Modern Manglish : Gobbledygook Made Plain

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9781921844508
• ISBN10: 1921844507
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2012-09-26
• Publisher: Scribe Pubns Pty Ltd

Summary

'I'm going to make a prediction - it could go either way.' 'London isn't the largest city, but it's definitely larger than the next largest.' 'It's been raining for eight consecutive days in a row.' The information superhighway brings more text to our door than ever before. It's just that most of it gets mangled along the way. Twenty years ago, Harold Scruby's original MANGLISH sold its print run in just a few weeks. This version preserves some of his classic Manglish examples with mostly new material from the shame files of the Plain English Foundation. MODERN MANGLISH explores the traditional linguistic traps of mixed metaphors and mispronunciation, of new words and old cliches, of euphemism, tautology, and jargon. It also exposes the latest Manglish in serially offending professions such as politics, business, and the law. When exactly did we all become stakeholders seeking to leverage our paradigms to achieve best-practice scenarios moving forward? Alongside these are the newest contenders for the Manglish crown, ranging from sports talk to silly signs, from IT speak to Twitterese, and from food speak to fancy-pants job titles. For your delectation and perhaps chagrin, here are the worst excesses of Manglish in 21 handy chapters, illustrated with more than 60 cartoons from Australia's premier editorial cartoonist, Alan Moir.

Author Biography

Neil James is the chair of the International Plain Language Working Group and the author of three books, including Writing at Work. Harold Scruby is the author of Manglish and Waynespeak. Alan Moir is the editorial cartoonist for the Sydney Morning Herald and a former editorial cartoonist for the Bulletin and Brisbane’s Courier-Mail. He is the recipient of twoWalkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism and six Stanley Awards for Editorial Cartoonist of the Year. He is the illustrator of Are We Nearly There Yet? Caroline Jones is a journalist and the author of Through a Glass Darkly.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Introduction	p. ix
Doublespeak and Verbing	p. 1
Tautologies and Other Redundancies	p. 9
Click Go the Clichés	p. 17
Buzzwords	p. 25
Suitspeak	p. 33
Mixed Metaphors	p. 43
Euphemisms (or Youse-femisms)	p. 49
To PC or Not to PC	p. 57
Pollie Waffle	p. 63
Legal(un)ese and Coptalk	p. 71
Lost in Translation	p. 79
Fancy-pants Job Titles	p. 85
World's Worst Mission Statements	p. 91
Strayan, New Zillund, and Yankspeak	p. 97
Spakfilla	p. 105
Pronounceeashun	p. 111
Malaprops and General Manglish	p. 123
Sportspeak	p. 129
Foodspiel	p. 139
Silly Signs	p. 145
Manglish Christmas Carols	p. 151
Acknowledgements	p. 157
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.