Every good writer knows that you should write in the active voice. It's punchier and a hell of a lot more powerful.
(If you doubt that, try this experiment: The next time you are making love to your mate, look deep into his or her eyes, and say: 'You are so loved by me.' It won't have the same effect as 'I love you so much.')
At the airport yesterday, however, I heard a very interesting use of the active voice. And I'm not sure it was a good use, either.
I was walking by a very crowded gate that was jammed with very angry looking people, when the airline employee who was manning (it was a woman, actually, so I guess she was personning) the counter made an announcement:
'Ladies and Gentleman, we have just been informed that United Airlines flight 683 to Charlotte has cancelled.'
Now, isn't that an interesting choice of words? There are a couple of ways you could make that announcement:
1. The passive voice: 'United Airlines flight 683 to Charlotte has been cancelled.'
2. The strong active voice: 'United Airlines has cancelled flight 683 to Charlotte.'
3. Or the sissy-ass, cop-out, active-voice-but-not-really option: 'United Airlines flight 683 to Charlotte has canceled.'
It's no mystery why they chose option three. Taking the best option—option two—would tell people that the airline canceled the flight. And we can't have that, right? People might get upset at the airline.
And option number one, besides being passive, could also lead people to believe that it was the airline that cancelled the flight. I mean, someone had to cancel the flight, right?
Ah . . . . but option number 3 . . . what a Godsend.
In the small minds of corporate marketing people who make these decisions (and you better believe that the language in this announcement has been focus grouped and analyzed to death), is perfect.
You can't blame the airline. It didn't cancel anything. The flight canceled. It canceled itself. The damn thing. The flight is to blame. It was flight suicide. And how can you hold United Airlines accountable for that?
Comments (15)
You could say the woman was staffing the gate, not personning it.
Posted by Laura | March 15, 2005 12:30 PM
Posted on March 15, 2005 12:30
Glad someone got the Manhole bar reference... that one was obscure, even for me.
I do believe the term "co-eds" has been officially "co-opted" by the Girls Gone Wild crowd. I do believe that term has fallen out of favor in a strictly educational usage sense...
Re. "womyn" - well, that one is just silly. I think that term has backfired more than anything. These days, its use serves as a warning beacon that the individual you are dealing with is politicized and agenda-driven at best, and very possibly a flat out loon.
Styve
Posted by Steve Neruda | March 16, 2005 10:58 AM
Posted on March 16, 2005 10:58
Ever seen the movie P.C.U. with David Spade? It was about how a school got overrun with political correctness and they forgot how to have fun. They had a group at the college depicted in the movie called the "Womynists". :)
Posted by Darin | March 16, 2005 11:45 AM
Posted on March 16, 2005 11:45
DATE: 03/15/2005 11:81:5P AM
Good going, Laura, you beat me to it.
Sort of on the subject, I once read a good, concise non-gender-biased replacement for manhole, but I never wrote it down & it's slipped my mind. I'm sure this will draw joking answers to real ones at about 20-1, but it's all good, right? Anyone? Anyone? thanks!
Posted by Laurel | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/15/2005 12:20:0P PM
This reminds me of when I first started working in health care and I wrote a radio ad for the hospital. The text came back marked up with a note that said, "We don't write about death here."
"But people die at a hospital. Everybody knows it," I argued.
"I know, but we don't write about death here."
Kinda like Patient #24 has cancelled.
Posted by Eileen | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/15/2005 22:95:4P PM
Laurel - Utility portal? Access point? Or, since I cannot resist a joke, the bar at 3458 N Halsted in Chicago?
Far be it from me to take us off on a tangent. But this issue usually - and quickly - degrades into PC flummery. I believe that the folks ( that's chicks and dudes to you) who frequent this board are far more respectful of the language than most. And I hate it when we are put in a position to have to communicate LESS clearly in the fool's errand of trying to offend no-one.
Yes, words can have unintentional meaning. But when we obfuscate meaning and sacrifice clarity we are not communicating effectively - and therefore not doing our primary job justice.
A quick google results in the following being considered biased terms:
BACHELOR'S DEGREE
SPORTSMANSHIP
LAYMAN
FRESHMAN
Sorry to be old school here, but have we crossed the rubicon of reasonableness?
SN
Posted by Steve Neruda | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/16/2005 10:60:2P AM
I don't have a problem with being a woman. I am happy to be part of mankind because, hey, you guys need all the help you can get. With an ambiguous name and a position in an engineering firm, I've gotten more than my share of cheating wives spams. But there's one thing that's starting to bother me. That is, the CEO's emails that begin "My fellow employees." I am a lot of things that end with -man, but I'm not going to be a fellow. I doubt if most men want to be one either. DOes anyone else have a problem with this?
