A Channe Nine graphic showing school literacy test results in South Australia.

As a young journalist, I was told to avoid using the word “now” because it was (a) usually redundant and (b) could sometimes be mistyped as “not”, which probably wouldn’t be noticed by an editor or proofreader, eg:

John Smith is now the leading tuba player in Kalangadoo …

could inadvertently become:

John Smith is not the leading tuba player in Kalangadoo.

A good sub-editor might rewrite that sentence to say:

John Smith, Kalangadoo, is a second-rate tuba player.

It defies all grammatical rules for a name to be uncapitalised.

I’m a ruthless anti capitalist and kill stray capitals whenever I see them, especially in titles. The president of the Lions Club does not warrant a capital P.

With such a knife-wielding attitude to capitals, one might assume that I welcome the radicalism of names being uncapitalised, but I don’t. It’s an affront to decency, a marketing ploy that has corrupted the language.

How can I justify to readers and cadet journalists that a sentence may begin with a lower case letter? It’s just not on.

A name is a proper noun and should carry a capital letter; eBay should be Ebay, mBox should be Mbox.

Being a cynical, paranoid type I seriously suspect the influence of marketers in shaping this evil practice. They create these names so they will stand out. And they do, like the proverbial anatomy of an unhairy dog.

Earlier this year the worthy charitable organisation Anglican Community Care changed its name to the grammatically dreadful ac.care. What a conundrum for newspapers!

As an editor I dread seeing stories about them because of the linguistic ethical dilemma. I wax between grief and anger every time I see the name.

It’s just wrong. They pronounce it AC care, not ac care.

Of course I avoid starting sentences with uncapitalised names, I just can’t bring myself to do it. But a name is a name and if it appears in a sentence it should be spelt as the name appears. Cringe.

We live in a highly regulated society, however it astounds me that while you have to wear a helmet to ride a bicycle 200 metres there are no limits on bastardising the language.

There should be a law against names without capitals. It should be impossible to register them or trade under them.

Parents don’t like letters from schools. Normally it’s a bill, or there’s a prospect someone may be complaining about something your child has done or not done.

This one was personally addressed, with three hand-written signatures from the deputy principal, a teacher and a faculty co-ordinator.

Oh, oh!

It was actually a good letter, headlined: “Letter of recommendation for Italian from Year 8 to Year 9″.

“Dear Mr & Mrs Gorey, Michael performed very well in Year 8 Italian. He has demonstrated the capability to study a second language. The faculty would like to recommend Michael for Year 9 Italian.”

It’s that time of year, of course, when high school students have to make subject choices.

The choices are fairly limited for Year 9, but they are still significant. Michael asked me to sign off on his subjects earlier this week and I initially refused.

That was because he didn’t include Italian.

I knew it was one of his best subjects. Also, I’ve always appreciated the value of a second language academically and personally, not that I achieved the results I should have myself in that regard.

For Michael it was a direct choice between Italian and music. He has never studied music seriously, but has an ambition to learn the guitar.

I tried persuading him it will help when he’s playing soccer for AC Milan to speak Italian, but he was adamant about music, and I relented.

The letter has given us something to think about.

Today I offered him private guitar lessons if he studies Italian.

I’m interested in the development of English, how regional variations evolved and where the language is heading.

For someone who has never undertaken formal academic study it’s probably unusual to be interested in linguistics, but I do find the subject stimulating.

The matter of -or/our spellings is something I feel qualified through experience to comment on.

At school we were taught to spell colour, flavour, etc with the -our ending; -or was considered American, heaven forbid.

I became a journalist in 1987 and the “style” at all Victorian newspapers I worked on was to favor -or endings.

Newspapers are commendably practical when it comes to language. Cadet reporters are taught to simplify how they write and to be as brief as possible.

I believed it was in that spirit that -or endings were preferred.

In the early 90s I undertook family history research. This involved many hours perusing old newspapers from the 19th century.

It surprised me that all those early papers (in Victoria) used the -or spelling. I wondered when and why -our became the school standard.

I meant to quote “Fowler’s Modern English Usage” and the “Cambridge English Style Guide” here, but I left them at work and won’t be in the office (if I can help it) for another week.

I read the references today and paraphrase them here.

Fowler spoke about -our having become the standard for words of French origin and -or for Latin, but conceded the source was unclear in many cases. I think Fowler believed -or was more sensible and I read somewhere he might have been overruled by his editor.

The Cambridge reference explained that Noah Webster simplified many of the English spellings in his American dictionary.

Canadians use both variations, as do Australians to a lesser extent. Mention was made of newspaper style, emphasising it was mostly Victorian to prefer -or.

As a student I believed it was loyal Australian to use -our because -or was American. As a journalist I became comfortable with -or and that’s now my preferred personal style.

