We should start addressing MALAPROPISM, another major problem writers need to be mindful of and avoid, to say what they mean and mean what they say. But for the benefit of anyone just embracing this column, we need to check our bearing at this juncture and recap what we have done so far. The column’s declared mandate from inception is to help to enhance lucidity and fluidity in writing. In that connection, we set down the approach in the first edition, namely, to “unpack and discuss the barriers to lucidity and fluidity,” which we assert “is the stuff of effective communication in English.” We started with some teasers to highlight the identified barriers to effective communication in English. Such barriers include: improper punctuation; run-on sentence or fused sentence and comma splice; misused parts of speech; subject-verb disagreement; and malapropism. Others are faulty parallelism; incorrect reporting language; misused articles; wrongly applied prepositions; poor familiarity with phrasal verbs; sundry misusages; misused idioms and standard expressions; uncommunicative use of English; and redundancies. All of them we called little matters that matter.
We flagged redundancies as perhaps the toughest impediment to handle for most writers. It has been observed that writers lapse easily into such solecisms because the many sources are forever lurking handily to haunt the mindless or unsuspecting writer. This is why we have dealt with some of such sources fairly deeply and expansively, tagging them redundancies you should avoid like a plague. Here we are reminding you of tautology or repetition, verbosity, circumlocution, bombasts, prepositional phrases, nominalisation and the use of certain verbs as helping verbs, even when they offer little help and rather complicate constructions, messages and meaning.
Be reminded that we explained redundancy as “a phrase, clause, sentence or text or any word or group of words considered unnecessary – in the sense that it can be removed without detracting the meaning. In other words, such a word or group of words has no function in the construction; it neither adds value nor helps the meaning. Rather, it tends to confuse and waste time and energy, particularly the reader’s. And when clarity is lost, understanding and communication (sharing of meaning) suffer. Moreover, redundancies are the stuff of inelegant writing.”
So, we warned that you have nothing to lose if your writing shuns repetition; you only gain the world of lucidity and fluidity, the fulcrum of effective communication. What is more, you read like a tutored writer, even when your lexical resourcefulness is challenged. This is why you sound more educated when you write, “The turnout at this year’s Olojo Festival was impressive” than when you write, “The turnout of people who came to this year’s Olojo Festival was impressive.” In the latter construction the words “of people who came to” are tautological and verbose, as the idea of people coming to has already been captured in turnout. See the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary’s intervention in this storm in a tea cup. It says turnout is “the number of people who are present at an event,” illustrating thus: “Good weather on polling day should ensure a good turnout.”
We have also, in a past edition, said that it pays to avoid circumlocutions and attendant ailments like verbosity, innuendo, clichés and the like. That was where we showed how to escape talking around and talking in circles – a writing habit that often impedes clarity and intelligibility. It is egregious circumlocution, for example, when you write, “This is not about the demerits of the policy, but the merits.” Why not tell your reader directly that “This is about the merits of the policy”? Coming out directly as in the latter sentence, you have saved your reader a lot of breath and time and thereby enhanced his understanding of your aim, drift and meaning. Leave the habit of speechifying to speech makers. Remember that in similar connections, you have been advised to keep your reader reading, not halting or reading in fits and starts. That is the writer’s unspoken covenant with his or her audience.
In last edition, nominalisation was the issue. We discouraged the predilection for that writing habit and style, because it tends to breed several other pathologies without the writer knowing. Take another look at the example of a heavily nominalised sentence cited in the edition, and decipher what we mean:
“The team made an assessment of allowances and benefits and comparative pay survey and a specific detailed classification of various jobs.”
This sentence stretches unduly, obfuscates and complicates the message, adds avoidable words (particularly prepositions), and drags the reader back and forth trying to divine the writer’s thought and meaning. Must you stress your reader to that extent? Oh no! That’s why we de-nominalised it, making it short, sharp, direct and easy to understand, thus:
“The team assessed allowances and benefits, compared pays and classified jobs.”
Note that we are not outlawing nominalisation, as it is not intrinsically bad. It is even good and unavoidable in many formal, professional and academic papers. What must be avoided is its excessive use, as we have seen that such a predilection can be harmful to good writing.
Next, we will start discussing the barrier called MALAPROPISM. Alongside the discussions, as done so far, we will continue to suggest the techniques and skills required to neutralize the impediments to good writing and effective communication.
- This column is being repeated as a result of headline error last week. The error is regretted.
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