Pocket Style

As I continue to fight the case for Boris as PM up here in Scouseland, with, I admit, limited success, I am delighted that one of his cohorts, Jacob Rees-Mogg has struck a blow for the reinstatement of the Queens English by issuing a style guide for his newly allocated government office.

Regular readers of this blog, most notably 'Off the Record Dick' and my late departed mate Figs,will be surprised and fascinated to learn that I developed one such style guide for the members of the IBM consulting and professional services organisation in the early 90's. The Company was just branching out into the consulting arena and it was considered important to ensure our reports and the presentation material surrounding them were of a consistent format, hence the need for some grammatical guidelines. I must admit to lax usage of the apostrophe and comma, however it is very interesting to look back at some of the guidelines presented at that time. Here are a couple:

Issue: Avoid using the word issue unless referring to a paper or journal. Use problem or concern instead.

Simplistic: Use simple-minded or naive, or simple if that is what you mean

Verbs: Do not use nouns as verbs; for example, 'IBM solutioned the problem'

One of the great sources of style was produced by The Economist for its journalistic staff. It is interesting that Boris himself was the editor-in-chief  for this organ for many years!!

This guide was later published and sits on my bookcase along with 'The Complete Plain Words' , 'Big Elephants Are Useful', a compendium of mnemonics and idioms and 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' a modern punctuation bible.

Can any or all of them solve the greatest grammatical challenge regarding what people from Argentina are called? Answer, from The Economist is that they are Argentines not Argentinian. Phew! glad we cleared that up.

You've lost two pounds?

I won't tell you the punch line from the Peter Kay joke above, but suffice to say that SWMBO and I are trying to lose some weight. 'Are you on a diet?' people say, and it just once again illustrates problems with basic language.

Yes, we are on a diet, but we are always on a diet, and so is the rest of the population. All we have done is modify our existing diet, so it becomes a new diet. Diet, though, seems to be associated with a radical change of eating habits, which is not always the case.

That said, I have not had a pie, chips, cakes, sweets or chocolate now for a month. We have removed white bread and pasta form our diet ( see what I mean) and are eating more fruit, drinking more fresh juices and have cut down our alcohol consumption.

Will it work? Well weighing day is just round the corner and the first time usually indicates some weight loss as the excess fluid is the first thing to go. February and March will be a bit of a tester with rugby trips and such like scheduled, so time will tell.

While I am on my language hobby horse, 'the player has pace' is another expression which annoys me. We all have pace, just some people have a quick pace and others a slow pace. 'The player is quick' or  ' he shows a good turn of speed' better describe what people are trying to say.

Whatever you do, don't get me onto 'simplistic' when 'simple' will do, or.........

I think I need a lie down!