cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Then there are those instances when, in writing, we manage to box ourselves into a corner with such irritating repetitions as, ‘Her opinion is, is that it will never work’; ‘The dealer admitted he had had the sideboard in his shop for two months’; ‘Not that that would bother her in the least’ and so on.
Finally, take care with double negatives, distant cousins of pleonasm. Although they can be useful they are also often confusing. The bomb attack was not unexpected. If you lived in a terrorist-ridden area, where to be bombed sooner or later would be no great surprise, the double negative not unexpected is better for conveying a suspended kind of expectation than was expected or was no surprise.
The puzzle for many writers is, why is I don’t know nothing about it considered to be unacceptable, while the Prime Minister is not unmindful of the damage already suffered . . is grammatically respectable? The answer lies in the modifying power of the combination; not uncommon, for example, does not mean exactly the same as common but something between common and uncommon – ‘a little more common than you might think’. The trouble is that often, double negatives can leave the readers trying to work out what is meant, so they are probably best avoided.
Witter + Waffle = Gobbledegook
They never shorten anything – that would make it less important – they inflate the language in a way they certainly oughtn’t to, indeed everything goes into officialese, a kind of gobbledygook invented by the sort of people who never open a (hardcover) book.
GOBBLEDEGOOK
That comment by poet Gavin Ewart refers to the propensity of ignorant people to witter and waffle and to inflate plain language into a meaningless, pretentious form of expression we recognise as gobbledegook (or gobbledygook).
‘Witter words’ are a key ingredient of gobbledook. Our language is liberally sprinkled with them – expressions that clog a sentence and add neither information nor meaning.
In this, wittering and witter words differ from circumlocution, which adds information, but in the wrong order – usually delaying the main point. In our death notice for the Rev A M Bennett (see page) the reader has to plod through 53 words before arriving at ‘breathed his last’. But those 53 words did at least tell us the place and time of death, how long he had been a vicar, the name of the church, the extent of his influence and the reaction in his parish to the news.
Witter words, on the other hand, tell us nothing. Some are more often heard in speech (especially speeches by pundits and politicians) but many appear in writing.
For a classic example of wittering, loaded with witter words, we could hardly do better than this passage from a speech by former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Mr Hawke had so perfected his ability to say almost nothing in the maximum number of words that the style became known as ‘Hawkespeak’:
And that tends to mean at times if you want to put it, there is no point in running away from it, it tends to mean at times that there’s a lack of specificity, or if you want to put it another way, there’s a range of options which are put which are there to accommodate that indisputable fact about the social democratic parties such as ours.
National Times, November 22, 1985
Here’s a compilation of witter words and phrases, many of which you’ll recognise:
Witter Warning List
as it were
as such (as in according to the rules, as such, they do not preclude . . .)
absolutely (typically used instead of yes)
abundantly, abundantly clear
actually
all things being equal
as a matter of fact
as far as I am concerned
as of right now
at the end of the day
at this moment in time
a total of (as in a total of forty-two applicants instead of forty-two applicants)
basically
by definition
by and large (has anyone ever worked out the meaning of this?)
currently
curiously enough
during the period from (instead of from January 16 to . . .)
each and every
existing
extremely
funnily enough (usually precedes something that is not funny at all)
good and proper
good and ready
having said that (get ready for the contradiction!)
I am here to tell you
I am of the opinion that
I am the first to admit (how can you be so sure?)
I have to say, here and now
if you like
in a manner of speaking
in due course
in other words
in point of fact
in the final analysis
in view of the fact that
it goes without saying that (but I’ll say it anyway)
I would like to say (and I certainly will)
I would like to take this opportunity to
last but not least
let me just say, right here and now
let us just be clear about this
may I make so bold as to say
many a time; many’s the time that
more than enough; more than a little
never cease to wonder
(to) name but a few
needless to say
no two ways about it
not to mention