Making Words Count

Making Words Count ©

By 

Michael Casey

Now, where do I begin, which is a song title, but I’m not talking about songs, just words. So, which is a Peter Gabriel album, but I’m not talking about him either as Annie Lennox sings Peace to me. Well I thought I’d talk about making words count today, and I’m not talking about the Times tables either, and  why do grown-ups say “times” instead of Multiply. And while we are on it, it’s US not Uz as I constantly hear, and when did a NOUN become an ADJECTIVE, the WALES team beat England, it’s the Welsh team, though that’s not the best example.

If you love words as much as I do then you too will be annoyed by the BBC and other Media butchering the language. Words do count, each has a meaning and a method to it, that makes a story better or worse, for richer or poorer, or just divorced from the facts. A story badly told is just that, bad. A story well told holds the reader or viewer. Even if it’s really complicated, if it’s explained well it does make a difference. What is the point of blinding people with science? To prove how clever the reporter or writer is?

My own opinion is that you should share stories, share information. As  children  we’d tell each other who we saw and what we did and what happened, it was as if we were cameras bringing back a report to the BBC. No shrugging of the shoulders and “it’s boring”, this is boring in itself. People live their lives looking down at a screen and not up and alert to the world itself all around us. People are not observant, Dirk  Bogarde as a child played games looking in shop windows and trying to remember all the items, he did Photographic Interpretation in the War, later he was a film star and a wonderful writer. I wish everybody was like that, looking around and observing.

So it is with words, they can be used to great or lesser effect, you just have to use them in the right place. I could use a word beginning with an F, or C, or N or W.  Pick your own alphabet.  But by using those words whatever they are in your minds, not mine. I was thinking Food, Clothes, Nature and Writer, if you were thinking any other words then you deserve to have the backs of your legs slapped with wet lettuce a la Larry  Grayson. What kind of alphabet were you taught in your school? But I’ve grabbed your attention now and made you smile and perhaps even think. Strong words are great, such as concrete, but you have to use them in the right place or they lose their power and are just boring. If a vicar suddenly used a word beginning with X Y or Z, pick your own, then it would shock, and have tremendous power, just as when the Pope used such words, if you can remember that.

So we all need to maximise the power of our words, and if we are sending a message in a bottle we have to make sure it’s to the point. Remember too for 20 years I’ve had a foreigner living with me, a Shanghai foreigner. So I know about explaining words first hand, it’s not just an intellectual thing based on 20 years of listening to BBC radio 4 before my 30+ years of writing. So we all need to use our words and make them count.

Speaking is one thing and is more fun, but when we write we have to be more concise, more Janet and John, so that it starts at 1 and goes to 10. With  speech we can go backwards and forwards but on paper our words must be more Logical, especially when Complaining. If you hunt my website you’ll see advice on how to write a compliant letter should you ever need to.

Well I have to go and watch Beyond 100 Days now, which is one of my favourite programs, it’s a news digest about UK/USA. The thing about this programme is that everybody is willing (***&& Brexit to be over, it’s like a bad heroin or is it heroine habit. But you replace the heroine with a hero and hope another blond can fix it. Over in USA we see the blond there “fixing” everything and you go down on your knees and ask God, when will you fix him. And you can hear God say, In the Beginning was the Word.