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No, you didn’t “reach out”, you CONTACTED them

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xrunner:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on September 19, 2021, 05:00:56 pm ---It's just that the less we have to say, and the "fancier" it needs to sound, so we can look smart and interesting while saying almost nothing.

--- End quote ---

In consideration of your statement, after a short time pondering all implications, I would have to assert and make known here, my complete agreement and endorsement of your claim.

Cerebus:
He means "Me too." <- ex professional editor at work.

I once had a friend, a highly knowledgable barrister, who was the model of clarity when you sat down and chatted with him. We got him to write the legal column for the back pages of the magazine I was working on at the time. Despite it not being my section of the magazine, somehow muggins here ended up with the task of editing his column. I suspect that our chief subeditor fluttered her Spanish eyes at me (the rest of her was from Yorkshire) with a plea that she couldn't make head nor tail of it, and that he was my friend so it was my problem. Anyone who has encountered a Yorkshirewoman who has made up her mind, let alone one with a streak of Spanish temperament in her, will know why I quietly did as 'requested'. Never in my life have I had to pummel quite so many words that said nothing into something comprehensible while still trying to extract what he was actually trying to say.

There's something about putting words into writing that makes some people go crazy and say things that they never would if they were talking face to face with someone. Lawyers are one of the principal classes of culprits here, and for some reason so are junior admin staff. At least with lawyers they usually know what the words mean, but the number of emails I've had from minor functionaries who do things like use "confirm" ten times in an email without ever using it once to actually confirm something. When I encounter that particular misuse it seems to be being used in the hope that if you say something enough times together with the word "confirm" it will somehow magically have become true in the face and the teeth of the actual facts.

Obviously the worst offenders are the management types and the marketing types, but at least with them the interpretation or translation becomes easy - it almost always boils down to "I said nothing of substance" or "I know nothing".

TimFox:

--- Quote from: Cerebus on September 19, 2021, 02:17:49 pm ---
--- Quote from: TimFox on September 19, 2021, 02:09:09 pm ---In 2027 (just five years from now), we can celebrate the useful neologism where the verb form of "contact" was added to the language, thanks to Americans.

--- End quote ---

Will we also be celebrating their equally useful neoarithmetisms?

--- End quote ---

If that ugly word become a neologism, and the new terms be equally useful, then another cause for celebration.

eti:
All very interesting and all that, chaps, but it's still wrong. A tree is still a tree, no matter who looks at it and from what angle.

bsfeechannel:
Now I am confused. Should I sing along "contact and take it"?

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