What is easy is seldom excellent

The true saying "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure" is usually attributed to Samuel Johnson. 

Well, most things like this seem to be attributed to Johnson, Churchill, Einstein or Twain.

Quote Investigator is a wonderful website for people who are suspicious of loose attributions. They think Samuel Johnson did use a similar expression ('What is easy is seldom excellent') but there are many precedents.

I could have done with them when we started the Simplification Centre. I collected quotes on simplification, including 'Einstein's' saying 'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler'. I assumed he probably hadn't said it but couldn't find any evidence either way. 

It turns out this attribution is a pretty good one, although it is a summary of something Einstein said. Quote Investigator concludes:

'...Einstein may have crafted this aphorism, but there is no direct evidence in his writings. He did express a similar idea in a lecture but not concisely. [Composer] Roger Sessions was a key figure in the propagation of the saying. In fact, he may have crafted it when he attempted to paraphrase an idea imparted by Einstein.'

Good morning? No, good night.

It's 2 seconds after midnight, and Sky News has just wished me Good Morning. That's just wrong. It's only morning in the Land of Pedants. For the rest of us it's still evening.

Don't ask me exactly when morning begins – I just know that it's after I've gone to bed. And dawn might also be involved. Or perhaps at 2am – the time they choose for changing the clocks when summer time starts or ends.

I recently learned that in Japan they extend the 24 hour clock when, for example, giving times for train journeys that end after midnight. So a train might depart City A at 22.30 and arrive in City B at 25.30.

Handy hint when using the toilet

Sign above the urinal in the Gents at Liskeard station. 

Apostrophie's

Aaaaaaargh! No! No! No! Please don't tell the Apostrophe Society about this sign in the Charing Cross Hospital.

Thanks to Sallie Morris for sending me this.

The inevitable typo

Some words are so confusable you can sense the typo around the corner before you get to it.

So it is with a leaflet from a neighbour who is raising funds for the Britain Nepal Otology Service. This worthy organisation sends medical teams to Nepal to treat ear problems. They don't treat people who are unsure whether they exist: that's the Britain Nepal Ontology Service mentioned on page 2.

I wonder if there is a Britain Tibet Ontology Service.

Marital status a la census

Gay marriage is called civil partnership in the UK, I believe as a compromise to respect religious sensitivities. But, as the 2011 census form shows, it seems we haven't yet evolved words for when it ends.

Whatever the status of the word 'marriage' can we not just stretch the meaning of the words 'divorced' and 'widowed', for goodness sake? Particularly 'widowed'.

Plain English - does it translate?

The European Union is making a welcome effort to introduce plain language principles, and last year produced a plain language guide, How to write clearly. A recent newsletter 'Languages and translation' refers to the rise of not just English but 'bad English as the Commission’s lingua franca'. It asked a number of translators to reflect on how they adapted the guide to various different EU languages.

We know that the rules of plain English don't directly translate into other languages – for example, English has many expressions for which there are latin and anglo-saxon alternatives - the latter are seen as plainer ('get' instead of 'receive'), but the equivalent vocabulary choice is not an issue in other languages. And we can use noun clusters in a way that just doesn't work in French, so our sentences can often be shorter.

But I found myself wondering if some of the translators' comments were actually about real grammatical differences between languages, or whether they didn't hint at an earlier stage of plain language evolution in those cultures.

It was very noticeable that the recommendation, common in plain English, to use the active voice, met with resistance:

"A chapter on the use of the passive voice was modified as the use of the passive voice in Latvian is not always a bad choice."

"Hint 8 (‘Prefer active verbs to passive’) could well be valid for conversational Lithuanian, but not for legal texts. In fact, the passive often takes precedence over the active here, especially when there is an inanimate subject."

"The over-use of the passive voice may be more of a problem in English than in Portuguese, as the latter favours the impersonal active."

But Plain English also involves the introduction of a more conversational style into legal texts, and met with similar objections many years ago. The point about active sentences is that they specify the doer, and so someone has to take responsibility for an action. Passive sentences avoid commitment. I wonder if that's not the same in Latvian, Lithuanian and Portuguese.

