Pakistan told India on Saturday [12/27/2008] it [Pakistan] did not want war and was committed to fighting terrorism — a move apparently aimed at reducing tensions after Pakistan moved troops toward their shared border.

I’m thankful for the specificity of the last two words there, because so many countries have unshared borders. Maybe the writer thought that the Pakistanis were playing “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon Geography.” Pakistan has a border with Afghanistan, which has a border with HardyOliverandLaurelStan, who starred in Sons of the Desert, which is often misspelled as dessert, which is often served at Thanksgiving, a celebration at which families usually serve turkey, a country that has a city named Isparta, which is the place that first grew organic iPods, which were subsequently made in China, which has a border (likely shared) with India.

Glad we cleared that up.

Quick recap: Kid darts into traffic. Grandfather dashes to the rescue and picks the kid up, when both are hit by a car. The headline:

Child, Grandfather Struck By Car As Witnesses Look On

JohnnyB Struck By Headline As Witness (Me) Reads On: “Isn’t that what witness means?,” JB writes. “‘Witnesses see nothing’ would be contradictory (though it would be what happens in most Cincinnati crimes).” Indeed, witnesses witness. Or give witness. But JB was also raising a larger concern—that of effective writing. The subject line of his email was a snarked “A fine piece of writing.”

JB says, “The fact that there were witnesses doesn’t even have anything to do with the story. I guess the headline writer thought it added drama.” The phrase also adds a bit of misdirection. Doing something in front of witnesses implies not accident but, as JB notes, dramatic intention. Compare “Dog bites man in front of witnesses” and “Man bites dog in front of witnesses,” the former being somewhat natural and the latter being an act of “I don’t care if you think I’m crazy.”

A couple of side notes before I mention what really frustrates me about the headline: First, the story reports, “Michael Benjamin [one of the witnesses] was there when it happened.” Because witnesses witness, being there “when it happened” is implied. Second, the story wastes the opportunity for precision and drama by beginning “A young boy and his grandfather . . . .” Boy implies “young,” but it turns out that the kid was just two. Beginning “A two-year-old boy and his grandfather” would have delivered additionally appropriate gravity to this incident.

Finally, what’s further frustrating about this story is the headlinese style of “Child, Grandfather Struck by Car”—perhaps deleting that bloated, space-hoarding word and to make room for the ever-so-needed nonsensical redundancy of “As Witnesses Look On.” Now there’s concision for you. Except. The cramped-newspaper-style headline introduces a transcript of an audio TV report—and it appears on the web, the realm of infinite space to express thoughts clearly, and in natural English.

But the blood-boil level perked up a bit yesterday when I saw this news story about the unrest in Greece:

Terrified workers in banks along Athens’ central Syntagma Square watched in fear as protesters shattered windows just replaced days ago after being damaged in the worst riots Greece has experienced in decades.

Here I would campaign for Athens’s to indicate that Syntagma Square is located in singular Athens and not a group of communities each named Athen. But there’s little boil factor in that. And I strongly suggest positioning the word just before the concept it truly modifies—”days ago”—but, again, a little blood percolation, but no boil yet. Then there’s “workers in banks.” Were they, say, construction workers who just happened to be in the banks cashing their paychecks? I suspect that they were instead “bank workers”—a clearer, shorter, more direct phrasing. Again, pulse quickened, but the little platelets are still floating around in conditions under 212 degrees.

The vascular steam engine revs up around mid-sentence. Imagine this Write Tight boy’s surprise to learn that “terrified workers” watched “in fear.” Not only can that latter phrase be lopped off, it must be. This description is redundant, as terror is (last I heard) intense fear, but redundancy is the lesser of the two sins the sentence commits. “In fear” doesn’t merely repeat; it deflates. Terrified workers become merely fearful workers in the space of a dozen or so syllables.

So, to reassure my kind friends who checked in on me, the pulse is still there. And so is the re-pulse.

“It seems to me that you need to remind people every now and then that you can’t communicate to people in a language unless you know the grammar and the syntax and, indeed, the punctuation,” the prince told a Georgian Group awards ceremony at The Ritz in London.