That brings me to -ise or -ize. I realise that’s another inconsistency and I’ll organize my thoughts before posting again.

Thanks to Johanna, curious readers might like to visit the Spelling Society website.

Some Australians cling to what they believe is English spelling for words like “programme” and anything that potentially ends in -our like “colour”.

I think they are mistaken. Researching newspapers from the 1890s for my family history a few years ago the consistent style was to spell “color” etc.

That’s possibly because newspapers are leaders in simplifying the language. They write in the vernacular without being crude.

For that reason I say the Ellenbrook sub-branch of the RSL is on the wrong track in their motion to demand the Macquarie Dictionary drop the word Anzac, and by extension, that newspapers also use ANZAC instead of Anzac.

It’s reported in The West Australian today the sub-branch objects to “faceless academics” (the dictionary wordmasters) influencing public opinion. It’s actually the other way around.

ANZAC of course stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

A good sub-editor once instilled in me a hatred of acronyms. They are evil, she said, and should be replaced wherever possible except when they are easily understood and accepted, such as AFL and ACTU.

Many acronyms are obscure jargon and in print they stand out like dog’s balls.

ANZAC could survive though, according to her ruthless definition, because it’s widely understood and in common usage, but it really does leap off a page.

Besides, Anzac has come to represent more than just the Army Corp which landed at Gallipoli. It says something about the Australian character. It’s an adjective as well as an acronym.

Sorry Ellenbrook RSL, but Anzac is here to stay.

I’m not surprised The Vatican has a web site; it’s just I had never thought about it before and had never visited.

As The Inquisitr reveals, a Latin section was only recently added.

I’ve never studied Latin and I was born just after the Second Vatican Council, so I never experienced a Latin Mass.

I can appreciate the value of Latin. From Roman times to the Industrial Revolution it was the universal language.

It was never really replaced in that role, although the European aristocracy spoke French for several centuries and English today is ubiquitous.

So it’s good to see Latin being preserved as a means of communication in the Church. I can’t understand a word of it, but here is the link.

While browsing the English section of The Vatican’s site I came across the Pope’s message to Burma.

Deeply saddened by news of the tragic aftermath of the recent cyclone, the Holy Father expresses his heartfelt sympathy. With prayers for the victims and their families, he invokes God’s peace upon the dead and divine strength and comfort upon the homeless and all who are suffering. Confident that the international community will respond with generous and effective relief to the needs of your countrymen, His Holiness asks you to convey his solidarity and concern to the civil authorities and to all the beloved people of Myanmar.

The tragic events in Burma have been well publicised, but given the brutality and isolation of the regime I’m afraid it will be soon forgotten.

It was never good, but it’s become worse. I struggled to write neatly in primary school; now it’s impossible.

I can print letters okay, but cursive script is atrocious.

Today I wrote Christmas messages for some key contacts.

I could barely read them myself. I blame two factors:

1) Typing. I’ve typed far more than I’ve written over the past 20 years. I barely write at all now, except short notes and my signature.

2) Work. I never learned proper shorthand, but developed my own version. It gives me useful notes of conversations, meetings and interviews. Only I can read it, so it’s almost like writing in code!

So, between lack of use and “writing” an alternative script I figure that I’ve lost the art of cursive script. Whether I need to rediscover it is debatable.

I travelled in 1991 and the perception was emerging then. It doesn’t surprise me that it’s worse today.

Seventeen years ago the “arrogant” tourists were Americans and Germans. Australians were considered brash but friendly.

Australians from my era (cusp of baby boomers and generation x) had a unique gift for adapting to foreign environments, a bit like the chameleon character in Woody Allen’s film Zelig. You hear that in Greg Norman’s American accent.

My own accent modified in Africa to sound Oxford or Cape Town English. I recall meeting many people who expressed surprise that I was Australian.

I think young Australians today are just so incredibly confident it sometimes comes across as arrogance when they travel.

Australians aren’t arrogant, but I think it’s a trait of generation Y to appear so, and that’s what people overseas are seeing the most in Aussies.

We are an insular society though, and probably the most monolingual western country on earth. Europeans generally speak two or three languages. North Americans are likely to know some Spanish or French. Not us, which is a shame I reckon.

The Israeli journalists who questioned the Dutch Foreign Minister using a web translator must be extremely embarrassed.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry isn’t too happy either. “How could this email possibly have been sent? These journalists have sparked a major, major incident,” said an Israeli official. “Sure he can’t understand many of the questions, because the English is so bad. But he is being asked about the sleeping arrangements of his mother!”

Apparently the failed translation attempt was from Hebrew to English. I wonder what they would have got from a Hebrew-Dutch service if they’d found one.

I find the web translators useful for gaining a basic understanding of web sites, especially those in German and Dutch, which I partly understand anyway. That’s all I use them for.