You Can't Use a Spelling Trick to Fool God

This blog being about words, we need to define our subject. You may think, “But everyone knows what a word is.” Not so

When I was a freshman in a Western Civilization lecture, my eyes happened to wander to the notebook of young coed as she penned a note that included the word “G-d.”

When the bell rang I asked, “Why did you spell “God” that way?”

She answered, “The Bible forbids us to write the name of the Lord.”

Being a wise-ass then—as some people say I still am—I replied, “Won’t God know what you meant. After all, ‘G-d’ is just another way of writing ‘God.’”

“Go to hell,” she said. Obviously my classmate had no clue about the true nature of words.

“But she was just a student,” you might argue. “This blog is for sophisticated adults, who aren’t so naïve.”

Yeah? Not long ago, my hometown newspaper quoted a local politician as saying, “I don’t give a f**k what people think about…”

In a letter to the editor I asked, “Why did you spell ‘fuck’ with asterisks? Isn’t the standard spelling ‘fuck”?

The editor printed my letter—courageously with “fuck” spelled correctly—and then noted that the asterisks were used to avoid offending prudish readers. I wondered: Wouldn’t prudish readers—who are as intelligent as the rest of us— recognize “f**k” as just a variant spelling of “fuck”?

So what have we learned? A word is an arbitrary symbolic structure that points to something outside itself. “Air” for example, refers to the stuff you’re breathing in and out as you read this blog. Spell it “ayer” and it still keeps you alive. “Blog” refers to the words you’re reading as you breathe the air in and out. Little is changed if I spell it “blogg.”

If you want a famous example: When NAKED AND THE DEAD was first published, censors printed each instance of “fuck” as “fug.”

I say, “Fug that.” Gertrude Stein might have put it more delicately:
A word is a word is a word.

Euphemism, Flatulence, and Style

According to the New World Dictionary, "euphemism"--from the Greek elments eu, "good" + pheme, "voice-- is "the use of a word or phrase that is less expressive or direct but considered less distateful, less offensive, etc. than another.

To my way of thinking, deliberately choosing language that is "less expressive or direct" is far more offensive than any word could be. Euphemism smacks of obfuscation, cowardice, and--in the extreme--just plain lying. So, for example, we have a "Department of Defense" instead of a "War Department." We speak of "collateral damage" instead of "innocent victims."

Which brings us to "flatulence," a word that we can say on the radio--no problem--but we can't say "fart" without getting into big trouble. Weird because "fart" refers to the exact same noisy phenomenon as flatulence.

Why can't we say "fart" or "shit" or "fuck" on the radio? Do those words actually offend anyone more than "flatulence," "excrement," or "intercourse"? If you want to talk about offense, let's start with the pricks (:penises" if you prefer) who devise tax schemes that soak the poor to benefit the rich.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against "flatulence," per se. I'm glad it's in our language. I happily included it in "Words of a Feather, where I showed the close relationship between "flatulence" and "inflation"--both words deriving from the Latin word "flare" meaning "to blow."

If I were writing a poem about farts and needed a three-syllable synonym for the sake of the rhythm, I'd jump up and down in thankfulness for "flatulence." But I'm against employing that word simply to separate me--via indirection--from reality.

In case you don't find the above argument persuasive, let me bring in the big gun Mark Twain, who worked at a time when popular writers were often paid by the word. Rather than talk about the power of clear, concise, direct writing--a la Strunk and White--Twain playfully explained: "I never write "metropolis" for seven cents because I can get the same price for "city." I never write "policeman" because I can get the same money for "cop."

Mission Statement + an Invitation to You

I'm all for individualism, but I don't go as far as Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead. I don't believe in the reality of the "lone inventor." Every creator, no matter how much of a genius, is part of some group, whether recognized or not.

Groupthink, then, will be the foundation of this blog. To put it more positively: I invite you to join me in a quest to understand words and then use the understanding to improve our lives.