More Pain Than Pleasure?

There’s an apocryphal story about a tribesman in darkest Africa – or is it New Guinea? – who is informed of heaven and hell by a missionary. “Father,” asks the tribesman, “If you hadn’t told me about Jesus would I go to hell?”

In a modified form that’s a question I sometimes ask myself: “If I had never heard of a transitive verb would my life be better?” Put more generally the question is: “If I did not possess a certain level of literacy would I be happier?” While there are few pleasures as great as that of turning a thought into a memorable and euphonious phrase – one that creates a vivid picture in readers’ minds – there is a deal of pain in being sensitive to the finer points of language.

I can tolerate typographical errors (we all make them), and the odd cliché, neologism and import from US English, but I have not yet become inured to misuse of the apostrophe, and I’d rather walk barefoot through a patch of nettles than read a paragraph littered with redundancies. (Imagine my anguish when I read the phrase “work colleague” in a book by none other than Lynne Truss. Aaargh!) When a sign informs me that traffic has calmed the zone I am entering (“traffic calmed area”) I want to use hyphens to staple the people responsible to the next four-by-four to jolt over the humps. (Urban four-by-fours are another pet hate of mine, but I’d forgive them if they served to punish the fabricators of such sloppy signage.)

Let me make it clear that I have no quarrel with people who admit to dyslexia, or whose first language isn’t English (indeed, I earn a crust or two by helping such as these). My pain is caused by those deemed competent by the school examination system (or, worse, that of a higher institution) but whose every written sentence gives the lie to this – those who put their idiosyncratic spelling, scrambled syntax, concatenated clichés, patchy punctuation, lacklustre lexicons and grotty grammar into the public domain with every appearance of confidence. When my helpful advice (“You realise you’re doing that all wrong?”) is met with indifference, my cacologalgia (a word I have just invented) tips over into the screaming abdabs.

The last sentence reminds me of another technique the semi-literate use to torture me: the apparently systematic vitiation of our vocabulary. Let me explain: the word “indifference” makes me think of the word “disinterested”, the meaning of which is rapidly being eroded by those who use it as a posh substitute for “uninterested”. I am far from indifferent to such sabotage!

Yes, the more I dwell on these things, the more I think it can’t all be down to passive ignorance. They hate me, and want me to suffer, and it’s getting worse… A few weeks ago I found myself having to explain (to a copy editor, no less, who had mangled my far-from-random prose) the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, which takes me back to my original question: “If I had never heard of a transitive verb would my life be better?” Well, probably not, because I enjoyed writing this.

Writers are all missionaries. We love the written word, and can’t help trying to infect others with our passion. Like religious zealots we believe it’s for their own good (if not for their salvation), but perhaps we should also admit that it is not entirely pain-free. As I imagine Lynne Truss might say, “no pain, no gain”.

R. Eric Swanepoel