Airline language is fertile grounds for comedy. I remember one time an airline staff person told us about when a door blew off and one of the passengers "exited the airplane" or, in other words, was sucked out into the wild blue yonder.
Posted by Lee Recca | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/16/2005 12:84:0P PM
A selection from Dictionary.com
Fellow:
- "A comrade or associate." This one is OK with me.
- "A person of equal rank, position, or background; a peer." So far, so good
- "A member of a learned society". Now I am blushing a bit...
- "A person of a lower social class." Now WAIT JUST A MINUTE!
Salutations can be tricky. Usually, we skip em. I've long wanted to begin an announcement with "Hola Amigos. Been a long time since I rapped at ya" ala Jim Anchower.
SN
Posted by Steve Neruda | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/16/2005 13:60:7P PM
Jim Anchower! He's got a bitchin' Trans-Am...
Posted by Darin | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/16/2005 80:41:0A PM
Being a woman, at least last time I checked, I was not offended at being called a freshman, and had no problem pursuing a bachelor's degree. I took more offense at being called a co-ed. Why is it that all universities are assumed to have been all male at some point, when, in fact, very few of them were? Only the female students are called "co-eds". Anyway, that's a tangent all in itself. I spell woman w-o-m-a-n, not w-o-m-y-n, because that's just stupid.
As for the flight, it's rather funny. Do you think it was intentional? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the person making the announcement forgot to say the word "been" ... changing it to "flight 683 has been canceled"? I think that's a distinct possibility.
Posted by Rebecca, Julie's friend | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/16/2005 81:61:1A PM
RebeccaJulie'sFriend:
No . . . because I've heard it before!! I think it's company policy, believe it or not. And Steve. . . . alas, the Manhole Club on North Halsted is no more. I know, because I made a joking reference to it in the Ragan Report, and one of our designers informed me that it was closed, replaced by another gay bar.
Eileen: Hospital publications crack me up . . . when you read them, because they never talk about dying or bad news of any sort, you think that patients are checkng into a spa for a hot rock massage and a bottle of pinot grigio . . . . instead of getting poked and prodded and invaded and eating bad food and maybe even dying.
Patient 24 has canceled. I love that!
Steve
Posted by steve C | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/17/2005 32:44:8P PM
Speaking of rude airline employees, here's a little something I heard yesterday while waiting to board my plane at Oakland International. The employee at the gate was doing her usual schtick about "we're now boarding passengers with first class tickets or special needs." (Don't get me started on that syntax. Really, you're boarding me? No, thanks, I have a headache.)
But to make matters worse, she was trying very hard to make sure passengers didn't board out of turn. At least twice, I heard (with some amount of obvious exasperation), "Again, ladies and gentlemen, please make sure your boarding pass indicates you are in group 1 or 2 only."
Isn't it always unacceptable to start a sentence to customers with "again?" Doesn't that simply acknowledge that we passengers are too stupid to read a boarding pass? Thank you, United Airlines, for that little boost to my self-esteem!
Posted by Kasia Chalko | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/17/2005 78:21:4A PM
"The flight has cancelled," is really passive. It's like the reflexive passive in Spanish: Se vende aqui cerveza fresca. Cold beer sold here. The flight has cancelled itself.
This way of putting things is jargon, the way insiders talk to one another. You hear marketing professionals say, "That 10,000,000 piece promo to Ragan Report subscribers mailed yesterday."
It's offensive from an official spokesman for the airline not only because it's a sissy-ass cop-out (which it is) but also because it's insinuating and familiar when some respectful formality is called for. You've just screwed up everyone's travel plans. Show some humility.
It's like getting a telemarketing call that starts out, "Steve, how are you tonight." That's Mr. Crecenzo to you, jerk.
Posted by Kevin McMurtrey | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 03/17/2005 79:94:4A PM
Kevin:
You are so right . . . that was the really infuriating thing about the whole episode: the bored, passive way this woman made the announcement. Hey, the flight canceled, deal with it, go see customer service.
If I wasn't in a hurry to the bar in order to prepare myself for flight, I would have done some on the spot interviews to see what irritated people the most:
1. The style of the announcement itself
2. The fact that no reason was given for the cancellation
3. The style of the woman giving the announcement
The combination of all those three things was deadly.
Steve
Posted by steve C. | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30
DATE: 07/23/2005 70:01:9P PM
A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs
but I've never seen wheat in a pile :)
did you like it?
Posted by Peter Jackson | October 16, 2006 4:30 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:30