Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [42]
A separate issue concerns objections often raised by authorities to words like finalize, prioritize, and the aforementioned conceptualize. Although the English language has been forming such words for centuries—bastardize, for instance, dates from the 1500s—new formations almost always encounter sustained opposition. Strunk in 1935 attacked prioritize and customize. Gowers in 1965 expressed dislike for finalize, among many others. Several usage books in Britain continue to disdain hospitalize and burglarize, though most American authorities accept them without comment.
The arguments brought against many of these formations can have an ironic ring, because what is elsewhere welcomed as a virtue—brevity—is suddenly considered not so important. Certainly there can be no denying that prioritize is shorter than “make a priority of” and hospitalize less cumbersome than “admit to a hospital.” The only honest objection to such words is that they are jarring or faddish. The protests are more convincing where a short word already exists. There is no special excuse for moisturize when we already have moisten or for finalize when we have finish. The general principle, as with most matters of usage, should be that the word should not draw undue attention to itself by its novelty or air of contrivance.
it. Sentences that begin with it are almost always worth a second look. Oftentimes an anticipatory or “dummy” it is unobjectionable (“It seems to me,” “It began to rain,” “It is widely believed that”), but just as often it is no more than a sign of careless or tedious writing, as here: “It was Mr. Bechtel who was the more peripatetic of the two. . . . It was under his direction that the annual reports began” (New York Times). Both sentences would be shorter and more forceful if “It was” and the relative pronouns (respectively who and that) were removed, making them “Mr. Bechtel was the more peripatetic of the two” and “Under his direction the annual reports began.”
iterate, reiterate. Since reiterate means to repeat, many people naturally assume that iterate means simply to state. In fact, it also means to repeat, a sense that appears not to have been intended here: “Union officials said they would iterate their demands at the weekend meeting, but not before” (Los Angeles Times). A separate but common fault with reiterate is seen here: “She hopes her message to the markets, reiterated again at the weekend, will be enough to prevent the pound sliding further” (Times). Again is always superfluous with re- words (reiterate, repeat, reaffirm) and should be deleted.
its, it’s. The distinction between these two ought not to trouble a ten-year-old, yet errors abound, particularly outside formal writing. Its is the possessive form of it: “Put each book in its place.” It’s is the contraction of it is: “The beauty of solar power is that it’s environmentally friendly.”
J
James’s, St. See COURT OF ST. JAMES’S.
jargon, argot, lingua franca. At a conference of sociologists some years ago, love was defined as “the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance.” That is jargon—the practice of never calling a spade a spade when you might instead call it a manual earth-restructuring implement. So long as it circulates only among a given profession, jargon is usually unobjectionable and frequently useful, since every profession needs its own form of shorthand. But all too often it escapes into the wider world, so that we encounter “attitudinal constructs” when what is meant is attitudes and “optimally consonant patterns of learning” for a sound education. In this sense, jargon is always better avoided.
Argot was originally the language of thieves, but has, like jargon, come to mean a way of communicating peculiar to a particular group. Lingua franca (literally “the Frankish tongue”) is any language or mixture of languages that serves as a common