Junk English [Paperback]

Ken Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 2001

In Junk English, Ken Smith takes on the misuse, abuse, and downright decay of the English language. His weapons? A sharp wit and an almost frightening grasp of the depths of the decline. Written so that the ordinary writer and speaker of English can readily see how the manipulation of words keeps the culture in a haze of misunderstandings and vagueness, Junk English covers the whole spectrum of the problem. In short sections such as “Butt-Covering,” “Feeble Beginnings,” “God Is on Our Team,” “Sports Talk,” and “Touchy-Feely Therapy Talk,” Smith shows how everyone from Madison Avenue to middle America has succumbed to euphemisms, mindless jargon, and weasel words. The book’s inclusion of basic advice on how to avoid lazy language shows there’s at least some hope for the future.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Junk English is the linguistic equivalent of junk food," says Ken Smith. "Ingest it long enough and your brain goes soft." Given the ubiquity of "junk English"--which includes pretentious, meaningless, euphemistic, and bloated language--we all likely suffer already from mushy minds. In Junk English, Smith uses real examples to illustrate 120 types of language abuse, including cheapened words (visionary, revolutionary), distraction modifiers (low, just, only), "fat-ass phrases," "free-for-all verbs," "jargon gridlock," "mirage words," "palsy-walsy pitches," "secret snob words," and "tiny type messages." If linguistic abuses were ticketable offenses, Officer Smith would fill his quota before he reached the second paragraph. While the greatest perpetrators of junk English may be business and advertising folk, we're all guilty. So take this as a reminder to say what you mean, and mean what you say, and leave the battlefield language and spiked clichés behind. --Jane Steinberg

From Publishers Weekly

If George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" were updated and expanded to address today's lexical and syntactic problems the tendency to make verbs out of nouns and nouns out of verbs, a general fondness for business-speak and verbal inflation, just to name a few it might look like Junk English. Ken Smith's (Mental Hygiene; Ken's Guide to the Bible) slim volume is a quirky, pleasingly judgmental dictionary of language crimes. From "invisible diminishers" ("virtually flawless") to technology jargon ("It is simply not natural to use feedback for opinion, [or] synthesis for combination"), Smith will delight language purists with his wit while confirming their grave assessments of contemporary speech.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Blast Books; First Edition edition (November 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0922233233
• ISBN-13: 978-0922233236
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #594,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amusing Corrective, December 13, 2001

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Junk English (Paperback)

Ken Smith, in the new critique of sloppy language _Junk English_ (Blast Books), continues an attack that has lasted over a hundred years on a pet peeve of mine, the misuse of the word "unique": "_Unique_, a word that means one of a kind, is freely bandied about by advertising copywriters and others who wish to sell with a certain high status. That so few things really are unique is precisely what gives the word its power. _Unique_'s veracity has been shaved away by phrases such as _practically unique_, _virtually unique_, _somewhat unique_, _most unique_, and so on, which truthfully mean _not_ unique. This is not to say that the products or positions or people being touted are not notable, special, exceptional, fabulous, marvelous, worthy, or rare, but it is highly unlikely that they are in fact unique."

This is not a grammar book, but one which looks at current shoddy word use as a human foible: "It is sometimes innocent, sometimes lazy, sometimes well intended, but most often it is a trick we play on ourselves to make the unremarkable seem important... Junk English is the linguistic equivalent of junk food - ingest it long enough and your brain goes soft." Smith's book is a compilation of examples which he has spotted in print or broadcast, and he has obviously a good ear and eye for them; Smith admits that he uses such phrases, just as everyone does, and reading this book is an exercise in humility, for sometimes only after Smith points out a common usage does it seem junk. For instance, under the section "People Reduction," Smith points out that "people" and "person" are disappearing from usage, replaced by "individual" or "individuals." Even worse, we have become not people, but consumers: "The nearly inescapable _consumers_ has become a cold synonym for many more accurate and human terms. We are gradually being turned into creatures whose only defining characteristic is that we shop: 'Consumers should check their medicine cabinet once a year for medications that are expired or are no longer being used.'" In a section on "Free-for-all-verbs", doesn't point out that for years some people have "gifted" presents to others, but his examples go from the almost acceptable "The parents took it upon themselves to see to it that all the kids were journaling every day" to the completely horrid "We're efforting to work this out." A relatively new verb "privatize" means to make a previously governmental function into a business to make money. Everyone likes privacy, and everyone likes smaller government, so there has been a popular push to privatize, but would you not think twice before sending your child to a school run as a business to make money? It is one of the many examples of Orwellian Newspeak in the book; it would be more honest, Smith shows, to create the word "profitize."

It's a darned shame that _Junk English_ is not going to be read by those copywriters and speechwriters who are the perpetrators of so many of the abuses catalogued herein. It seems as if pomposity will always trump plainness. Nonetheless, the book is instructive, and it will put those of us who care about words on our guard. It is a deliberately short book, and so some of the atrocities that are your own pet peeves are likely to be omitted. As a picture of how we are using and misusing English at the turn of the millennium, and as an entertaining and funny look at language in need of correction, Smith's book is unique. But not very.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars We're a Dying Breed, October 25, 2002

By 

Penner (Brattleboro, VT USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Junk English (Paperback)

This book is a fascinating and hilarious and at the same time somewhat melancholy examination of where our language is heading and what our culture has done to it. The "militant grammarians" among us, who daily bemoan the casual butchering of linguistic precision, will gasp with wonder and relief that we are not the only ones who notice these barbarities.

Our second reaction, however, is to realize that though we may think we know our language well (and we probably do, compared to our peers), we don't know it nearly as well as we should, or as well as Ken Smith does. We'll see examples in this book of lexical misdeeds that we ourselves commit on a regular basis, and we'll fret, "How can I continue to call myself a stickler for grammar when my perspicacity is not perfect and complete?"

The third reaction, I think, is depression. Smith is certainly right about Junk English, its origins and its consequences. But who cares? Aside from those of us who pay attention (and we're a precious tiny little minority), accuracy in written and spoken English is declasse. I often feel that advertising, PR propaganda, political reportage, and corporate communications are written largely by morons for other morons, so everyone's satisfied. What is to be done? Smith isn't trying to provide a solution to our language's ills, but his focusing on the problem does raise the question.

My mild criticism of the book consists in Smith's apparent lack of patience with whimsy, colloquialism, and artistic embellishment. Sometimes, when we neglect to use the most economical or efficient word, we do so on purpose -- to use the "au courant" argot of a specific constituency, to dress up a sentence for the simple love of language, or just for fun. Junk English seems to be more about using words and phrases without a thorough understanding of their meaning or implication -- but this book occasionally steps beyond this into written inefficiency.

Writers who are concerned about getting caught themselves in the morass of Junk English, however, should keep a copy of this book around. After you finish a draft, flip through its pages and see if anything you've done is named there.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Standard, April 1, 2002

By 

An Avid Fan (Macungie, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Junk English (Paperback)

Excellent. Strunk & White on steroids. And a lot easier to reference than Strunk & White. The alphabetical system makes a lot more sense. Required reading.