The prince quoted above is England’s Prince Charles. Bless his royal-blue heart, his intentions are good, but his attempt to “communicate to people in a language” needs a bit of precision. This flabby sentence should feature all the precision of the Buckingham Palace guard, yet exhibits the wasted motion of fans in an artist-formerly-known-as-Prince (the other one) mosh pit. Let me pick royal nits:

1. The statement is imprecise and, in a sense, not true. You can communicate with grammar, syntax and punctuation lapses. We do it all the time. “I ain’t got none of them cookies no more, they’s gone.” Are you confused about my cookie inventory? Prince Charles meant that you can’t communicate precisely, without distraction, and with authority if you haven’t mastered the big three.
2. The good prince’s declaration not only fails to address but also itself employs another obstacle to communicating to people in a language: squishy and indirect word use. To wit:
   • “It seems to me.” If it didn’t seem to you, why would you even say it? Unnecessary. Besides, the phrasing has a subtle sense that he is at odds with general thinking (”they say one thing, but it seems to me that . . . ”)
   • “you need to.” you must is shorter and more powerful.
   • “remind people every now and then.” remind people occasionally would have been more direct, and more in tune with an audience sitting in the Ritz.
   • “to people.” Who else would you be using grammar, syntax and punctuation to communicate to? The dog? Rover doesn’t care if the command “Rover sit” should feature a comma. And not many inanimate objects can hear you at all, not even the chair in Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said.” Delete “to people.”
   • “in a language.” The phrase’s construction and placement weakens its connection to the language elements about to be listed. See my edit below.
   • “the.” Instead of “the grammar and the syntax,” how about “its grammar and its syntax”? Despite the being a definite article, “the grammar” gives the noun a general, unconnected air. Its clearly ties grammar to language.

My suggested revision isn’t poetry, but it would likely carry far more of the authority and confidence we expect of the man who will be king: “You can’t communicate precisely and credibly without command of the language’s grammar, its syntax and, indeed, its punctuation.”

And then I’ll take it even further: “You can’t communicate precisely without command of grammar, syntax and, indeed, punctuation,” as grammar, syntax and punctuation are components of language and few other things (name one), and, combined with the word communicate, these three words clearly imply language.

In other words, to fight the good fight, write tight.

The Republicans’ attempt to make the case that Barack Obama is hoity-toity and they’re hoi polloi has fallen under the sheer weight of the stunning numbers

That’s Maureen Dowd. Hoi polloi from the Greek literally means “the many.” Hoity-toity, a duplicative (think flimflam, dillydally, etc.) means, to put it informally, “all uppity and stuff.” And Dowd gets them both right.

Hoi polloi is often misused to mean the phrase’s very opposite—”the elite”—likely because of comparison or confusion with the similar-sounding hoity-toity. In an odd way, hoity-toity has experienced a similar reversal, though in the opposite direction. Hoity-toity, meaning “putting on airs” in a mocking sense, results from the verb hoit, which means, roughly, “to act the hoyden”—to be rude and boorish. Which is an accusation that the hoity-toity might be prone to assign to the hoi polloi.

(And if you persnickitors are going to grouse that “the hoi polloi” is redundant, bring it on. I’m ready for you.)

But my main concern is Mr. McCain’s Orwellian twisting of the word eloquence. In 1984, “War Is Peace.” In 2008, eloquence is deception. In two sarcastic instances of “praise” for Mr. Obama’s eloquence, the second of which involved using air quotes to visually make his point, Mr. McCain implied that Mr. Obama was really using language to deceive rather than using language to clearly make his points. Mr. McCain, if you’re going to attack what you wish to convince us is “just words and no more,” use the right words to do it—otherwise you are guilty of your own accusation.

There’s amazing power in that meta-word—a word that describes its own meaning. At one point earlier in the campaign, Mr. McCain disdained the power of the word by attacking Mr. Obama as “just a person of words” (note that Mr. McCain was using, yes, words).

This wordishly wordy attack is, of course, not unique these days. Quoting the words (yes, words!) of James Wood in The New Yorker:

The leathery extremist Phyllis Schlafly had this to say, at the Republican Convention, about Palin: “I like her because she’s a woman who’s worked with her hands, which Barack Obama never did, he was just an élitist who worked with words.”

Yet, a few years back Phyllis Schlafly spoke with me for an hour on her radio show about, um, words. I was a guest, schlepping my book Write Tight wherever I could, and I suppose that one of my stances in Write Tight—against ballooning the language for the purpose of political correctness—had attracted her attention. These years later, why are words now suddenly her enemy, and the current campaigners’ enemy as well?

My grandfather was a farmer. My father was an auto mechanic. My mother was a short-order cook. They worked with their hands (to the point where my grandfather had lost portions of two fingers to farm machinery), and I love and respect them. They, in turn, returned the love and respect even though I (disdain me! hate me!) am an “elitist who worked with words.” And still do.

