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(ALERT: What follows is intentional overuse of big words. Get your dictionary ready, friends.) I highly doubt that anyone will haul me into court to accuse me of pitch-perfect application of the English language. I did my undergraduate work in Sociology, not English, consequently I have held no illusions that I would one day become the next internationally renown author of the "Great American Novel." Writing long-winded, ponderous reports comes naturally. Debate is innate. But lilting, rightly crafted prose? That, as I have been told, is a real struggle for a gasbag the likes of me. Have I ever been a credible purveyor of the Queen's English in daily life? Barely. Growing up in the South Philly region poisoned me for life with a genetically grounded propensity to shorten words inappropriately, dropping a few too many "g"s from words otherwise ending in "ing." Further, though I have been known to occasionally play at being a wordsmith, my income these past two decades has been largely based on my success manipulating bits, bytes, and bandwidth, not my overpowering prowess with simile, syntax, and structure. Nevertheless, this knowledge will not stop me from bellying up to my God-given responsibility, doing my part to protect the vast, unaware proletariat from eviscerating the effervescence of effective English with the blunted blade of a lazy lingua. Perhaps I am merely living up to the hopes and dreams of my late mother-in-law. As a retired teacher and former English major she never missed an opportunity to insure that I paid proper respect to the use of such benchmark components of speech as "good" and "well," as in, "I am doing well", not, "I am doing good." (Thank you, Ruth Edna, for insuring that your son-in-law broke free from his Philly cheese steak moorings to bask in the glow of an occasionally more refined presentation.) Consequently, there are now some applications of our native tongue that even I - a professional geek and sometime leadership development wonk - immediately recognize as sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. My eyes have long been opened to the prickly reality that although some words "can" be used in certain contexts they most likely should not. Take the word, "hugely," for example. |
