Say what?

I've received a variety of queries, along with examples of jargoneering social service bureaucrats, this time around. Perhaps we should first remind ourselves that human service agencies are often far from the worst offenders. Consider this gem that illustrates how schools can make the typical social service agency look like a model of clear writing. It is an advertisement for a teacher that a friend sent me:

"Proactive, self-starting facilitator required to empower cohorts of students and enable them to access the curriculum...."

But back to our line of work. A friend of mine has noticed a new phrase intended to deflect responsibility or even knowledge of a problem. The commissioner of her East Coast human service agency was being questioned about an unpleasant mess at the agency and simply told the legislators: "I am not advised on that." The president's nominee for attorney general gave a similar response to the Senate's Judiciary Committee, so it looks like we may be in for a trend.

Another trendy usage that seems to be found in all sorts of places is the use of "edge." A social worker I know told me that her agency now trains her colleagues in "edge values" while I'm told of New York politicians describing a proposed human service program as an "edge project." And in my home town of Austin, a local TV news show is now called Fox News Edge. I would feel silly doing so, but I want to ask the TV screen: "And your point is?" Well, as a famous counterculture bumper sticker in Austin used to read: "Onward Through the Fog!"

In the category of good hypocritical advice, that is, advice I often fail to follow, a director of a large state agency asked me to mention the use of "try to" and "try and" instead of simply saying "try." The latter is clearly best when you are writing but, especially in the South, it is easy to fall back into everyday speech as in "I'm going to try and call her."

I was asked by a fellow participant at a legal conference to try to put the goal of avoiding gobbledygook and writing in plain English into a simple sentence. I told him the best I could do was to say we should strive for everyday but accurate words, the active voice, shorter sentences, and personal pronouns that speak directly to the intended reader, all written with a definite audience in mind. Not, I grant you, as memorable as the country song where the cowboy pines for "older whisky, prettier girls, faster horses and more money." Maybe the plain English movement just needs its own Hank Williams.

Paul Leche is special counsel for appeals at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission