in its motivation from many other burnings of Rowling’s works.

Burning books is a confession of intellectual bankruptcy. The burner is saying, in effect, “I can’t answer what this book says, so I’ll destroy it before people can read it.” It has been a favorite tactic of authoritarians for centuries. In The Magic Battery, Gottesmann burns Frieda’s book in public because he can’t bear the thought of people reading it. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice featured a cop grabbing someone from behind and a man throwing books into a fire on its seal. The Nazis publicly burned books by the thousands. It’s a distressingly common phenomenon in modern society as well.
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Redefining “equity” 1

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged usage vocabulary writing on by

In a previous post, I quoted a statement by Hamline president Fayneese Miller referring to “a purported stand-off between academic freedom and equity.” This got me thinking about the way some have tried to change the meaning of the word “equity.” It’s hard to tell what Miller meant, since she’s the only one doing the purporting. Others, though, have tried to shift the meaning of “equity” from its traditional one.

The Merriam-Webster definition of “equity” gives several technical meanings in law and finance, as well as “justice according to natural law or right; specifically: freedom from bias or favoritism.” Equity means applying the same standards to everyone; it rejects, for example, laws giving special privileges to the nobility or denying rights to people on the basis of their appearance, sex, or religion.
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