Thesaurus Blues

The rivalry between Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Explorer web browser has led to some recent casualties on the linguistic field. To get the latest in correct terminology, we turn to Microsoft's "Manual of Style for Technical Publications" (2nd edition, 1998, p. 185) where we find the following instruction: "Avoid the term navigate to refer to moving from site to site, page to page within a site, or link to link on the Internet... Instead use explore or move through to refer to sequentially moving from one link or site to another, or a similar neutral term describing the action." And now that Netscape has released its "Communicator", I think we'd all do well to find synonyms for the verb "communicate". Likewise, since America On-line bought up Netscape, the term "on-line" might be jettisoned, although I do believe erasing "America" would be going too far.

Double Your Pleasure....

Movie producers and clothing manufacturers are cooperating to help actors further their modeling careers. For example, crime fighters in The Mod Squad will be showing off a new line of Levi's, while actors in The Faculty are modeling Tommy Jeans and cast members of Dawson Creek parade about in their J. Crew wardrobes. In return, clothing manufacturers are running "integrated marketing campaigns", using the same stars in their commercials with film footage direct from the movie sets. The elevation of movies from a mere art form to a platform for advertising is expressed by Levi's spokesman Mark Malinowski when he notes that, "We have as much stake in The Mod Squad as MGM does." How long before we see the breakthrough movie that wins both an Academy Award and Advertising Age's coveted trophy for the Best Advertisement of the Year? (American Demographics 3/99)

The Kiss of Death

A national telemarketing firm named Unitel discovered it had no choice but to shut down most of its phoning operations in Frostburg, Maryland and move them to Florida. Why? As their vice-president Ken Carmichael explained, "The culture and climate in Western Maryland is one of helping your neighbor and being empathetic and those sorts of things." ( I particularly like the the phrase "and those sorts of things" and hope the speaker was wearing gloves to avoid contamination.) This made Frostburg the first town in America to officially lose an industry because its citizen's were deemed too nice. I can't wait to learn which town in Florida was judged suitable to a modern day corporate culture? (WP 3/17)

Bureaucracy in Action

Tragedy struck the Seattle Police Department as two members of the fingerprint identification section fell off their chairs and injured themselves. Now all members of the unit have been ordered to attend a class on how to safely sit down. The chairs are on rollers and (here is the good news) they will be returned after employees receive their instruction on how to use them. Employees were informed in a March 19th memo entitled "Chairs/sitting" that: "Until the safety officer can come down and give formal training, please inform all of your employees to take hold of the arms and get control of the chair before sitting down." I cannot emphasize how important these words are. If your workplace does not have a safety program in place to teach proper chair sitting, be sure to send out a copy of our new publication, "The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Chair Sitters". (WSJ 3/24)

Special thanks to the eagle eyes of Lenny Foner, Lara Boeck and David Goldsheft. Send in your own examples of quality Newspeak or get on the mailing list by contacting wgrytt@blarg.net