• Quoted in a news story: “It’s just a very unfortunate tragedy.” Not many tragedies are fortunate.
• In an early part of a news story: “there are two opinions about the untimely death of . . .” If any given death were “timely,” now that would be news.
• Seems I spend too much time commuting (and watching the needle on the gas gauge appear to not descend, but topple, even at 30 miles a gallon highway)—overheard in a radio commercial: “Are you tired of car dealers treating you like a puppet on a string?” Yes! Treat me like a puppet without a string! What does the phrase “on a string” add, other than a visual image? And an incorrect image, at that, as marionettes have multiple strings, and hand puppets have no strings.
• Spotted in a press release: “Handling over 39,737 online transactions annually . . .” Wouldn’t “over 39,737″ be, um, 39,738? Matching the vague with the specific is mentally jarring, and slows reading. “Odd” numbers, indeed.

I ask these inane questions to demonstrate the futility of trying to draw the reader into a piece of writing by posing questions. For a real-world example, here’s a quote from near the beginning of a course description, designed, I would imagine, to help entice possible matriculators to sign up:

What are the benefits of old age?

Excuse me while I pause to consider the multitude of snappy retorts that don’t involve socks and sandals. Let’s just revert to the classic, then: “Avoiding the alternative.”

The fact that I’m pondering potential snarky answers demonstrates one of the more severe detriments of using questions to begin articles or establish transitions: they can set off readers’ smart-aleck radar, slowing the reading experience. A less flashy but equally severe problem is that facilely stated questions often signal that the writer is warming up or searching for a way to enter the story and choosing an easy tool rather than working to enter at a more compelling moment.

The question is one of a number of hackneyed signals of wordiness or simple authorial floundering. Other hackneyed forms include:

• One-word opening declarations. For example, “Pretentious. That’s a perfect word to describe articles that begin with a single pretentious word—in this example, the word pretentious.”
• Describing the very beginning of a story. For example, “George woke up that morning . . .” Oooh! Tell me more!
• It should be obvious, but any sentence beginning with the word it. For example, “It was a dark and stormy night before George woke up that morning . . .”)

Because, you see, waking up in the morning is one of the benefits of old age.

And I’ll take those potshots at participants in that other national pastime, which would be baseball.

In Write Tight, I advise writers to listen to sportscasters to study best practices in concise communication. Sportscasters provide perfect examples of what not to do. To be fair (OK, somewhat fair, as we’re frolicking in potshot land right now), studying almost any oral communication will reveal multiple laughable pitfalls. In my work, I deal regularly with raw interview transcripts, which has taught me that nearly every spoken sentence begins with the word so and contains at least one instance of actually (the “educated” version of um). That said, start ducking, sportscasters; I’m pitching a few high fast ones. Most of the examples below come from last night’s Cincinnati Reds win over (of course, it’s the Independence Day weekend) the Washington Nationals:

• “This team has been devastated—and I mean devastated—by injuries this season.” Thanks for the clarification. The first instance of that wimpy word devastated kinda confused me.
• “I know you’re married to your wife . . .” Pretty reliable scouting report, apparently.
• Regarding skill improvement: “Those players must continue to move forward in a positive direction.” Oh, where do we begin? Never mind. A snark about that one has all the meaning of a batting-practice home run. Instead, let’s continue to move forward in a negative direction to the next example:
• “If they can hang on for two more innings . . .” Whew! I’d hate to see them hang on for two fewer innings.
• “They’re holding the runner tightly at first base.” Hey! Watch it, fella! This isn’t the “friendly confines” of Wrigley Field!
• A few days back: “We’ll turn the calendar to the month of July beginning tomorrow.” Good thing you specified; my first thought would have been turning the calendar to the Republic of July. And when will you be ending turning the calendar to the Republic of July? Oh, the dangers of waxing pathetic.
• While we’re at it (trying not to, as a sportscaster once said, “beat a dead horse to death”), here’s an oft-quoted classic: “He was originally born in Philadelphia.” And later born in Pittsburgh?
• But back to last night’s game for the final at-bat, discussing a player personnel move—a triple play! “We reclaimed him [OK, solid swing] back [ouch—foul tip] again.” Redundancy three! You’re out!

This is as opposed to all the somber ventriloquists on stage these days—you know, the ones who use wooden dummies to explain the theory of relativity, cardiovascular circulation, and transcendental philosophy. How many ventriloquists aren’t comedic, so why the need to identify Dunham as such?

So at its heart, “comedic ventriloquist” is redundant—and yet I’ll argue with myself now that this is very likely a needed redundancy (how’s that for an oxymoron—in essence, the “needed unnecessary”?) given a general newspaper audience. If one doesn’t know Dunham’s work, simply describing him as a ventriloquist is not as strong an introduction as is appropriate; simply calling him a comedian doesn’t distinguish his style of comedy.

So, the comedic jury is out on this one, and I’ll further waffle by pointing out that fewer words are good, but when considering redundancies and what words imply, always consider what might be lost in meaning, nuance and rhythm when you begin trimming.

By the by, speaking of transcendental: Presidential campaign buzzword alert from Stephen Colbert.