The Ultimate Spellchecker & Councillese

12/06/2009 by Steve Tierney.

The Ultimate Spellchecker
My English is not too bad, I hope.  I’ve done a fair bit of writing (some of it professional) in my life and I like to think that I can string a sentence together without being too terrified of the consequences.  That all changed this week when my friend “Samuel Brakespeare” in the Cambs Times column of the same name pointed out that I had spelt fete incorrectly as “fate”.  A blog reader had emailed this to me already so, as of publication, I had already amended the entry (and thought it had escaped other notice).  Just goes to show, the web is a devious mistress. 

I ask you, dear reader, if there is a more powerful spellchecker than the fear that the all-seeing eye of the press is watching your words as they appear with one eyebrow cocked and the glint of a schoolmaster eager for any slip of the keypad.  Now, as I look at the “publish” button on my blog software I can feel the dread creeping in.  Has a word escaped my notice?  Perhaps I have used a semi-colon where a period would be better?  Has an apostrophe been used to indicate a plural?  Have I misunderstood the difference between grammar and spelling? 

Of course, despite my wry excuses, Sam was right.  I did spell fate (sic) wrong.  The Cambs Times helped me get it right in the end.  I hope this is the start of a long and successful period of cooperation between that august publication and I.   All constructive criticism is actually very welcome.  I’ve got a lot to learn as a new county councillor.  Jokes aside, I appreciate the input very much. 

In the spirit of cooperation; in the Cambs Times Diary this week under the heading “Son thing of a problem” our erstwhile columnist might like to check paragraph 2.  “A thoroughly decent chap whom I met him last year” seems wrong to me.  I’m surprised the editor didn’t catch that. 

Councillese
I speak a little Spanish and a little French.  Enough to get by on vacations: “Hola, me llamo es Steve.  Dos cerveza por favour” and the like.  But I’m not one of these people that pick up new languages with great ease and so I was a little taken aback by my first training course at Cambs County Council this morning.  The (very nice, very helpful, I must stress) senior staff put on a seminar which included the obligatory powerpoint slide presentation and a “carousel” system (a bunch of important staff sitting at different tables that you meet and ask questions of as you mingle around the room.)  It was all very enlightening and a great deal of extremely useful information was fed to us newcomers.  But I was struck by the bizarre new language that all these council staff speak.  Let’s call it Councillese for sake of a more imaginative name.  Anybody who has sat on a committee, or been involved in the corporate scene will have heard this sort of thing before, but the strange world of County Council has its whole own diallect.  Everybody is interfacing with one another, attempting to engage and cooperate with partners, while streamlining their engagement with external bodies to maximise choice and facilitate improved outcomes.  Que?  After a while the words begin to wash into your brain and the sentences start to snap together and take recognisable shape.  It’s surprising how quickly you catch the bug.  When we took a break I even considered using a recepticle to incorporate a caffeinated beverage into my nutritional schedule.  But instead, I had a cup of tea.  Which was very welcome.
  
  

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