A reader was amused to tell me this week she received a hand-delivered letter from Perth and Kinross Council advising maintenance will be carried out on her home.
The letter promised further information would be forthcoming. It said: “The contractor will letter your property”.
Letter your property?
Why would anyone choose this arrangement of words? They must realise it isn’t proper English.
Why couldn’t they have said: “The contractor will inform you of the details”? And surely it should be the house owner who gets the letter? Some properties can’t read.
The author did not consult a dictionary and find “letter” used as a verb. No serious dictionary allows that.
And with the authoritative Fowler’s English Usage by my elbow, I can confirm it does not list “letter” as a verb meaning “to send a letter”. The only usage as a verb is “to letter a sign or object; the act of lettering; putting letters on to an object”.
This communique, therefore, appears to promise recipients that someone will etch a message on to their house.
When language isn’t used properly it reflects upon the whole organisation.
This makes me wonder if P&K Council can be trusted. If they are so sloppy they can’t even write a letter correctly, are they similarly slapdash when undertaking maintenance jobs?
Do they confuse workers by instructing: “use a narrowly conical metal pin with helical thread” when they mean: “use a wood screw”?
I’d like to ask the council why they lurched into this strange form of English when the intention should have been to be clearly understood?
Is there anyone in your communications department who knows what nouns and verbs are, and how grammar holds them together?
I would suggest that having someone who knows a little bit about language might be a boon to a communications department.
Perhaps the author of this letter thought they sounded clever. But the aim of a communications department isn’t to appear clever. The reason they exist is to produce material that is understood as quickly, easily, and completely as possible.
The way to achieve this is to use the English language simply, to eschew fads like verbing, and to tailor the message to the reader.
This should preclude the jargon-laden form of English that is bandied about among chai latte-sipping poseurs who love to tell each other: “Ya, I major in Comms” (they would award themselves the capital C, believe me).
All governmental communications should be written in plain, simple English.
P&K Council, send yourself a stern letter of censure. Preferably using words you can understand.
Word of the week
Sopor (noun)
An abnormally deep sleep; a stupor. EG: “If a council document is so badly worded or boring that it plunges you into a sopor, it was probably written by their Comms team.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