And again:

"The most difficult bit to get around had to do with addressing the reader directly. The English guide suggested using the personal pronoun ‘you’ more often in documents — something which is certainly to be avoided in formal Portuguese. Direct address is acceptable in advertising or in direct information to the public, but in other areas it may be wiser to use impersonal constructions."

Plain English, too, is nearer to an advertising style than was once acceptable. Isn't plain Portuguese also bound to appear less formal than is traditional in official documents?

I'd love to be corrected by someone who knows what they're talking about.

News just in: Quavers now one calory more

Judy Delin's eagle eye spotted this odd couple in the uni cafeteria the other day. The sell-by dates are different, showing that the higher number is the newer.

I know it's a stretch, but could we think it ironic that this supposedly low calory snack now carries a picture of the bingo ball traditionally known as 'two fat ladies'.

Not very politically correct, that term, as the Daily Mail (who else?) pointed out in one of their regular 'PC gone mad' stories last year.

"A council which has banned the bingo phrases ‘two fat ladies’ and ‘legs eleven’ in case players are offended and take legal action was criticised for being politically correct yesterday.

Sudbury Town Council in Suffolk fears it could be sued by overweight players or women who find the terms sexist.

It has advised bingo caller John Sayers, 75, to revert to using the number ‘88’ instead of ‘two fat ladies’ and 11 for ‘legs eleven’."

In defence of Powerpoint

I recently became slightly embroiled in a debate about Powerpoint, when it came under fire [insert own pun about bullets] on the infodesign café list - best known critic is Edward Tufte, of course. Thought I might share my contribution here:

"In defence of Powerpoint, perhaps the contrarian view in this list...

• on one hand, there's nothing more deadly than someone reading off a load of bullet points, word for word
• but on the other hand something like this doesn't catch on unless it fills a need, and we should hesitate before assuming people are lazy or worse for using it
• it's not always displacing a longer reasoned argument (which takes hours to write). More often it's the alternative to a spontaneous, unscripted verbal performance, which goes unrecorded, can easily go wrong, and which not everyone is confident enough to attempt.
• I've found Powerpoint particularly useful when speaking to people whose first language is not my own, and for following presentations in another language, when I have only a school-level reading knowledge of it..
• it's also good for people who weren't at the meeting... when I've given presentations without slides, or with purely visual ones used as punctuation or as talking points, I end up producing bullet point versions to distribute later.
• is there some contradiction between the view that Powerpoint "fundamentally devalues reasoning and logic in an argument, and replaces it with mere summation and statement" and the idea that "one good image, or one good graph with important statistics, is much more persuasive"? [quote from another debater in the list]
• Powerpoint is easily mocked with the Gettysburg address or Churchill's speeches in bullet point form, but oratory uses similar techniques to make itself easily grasped and memorable: rhythm, alliteration, etc. 

I think seven bullets is enough... "

The declining public apostrophe: evidence mounts

Thanks to Andrew Belsey for this addition to the collection. I'm guessing which one of these Cambridge street signs is the newest - looks like apostrophes are going out of fashion.

On another matter, Andrew is fond of Polish peanut-themed chocolate snacks, and noticed this nice proof-reading before-and-after pair (clue: look at the foot of the image).

The grocers/grocer's/grocers' apostrophe

At my public lecture the other day, a questioner raised the matter of the grocer's apostrophe - that's the apostrophe's in potato's, apple's and carrot's.

I said I wasn't particularly bothered as long as I get my potato's.

I was pleased to see support for my position on the BBC programme QI last week, where Stephen Fry said: "People have been ridiculing what has become known as the grocer's apostrophe since the eighteenth century. The Oxford Companion to the English Language notes that there was never a golden age in which the rules for the use of the possessive apostrophe in English were clear cut, and known, understood and followed by most educated people - never."

Have a look at this nice 'apostrophes for Africa' sketch with Omid Djalili playing the part of Lynne Truss, and Marcus Brigstocke on the grammar bullies on Room 101.