Provide water services? No, just provide us with water

        A senior colleague at The Guardian where I was introduced to the exciting (and exacting) career in scribbling used to reprimand us over the use of what he referred to as passenger words. “Don’t use even a single word that doesn’t add value to what you’re saying in your sentence,” WM would tell novices like me.

Why, we seemed to believe that you needed to use words beyond the expression of fact, maybe to show readers that you aren’t a mere messenger of truth, that you’re an educated person too. What nonsense!

For some inexplicable reasons, many of our media men and women have fallen into the trap of verbosity (which includes the use of passenger words). Which is why, when it’s time for us to choose new leaders, we don’t go to an election; we go to an ELECTION EXERCISE!

In story appearing in certain weekly recently, for instance, a scribbler, purporting to quote what a programme coordinator of an international NGO said, writes: “Patients and pregnant women were forced to walk long distances of up to three kilometres in search of water SERVICES…” Oh yeah, water services! Why not simply: …in search of WATER?

According to activists working for NGOs, our children don’t need to attend school; they need to ACESS EDUCATIONAL SERVICES!

Enough of NGO-speak bashing and now, let’s share linguistic gems unearthed over the past week and so, here we go:

On page 4 of the Sunday, tabloid version of the huge and colourful broadsheet (Dec 3-9 edition), there’s a story entitled “Stakeholders decry impact of gambling on youths” in which the scribbler, purporting to quote an expert, writes: “Whether this gambling person wins or loses, he/she will continue to bet, HOPPING they would one day win big.”

“Hopping” is the present participle form of the verb “HOP”, which means to move by jumping on one foot. Of course, our colleague had in mind the word “HOPE”, whose present participle form is HOPING (single p).

The scribbler falls in the same trap when she writes in her last para: “Gambling behaviour (sic) may be associated with poverty, peer pressure or as a COPPING mechanism for negative or stressful situation.” “Copping” is from the verb “cop”, which means to receive or suffer something unpleasant. Of course, that isn’t what the scribbler had in mind; he had in mind COPE, which means “to deal successfully with something difficult.”

Besides the hop for hope and cop for cope goof, our colleague also offered us the following in her good story:

• “He added that gambling may also lead to mental disorder, making people hope they WILL WIN LIFE by gambling.”

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