John S McClenahen former editor of IndustryWeek

Leadership

No Virtual English, Please

June 9, 2013

Fast, fun(ny)--and memorable--fixes to the most egregious English-language errors ever made.

I begin with two buzz-phrases and three buzzwords that deserve, well, to be buzzed off:

“Virtual server.” I have had this unreal experience in a few restaurants, and it is reason enough for never going back.

“The Cloud.” Apparently this is where the virtual server hangs out once the server has decided that waiting on me is not part of the job description.

“Architecture.” Does this mean your computer system comes in a choice of Colonial, Federalist, Craftsman, or Prairie Modern?

“Cohort.” Perfectly all right if you’re identifying several people with the same characteristics to another statistician or demographer. But otherwise, why not use “group”? What’s more, cohort also is an abbreviation for agriculture. Do you really want to be referring to your colleagues as a bunch of carrots?

“Paradigm.” Overused. Time to shift to another word.

To be sure (another overused phrase), I am not advocating junking all jargon. It has its place, for example, among manufacturing executives and medical doctors. CEOs are free to compare EBITDAs. And I expect physicians to speak to one another of myocardial infarcts. But when speaking with me, please talk of earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation and— particularly if EBITDA is awful—of a heart attack.

Here are eight more of my current language gripes:

"Data" is a word plural. Saying “data is” is the ungrammatical equivalent of “they is.” Similarly, criteria is a word plural.

"Criterion" is the singular. “My criteria is” is just as wrong as “they is.”

“Like, you know.” I don’t like “like, you know,” especially when this phrase dominates the content of a conversation.

“Only focus on the bottom line” implies you could do something else to the bottom line. “Focus only on the bottom line” is probably what you mean—even if the wisdom of this imperative is debatable.

“Less” does not mean fewer. Those signs above supermarket check-out lanes “10 Items Or Less” are always wrong, including when you have only a single bottle of Less.

“Who do you trust?” I don’t trust who; I trust whom.

“Backstory.” A pretentious word used instead of “background,” by even network television newscasters and people who should know better.

“At the end of the day.” At the end of the day, I expect to be going to sleep—not summing up a pretentious and perhaps irrelevant argument.

This is another of a series of occasional essays by John S. McClenahen, who retired from IndustryWeek in 2006 and remains an interested observer of global manufacturing.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.