everyone wants to write well

Let's start with something drastic:

Image of the book 'Rich style, poor style', by Luis Magrinyà.

EDITORIAL DISCUSSION

Let's continue with something just as drastic, but embellished and in block letters:

Image of the book 'Rich style, poor style', by Luis Magrinyà.

EDITORIAL DISCUSSION

And now we go with the cuqui version:

Image of the book 'Rich style, poor style', by Luis Magrinyà.

EDITORIAL DISCUSSION

It is obvious that the first case, apart from being a warning, has little to do with the other two.

He follows, like them, the slogan of precision, which is essential in this type of communication, but he has not been concerned about distinguishing precision from abruptness.

Written by hand, with a thick marker, with a rebellious horizontal line, all in capital letters and with an ominously underlined signature, nothing in it reveals more than the warning of an authoritative authority.

He is aggressive, he has no time for nonsense, not even for accents.

It is a pure substitute for an oral message, oblivious —insolently, one might say— to the nuisances of the written word.

It fulfills its function, but shows no desire to write well.

The second shares all the drastic features of the first but is already a carefully printed message.

The sophistications of the written language have been activated.

The process has required time.

Time even to think that to

was a weaker verb, or more vulgar, than to

.

In this way he has achieved two things: ruining the slogan of precision, creating distractions in the public;

and be comical, creating misunderstandings.

But the intention was to write well: in fact, very well.

In the third there is not the slightest trace of drasticity.

He understands the precision slogan, but he also understands that precision alone can be not only abrupt but insufficient.

He knows that the "neighbors" need to be persuaded.

There has to be a way to formalize precision, he tells himself, and, thinking, thinking, he discovers that there are several.

He chooses the most cordial: let it be clear that he is not looking for a fight.

You have to be very careful what you say.

This

with which he starts disarms anyone.

He chooses the verb

(the music) instead of

because it is more technical and kind of more polite.

There is some confusion of concordance (

for

) that betrays urgency, but not even the

(quite passive-aggressive) nor the final underline are violent.

Just in case, everything is finished off with a sweet, common, convincing graphic expression belonging to another medium that is identified with familiarity: an emoji that repeats the idea of ​​supplication.

Persuasive rhetoric gets its trumps.

The message is, on the other hand, very attentive to the punctuation, which is irreproachable.

All of these ads are aware that they are directed at a community.

They know they will be read, that they will have an audience.

Apart from the interest in making themselves understood, the second two have also believed that to address the community you have to take care of the expression, the formality, that nothing is worth anything.

Not only do you have to choose the words, but also the tone: since the community exists, you have to find a way to treat it.

The work certainly has an ethical dimension.

That is why the first one has such an unpleasant effect: not only are they going to cut off our water but they also tell us roughly.

It is as if they do not respect us, and after all whoever wrote it and those of us who read it are part of the same community.

The processes to reach precision, persuasion and formality, if they are laborious, is largely because they presuppose the existence of codes.

Of course, the codes of writing well have existed for centuries: there is hardly any grammar, dictionary, or user manual that is not normative in one way or another.

There are even style books!

It is a triumph of our education that we are aware of such guides.

The problem is that really knowing the written codes —and let's not say their evolution, their mutability— requires a certain dedication, that is, more work.

So consciousness generally falls back on the unspoken codes, on what it has traditionally or commonly heard and internalized is correct and "sounds good," even if the tradition, unbeknownst to us, has been superseded or even wrong all along.

We have time to think about writing well;

less to think about what this means.

It is understandable, at least on a non-professional level, as is the case with these ads.

So that the community does not doubt that, although we are asking or ordering something, we have dedicated our interest and our appreciation to it, it is enough that the effort we have made is noted.

"Be noticed": a principle that will be repeated throughout this little book.

Writing is in itself an effort: we do it for the community and we hope, to a greater or lesser degree, that the community will recognize us.

That the effort then starts from questionable, outdated or directly imaginary codes whose effect can be simply ridiculous is the least of it;

It is not necessary to enter into delicacies or deep reflections so that it is noticed that we have done it.

And being noticed is what we want.

Let's look at an example of what you notice:

Image of the book 'Rich style, poor style', by Luis Magrinyà.

EDITORIAL DISCUSSION

This poster for a community of neighbors is an apotheosis of the administrative code: it has an unmistakably official format, with a structure (several letterheads, title, white lines, heading justified to the right with the name of the authority, date and signature justified to the left) and typographic aids (italics, bold, underlining, color);

it is full of impersonal verbs (

,

) and reflexive passives that avoid the personalization of the addressee (

,

);

and begins with nothing less than a

.

The chosen language, the one that is believed to be relevant and will be more respected, is that of the bureaucracy, which is imitated even in its most condemned formulas.

For a long time, for example, the use of

as an "anaphoric element" (

, that is, in the elevator) has been scolded from everywhere.

The

of the Royal Spanish Academy prescribes at least since 2005:

—Despite its extension in administrative and journalistic language, its use as a mere anaphoric element is unnecessary and inadvisable

that is, as an element devoid of meaning whose only function is to recover another element of the aforementioned discourse;

can always be replaced

by other more properly anaphoric elements, such as demonstratives, possessives or personal pronouns;

Thus, in «He criticized the irregularities that had occurred during the assembly at the end of the assembly

(

[Eng.] 1.6.85), it could have been said

assembly or

;

in «They would be summoned in the same delegation in order to expand declarations and ratify

» (

[Méx.] 1.21.97), it should have simply been said to

But these precautions, these modifications of the code, are either not known or have been ignored.

The truth is that, despite academic admonitions, this use of

continues to be in the tacit code of solemnity (precisely because of "its extension in administrative and journalistic language") and from there it seems that no one can remove it:

Image of the book 'Rich style, poor style', by Luis Magrinyà.

EDITORIAL DISCUSSION

Returning to the first poster,

is not the only indication of ignorance of the non-trivial fact that the codes are reformed.

The demonstrative

appears with a tilde that the Royal Academy suppressed in its

of 2010, and we do not believe that the contravention is due to rebellion.

As far as the current codes are concerned, there are disorders in the concordance (

, instead of

) and in the syntax (the sentence that begins with

it does not have an express subject, but it is clearly not the same subject as the previous one, to which it is juxtaposed without even a comma): none of this contributes much to the purpose of clarity.

The statement, despite the underlining and bold, confusingly handles the information, branches it off with added conditions (

), is long and the final effect is clumping: it almost has to be read a couple of times to understand each other.

As stated it is quite a failure.

It is also true that sometimes failures are not so dramatic:

Image of the book 'Rich style, poor style', by Luis Magrinyà.

EDITORIAL DISCUSSION

Apart from the primary objective that the statement be understood (and if possible, measures are taken), a desire for style is detected in this notice.

In addition to the rich typographical resources (uppercase, underlined, bold, different letter sizes) there are endless nuances and connotations: a whole

of subsections, commas, loans from the pretentious language of politicians (

), lexicon something epic (

) and forced emulations of administrative prose, including some construction faults (

instead of

;

without

).

Someone might suspect that, after so much dedication, the result is somewhat clumsy.

The extreme entomological precision (

) has given rise to certain humorous notes written by hand, at the expense of some well-known

of the Spanish entertainment world.

We do not know if they read well in the reproduction of the photograph.

They say the following:

(With a letter:) There are 2 types:

• Norma Duval Blonde

• Blonde Ana Obregon

(With another letter:) The most harmful and repellent, those of the Esperanza Aguirre type.

He he

(With yet another letter:) beware!

In my house there is a Leticia Sabater with a lot of gear!

But in no case can these comments be considered an assault: they are rather a commendable case of community in misfortune, which is better taken with a good humor.

The purpose and means deployed are as willful as they are well-intentioned.

Even the latent principle of authority is not unfriendly to us.

The facts that are treated, the blonde cockroaches, unite us and are above language.

The message does its job.

Even so, we repeat: everyone wants to write well, and we intuitively cling to the recipe book that we have closest at hand.

describes this intuition and aspires, well, to redirect it.

look for it in your bookstore

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