Words at W ork

Despite experiments with aluminium doors, a programme of repairs to

OBA open wagons sees the original wooden dropside doors replaced in
kind.
Again there is no advantage in using the verb to see. No verb other than
replaced is required: in a program m e of repairs to OBA open wagons
the original w ooden dropside doors are replaced in kind.
Like other metaphors, the verb to see, meaning to register, ought not
to be used in a context w here metaphors m ight collide. A newspaper
headline about a speech made by an opposition spokesman in Serbia
reads Dissenting voice seen as proof of split in Belgrade. Since voices
are heard and not seen, this particular use o f the verb to see ought to
be avoided.

Personal Terms Used Inappropriately

We suffer advertisers to take certain freedoms in this matter of using a
personal vocabulary w here it is strictly inapplicable.
Sensitive skin needs treating with respect and understanding.
The advertiser purposely takes the regularly partnered words, respect
and understanding, out o f their normal psychological milieu. Both
respect and understanding are desirable hum an qualities most often
directed towards other hum an beings. Here the advertiser treats them as
proper attitudes to be taken up towards o nes skin. The point made is
valid enough, but we should observe that the m ore the two words
respect and understanding are thus used, thus depersonalized as it
were, the m ore the resonances o f hum an w arm th and appreciation are
dissipated.
O f course a w riter has a perfect right consciously to mix the personal
and the impersonal to comic effect, such as in:
What self-respecting garden would be without a few bold clumps of
Cornflower Blue Ball?
Just as one should be wary o f attributing actions and processes proper to
hum an beings to the inanimate, so one must be wary of describing the
inanimate in inappropriate personal terms. The attempt to personalize
the impersonal, even w hen consciously made, can easily fail to come off.