A MEMO recently appeared
in our baskets at the News.
Called ‘‘The Power of
Short Words,” it made
weighty assertions about
how ‘‘single syllables can
take you a long way.’’

By Barbara Black
News Reporter

\t made me gag (to put it
monosyllabicly).

To add insult to injury this tract
On terseness was condensed from
the Readers Digest. And written
by some dean of language named
Richard (Dick, for short) Lederer.
He advised us, in the most
Straightforward manner, to use
short words, which he says we will
find to be ‘‘fast friends.’’
(Doesn't that sound a bit like
**fast food’’?)

Today’s newspapers and most
media, you see, are concerned
with digestible info-bytes. News-
paper style is supposed to be short
and pithy. No time for laboring
with language, let’s just get the
goods out.

Editors cannot tolerate word
nerds in the journalism business.
They are an anomaly, a liability.
Better edit, in case the public does
not understand.

It's all. part of the lowest com-
mon denominator phenomenon
@eok where that got us with tele-
vision).

What it means in newspapers is
the stories get shorter and shorter,
the grabbers and ‘‘quick facts'’
boxes more numerous, the
headlines larger and now the
words smaller. It is the Dick and
Jane-ization of reading.

Our Dick says small words can
Meet our needs. He warns that big
words can ‘‘make the way
dark...” for listeners and readers.

Now what exactly does he
mean? Is that some kind of meta-
phor? Careful, Dick, avcording to
Douglas Copeland's book Genera-

tion X, we are in the age of
“‘metaphasia.”” We are dumb to
the metaphor.

INSIGHTS

What Dick doesn’t realize is
that small words do not necessari-
ly simplify the meaning of a

Thanks for Tank tribute

An open letter to Trevor

Lautens:

We live in a very organized
society and a loi of the time we
— the two-leggers of society —
have a habit of getting our
priorities mixed up. We forget
about the hidden emotions that
we show only to our in-
ner selves.

Recently after I left a medi-
cal clinic, where I was put
through ignominious indignities
to see if I’m suffering from an
ulcer, I decided to stop off ata
small coffee shop and defy my
doctor and have the strongest,
and the blackest cup of coffee
I could muster.

Sitting on the table was a Ju-
ly 24 issue of the North Shore
News. I immediately turned to
your column, and I'm afraid I
wasn’t quite ready for what |
Tead.

Unable to contain myself, |
burst into heavy-duty tears and
made a complete fool of
myself. Reading about my
beautiful old dog Tank, and by
the way, he was and is the

most beautiful dog in West
Vancouver, 1 forgot about my
own problems and with the
help of a very nice lady who
was operating the coffee shop,
I had a rush of good feelings,
and more tears and some
wonderful memories freely
flowed from me.

A lot.of years ago, a very
wise old lady, my granny to be
exact, told me that even the
lowest form of iife has a
reason for being, and that we
must respect that reasoning,
and most explicitly we must
remember that even the dread-
ed fiea has a mother who loves
it.

She told me this after she
caught me teasing a spider who
was trying to weave a web. |
was just a little boy at the
time, but it changed my life
and 1 immediately became a
champion of animals.

I’ve lost a lot of two-legged
friends over the years, but I
have never experienced the
gnawing grief for them that I
feel for my four-ieggers -—— that
impassioned love that we feel
for our pets is a love experi-

ence that everyone should te
granted.

I hope with all my heart that
your ‘Garden of Biases’’ col-
umn ignited a spark in all of
those people who have never
owned a pet, a spark that will
prompt them to share their
lives with one of those
beautiful animals that are put
to sleep, each and every day,
because there are not enough
people who care.

Thank you, Trevor; thank
you for showing me that it’s
OK to grieve deeply for a lost
and beloved pet; thank you for
showing me that it’s OK to
shed tears, and that it’s OK to
share my sorrow with friends;
and that it’s OK for me to be
angry with the Almighty for
giving the most ioving, and the
most faithful animal in this
tough old world such a short
lifespan.

Thank you, Trevor, for be-
ing a warm and caring friend.
You can be one of the biases in
my garden any day of the
week.

Earle Bingley
West Vancouver

sentence. Sure, they sound snappy
and brisk, but that doesn’t mean
direct access to the brain centre.

He quotes famous maxims such
as *“‘A stitch in time saves nine’
and ‘‘A bird in the hand is worth
two in the bush.’”? Does anybody
know what those mean? Single
syHables are deceptive.

To prove his point about the
effectiveness of small words
Lederer cites Shakespeare as a
master monosyllabist. Maturally
be chooses one of those rare clear,
short-word monclogues to serve
bis argument: ‘‘And my poer foct
is hang’d! No, no, no life!...””

Well, the bard may be a wiz at
weeny words, but he also indulges
in his fair share of polysyllables,
allusions and the like. Most peo-
ple find him a mouthful.

Dick points out that 1!
monosyllabic words account for
25% of spoken English. But that
doesn’t mean we have to write
with them, This man is a ver-
nacularist!

But now I've
underlying fear. You've
penetrated (seen through) this
harangue (speech). It is none other
than a selfish defence of my own
proclivity (bent) for a prolifera-
tion (swarm) of polysyllables (big
words), or at least a genuine (real)
affection (love) for using fe mort
juste (the right word).

My prose is awash in purple.

You sce, some people are ad-
dicted to the sound of words. We
want to hear the jangle and jostle
of alliteration and multipte sylla-
bles.

_ We live in horror of condensa-
tion.

Because, in the monosyllabic
world, everyone. decomes a
stickperson and words a sort of
Jollipop with no flavor. it is a
bore.

My guess is there are just as
many monosytiable-oriented
readers out there in readerland as
there are purple prosers. Why
pander to the vocabu-
lary-challenged?

revealed my

And, by the way, Mr. Lederer,
astitch in time saves nine what?

The green of the dollar
over green of the land?

Dear Editor:

May 1 share Mr. Rod Hesp's
(Cricket Assn.) concern regarding
the upcoming Bryan Adams’ con-
cert, Sept. 7 in Stanley Park.

Like Mr. Hesp, I too am
disgusted with the attitude of the
Vancouver Parks Board, in their
arrogance at proceeding with this
concert with apparently little con-
cern for input from the communi-
ty.

This unfortunately seems to be
the attitude of elected officials,
particularly in the field of enter-
tainment, where public officials
have little regard for the public’s
hard-earned dollars.

The last event was the former
government’s Music "91; | tried in
vain with several colleagues for
over a year to get some answers
on that program.

Recently the auditor general
published its report on Music °91
and sadly, every concern we had
was true (mismanagement,
secrecy, deception), including the
fact that Music °91 cost the people
of this province $19 million.

The most disgusting thing about
the Music 91 program is that no
one has been held responsible for
this horrendcus mess and it seems
that it will be silently pushed

under the carpet. How nice if the
rest of us could get away with this
type of irresponsibility.

Aithough I am pleased to sce
that they have been required to
pay a iarge damage deposit, I
would like to suggest~ that the
parks board members also pay a
damage deposit to prove their
guarantee that the fields of
Stanley Park will not be damaged.

Since there is going to be a
profit from this concert might I
also suggest that the promoters
and the parks board donate some
of that profit to some of the fine
arts organizations such as the
Vancouver Opera, the symphony,
art gallery, etc., as I understand
the funding has been drastically
reduced this year (probably also as
a result of Music °91).

In short, elected officials are
gcing to have to decide what they
are going to promote, the profit
of a few at the expense of the
general population, and the green
of the dollar over the green of the
land?

But most important, when are
they going to realize that they are
accountable to the majority?

Sue Cook
North Vancouver