October 18, 2006

Plain english


Once I attended an English Language course. The lecturer was a Canadian. He was peeved at people using phrases like: ‘in the Singapore context’ and ‘at this point of time’. His reason was “you don’t need to use unnecessary fanciful phrases when simple words will do.”


Why ‘in the Singapore context’, just ‘in Singapore’ will do, he said. As for ‘at this point of time’ it can be replaced with ‘now’ or ‘at the moment’. Or it could be omitted altogether.

I don’t think you see these 2 phrases being used often. Came across this about 2 weeks ago: ‘At this point in time, the offer still stands’.In this case I think the lecturer is right. That phrase can be replaced or omitted.

3 comments:

Victor said...

Agreed. (Can it be any plainer or simpler than that? Haha.)

Anonymous said...

True! The more you write, the more misunderstandings you might create. That's why I hate it when my in my previous company my colleague come over to my desk to help me amend my emails. So many flowery and repeating phrases that I had to delete all of them after they left!

Anonymous said...

Here is my story - When I was in Secondary school, I came across an English author teaching the skill of summarising a piece lengthy essay. He essay was about how Colombus found America. He shortened the whole story to: "Colombus sailed west and discovered the New World". I hope we have not lost the skill of simplifing things.