Telling it like it isn't

I love euphemisms. Well, those used for comedy effect. I don't mean things like this.

I'm sure we've all seen someone we like and been keen to have a 'tongue in cheek conversation at point blank range' with them. Then maybe if that didn't work out, got a bit 'tired and emotional' and perhaps had a 'reversal of fortune' on the 'porcelain telephone to god'. These are all good.

But even better are accidental ones, where people are just trying to be polite. As anyone who knows her will testify, there are very few people sweeter or more polite than my girlfriend, Ruth. Last summer, we were on holiday in Italy with my parents and my mum was driving the hire car. She was attempting to back out of a parking space but the car wasn't moving and my mum wondered aloud why.

"I don't think you're quite in reverse," said Ruth. Coming from me, this would have sounded/actually been sarcastic but from Ruth you just knew it was her way of gently informing my mum of the problem.

Then just the other day, I got home to find the bathroom light on. My housemate Lucille was in her room and as I wanted to have a shower asked her if she was finished in the bathroom.

"I will be. Once I've had my bath."

'I will be.' How brilliant is that? Has there ever been a more positive, less offensive way of saying 'no'? Short of outright lying, I'm not sure that can be beaten.

If anyone knows of any better euphemisms, I'd love to hear about them.

Unmissable?

I have a gripe. And it's not that often I have a gripe about the BBC but this time I do.

It's this tagline for the iPlayer, which incidentally, I happen to think is a wonderful invention. In case you've missed it, this is the tagline:

Making the unmissable... unmissable

Now, technically 'unmissable' can mean 'cannot be missed' or 'should not be missed'. I suspect, knowing marketing people as I do, that they intended this to be the former. After all, hyperbole is rarely far away when trying to sell something. But if they mean that then even having the iPlayer in the first place means they've lied, as it wasn't unmissable in the first place.

If we assume they mean you shouldn't miss it, then that's what the iPlayer is for and programmes are available on the iPlayer. For seven days. A week! Go on holiday and that's that! Quite easily missable, I'd say.

The other problem I have with this description is that it assumes that everything available on iPlayer is of exceptional quality. Nature's Great Events? Yes sirreebob. Not Going Out. Absobloodylutely. EastEnders? Really? Eggheads? Er...

So I propose a change to the tagline. How about this?

Making what you've missed and that is occasionally good television... available for a week

Catchy eh?

Restructured by 10%

There are a lot of words in the English language, somewhere between 150,00 and 200,000, depending on how you count it. Despite taking a greater interest than many in words, there are still thousands of words for which I do not know the meaning.

However, one that I do know, and I'm sure you do as well, is 'restructure'. It means, as far as I'm aware, to change the structure, to rearrange the component parts thus altering the shape or form. What is does not mean is to reduce. And yet, I have just read a press release which states that a company will "restructure its workforce by 10%."


You can see what's happened here. They're making some people redundant but don't want to say so outright and have decided that 'restructure' is less negative than 'reduce'. Well, it is, but what they've ended up with is a sentence that makes no sense whatsoever.

How on earth can anything be restructured by a percentage? It's either restructured or it isn't. Do they honestly believe that the reader will not realise that they mean reduced? If they do think that, they're treating the reader like idiots. And if they don't believe that, then they're idiots themselves.

The Plain English Campaign has been running since 1979. Let's keep it going eh?