Defining your credibility
“Language is also part of DR’s credibility” reads the headline of an article written by Jesper Termansen, users editor at Denmarks Radio. The article relates to people’s complaints about bad language and poor grammar. Stressing from Termansen that a determined effort by DR to improve the quality of language must benefit DR’s credibility. This is a clear indicator that your language is part of your credibility.
To equate correct language with the sender’s credibility is something that readers/listeners/viewers do either consciously or unconsciously. They think that when the author doesn’t have a handle on “lay” and “lie” or can’t figure out compound nouns, there’s probably a lot more in the author’s text that isn’t right either. Unfair, but true.
This blog post provides some very basic tools that can both help you get a handle on grammar and write better. At the bottom you will find links to pages where you can get much more and more thorough guidance on avoiding the linguistic pitfalls.
DR’s style guide is a language toolbox
Through the years, Denmarks Radio has been very attentive to correct and captivating language. So the reader/listener/viewer does not lose interest during an article or broadcast. One of the more extensive collections of tools for DR journalists in recent years is the 2017 Style Guide. Over 140 pages of approximately the same format as PowerPoint slides. DR provides a linguistic handout to its journalists that also contains plenty of advice for clear and precise language others can learn from:
- Hold back with subject expressions if your texts aim at a broad audience. If it is a karate club that wants to reach out to potential club members who have not practiced martial arts before. it might be a bad idea to write about what the kata syllabus consists of and what the instructors’ Dan degrees are. Stick to writing that you practice karate e.g. in the style art Goju-Ryu (with link to info on this) and that your instructors are black belts.
- Use active verbs. “As a member of X-Købing IF, you are supported throughout your football life and trained from U13 to the men’s series.” a slightly sleep-inducing text could sound. “Supported” and “trained” are passive verbs that weaken the sentence by hiding who it is that specifically supports and trains you. Active verbs create more life: “X-Købing IF supports you through out your football life and trains you from U13 to the men’s series.”
- For DR newsreaders, it’s good that a text is written in a mouthful– and what makes a text mouth-footed typically makes it easier to understand. Word choice plays a part here. The style guide has a large list of very formal words you can replace with some less formal ones. For example, “provided” can be replaced by “if, “furthermore” by “and”, and “likewise” by “also”.
Learn from Langå – translate with care
English is not everyone’s strong point. If your association’s website tries to target an international audience, you need to express yourself in English, and if you are not comfortable in the language, you run the risk of going wrong in translation. It has learned now defunct Langå Municipality.
In 1990, the municipality published a tourist brochure containing a German and an English translation of the same Danish text. Especially the English was less successful.
- “We pamper our guests” was translated as “We coddle our guests”,
- “During the Last Ice Age” became “During the last ices period”, and
- “The modern tourist will have service during the holidays – and be able to shop within a reasonable distance” was somehow to “The modern tourist wants service during their hollidaying – and be able to do business at a safe distance”.
So if, despite your uncertainty with the English language, you still choose to engage in content written in English, make sure you regularly confer yourself with the dictionary and grammatical rules – and then just grab a friend who can read it all through.
A few dictionaries for further reading
Writing about all the linguistic pitfalls would be too much for just a blog post, so here are a number of places you can seek help both in terms of grammar and spelling:
- English grammar for dummies: Hundreds of sample problems and quizzes to test your grammar skills. https://www.dummies.com/education/language-arts/grammar/
- Oxford dictionary: Behind the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary’s creation is the fascinating story of a ‘simple teacher’ with a brilliant mind. It has changed the passion for language teaching which has influenced the way the world learns English. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/
- Thesaurus:Thesaurus.com is the world’s largest and most trusted free online thesaurus. https://www.thesaurus.com/