Most of us feel strongly about things at times. The war in Iraq, the fate of the planet, who took the last biscuit. But not many of us get worked up over alphabetical order, writes Susan Butler.
Most of us feel strongly about things at times. The war in Iraq, the fate of the planet, who took the last biscuit. But not many of us get worked up over alphabetical order. Not many of us realise, to begin with, that there is more than one kind of alphabetical order.
How to explain this without sending you all to sleep? The following sequence of words is arranged in the manner that is the norm in The Macquarie Dictionary: bush, bushbaby, bush-bash, bush breakfast, bushed, bushwhacker, bush wire.
This is a very computerate style where spaces and hyphens are ignored and you go letter by letter.
Other dictionaries organise the presentation differently, grouping all the words that are spaced or hyphenated under the first key item, so all the bush compounds of this kind might appear at bush, and the compounds that are set solid would have their own headword. The order in this system would be: bush, bush-bash, bush breakfast, bush wire, bushbaby, bushed, bushwhacker.
There are arguments for and against, but at the Macquarie we prefer the letter-by-letter arrangement. As we all know, English changes its mind about whether words are set solid, hyphenated or separated, so the letter-by-letter order avoids the change that would happen if we decided, for example, to spell bushwhacker as bush whacker.
You are probably still with me so far – differences abound in this world and people can argue up a storm for various points of view. But we have one unusual caller who adds a moral dimension to this. Her response to difference is to say that there is only one correct way. “Why do you people take everything to the lowest common denominator?” she exclaims with passionate feeling.
It seems that we attach connotations to everything we touch. Seeing difference leads us immediately to decisions about right and wrong, and inevitably to associations with people that we love or hate. All on very little information.
Another correspondent asked about the spelling of potatoes and tomatoes. Should this be potatos and tomatos and was the spelling in -oes an American corruption? There we go, giving way to the Yanks again who, as a chorus lead by Prince Charles would say, can’t speak English anyway. We blame the Americans for many things in our spelling and usage, but to blame them for potatoes seems a trifle unfair. It is a curious twist that the plural in -os has become so common that some of us see the -oes ending as the exception.
A flawed heritage?
Les Murray visited recently, and was telling me that someone had described him as a “heritage poet”. He didn’t know whether this was a good thing or not. I said I thought it sounded nice, in the same vein as a national treasure, but I then looked into it and discovered that it means that Les is on the other side of that wall that separates the new media from the old. The heritage media are the ones that are fading away. Les looked a little bit disconcerted, but rallied in time to give a reading of his poetry and shows not the least sign of fading away.
Cliché as a rhetorical weapon
I approve of our politicians being diligent and energetic in the pursuit of their goals, but I do wish Mr Rudd didn’t roll up his sleeves quite so often. Three times in one announcement is a bit excessive.
There does seem to be a rhetorical strategy involved here, that the repetition of a somewhat old-fashioned cliché will engender trust. Perhaps it failed because he didn’t go quite far enough. Three times was merely irritating, but six times would have reduced me to a sentimental mush.
It is important when creating an effect to make it clear to the audience that it is intended. I hadn’t thought of the cliché as a device to be used in this way, but if there are those of us who respond at an emotional level to alphabetical order, then manipulating the feelgood factor of the cliché should be a snack.
Susan Butler is the publisher of The Macquarie Dictionary
Judy Horacek is a freelance cartoonist and writer; horacek.com.au
