Language changes with the times
Dec 12th, 2007 by Dave Olson
Two items in the world of words this week got me thinking about the ever-evolving English language, how we decide which words to keep and which to abandon, and how we are continually searching for new ways to combine them into something that is more than the sum of their parts.
The most recent item was the announcement by Merriam-Webster (a fresh copy of their dictionary used to show up under the Christmas tree every year) that the word of the year for 2007 is “w00t.”
It’s not a typo. The mashup of numbers and letters is used by online gamers as an expression of joy, or victory. Gamers routinely substitute numbers and symbols for letters, creating “l33t speak.” L33t sounds like “leet” when spoken, and is short for “elite.”
The news didn’t make Allan Metcalf, executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, happy at all.
“It’s amusing, but it’s limited to a small community and unlikely to spread and unlikely to last,” Metcalf told the Associated Press.
I’m not sure I agree. The online community isn’t a separate group from the rest of us anymore, and its influence on communication is going to continue to grow. The English language is going to change along with it as people search for new ways to describe what they feel, hear and see.
That’s what Rene Cappon was all about, and that brings us to our second item.
Cappon, longtime editor at the Associated Press, died Sunday at 83. As an editor, he nurtured several Pulitzer Prize winners.
Those of us in the business know Cappon better as the author of “The Word: An Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing.” Along with Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style,” it ranks as one of the best books written about the craft.
“What matters most to me,” Cappon wrote in the book’s introduction, “is the hope that this work might stir some writers, new and old, to think more about the process of writing, to remember that the first duty of language is to communicate, and that words can be the best of friends and the worst of enemies.”
Here’s how the AP described parts of Cappon’s book in his obituary:
“As for feature writing, ‘It thrives on color, nuance, wit, fancy, emotive words, dialogue, character…’
“As an example of how not to write, he cited a lede ‘phrased in a way no human being ever talks. Writing is not transcribed conversation, but good writing is never that remote from the spoken idiom.’”
One suspects Cappon would have understood w00t, and if anyone could have understood how to use it in a beautiful sentence, it would have been him.
P.S.
While I understand why w00t was the winner, one of the other finalists for word of the year had me laughing out loud: “Blamestorm,” a meeting in which mistakes are aired fingers are pointed and much discomfort is had by all…