P.M. Castle

Colorado Author

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I’m gobsmacked by cockamamie language

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As a newspaper editor and mystery novelist, I’m by necessity also a student of language. I’m fascinated by the information I come across about words and the ways they’re used.

Did you know, for example, nikhedonia describes the emotion you experience when you’re playing a game or watching your favorite sports team compete and realize you or your team is about to win. Unfortunately for me and my fellow Denver Broncos fans, we seldom anticipate success. Especially come the fourth quarter.

How about crapulence? The word sounds every bit as dreadful as its definition for the sickness or indisposition that results from excess drinking or eating.

I suspect a lack of nikhedonia leads to crapulence. Particularly on Monday mornings.

I also found on the internet a list of slang terms from the 1930s. In the event you’re wondering what happens when some kaylied up nogoodnik blows your wig at the juke, it means a troublesome drunk infuriates you at a nightclub.

I’m determined, by the way, to perpetuate some of the other slang terms on the list through their more frequent use, including gobsmacked and cockamamie. Those are good words.

What really caught my attention, though, was a news release I received about a book written by Jo Anne Preston titled “Lead the Way in Five Minutes a Day: Sparking High Performance in Yourself and Your Team.” A workforce and organizational development manager, Preston believes business executives and other leaders should pay more attention to what they say and how they say it. It’s difficult to argue with that. The news release went on to enumerate the common words and phrases leaders use that turn people off. The list made me wince. Which, I guess, was the point.

Consider, for example, subordinate. That applies to anyone who works for or reports to someone else. But the word sounds about as appealing as minion or flunky. How many people want to put one of those titles on their business cards? As the sole member of the editorial staff at the newspaper where I work, I could be subordinate-in-chief.

Here’s a phrase from the list. “I’m a perfectionist.” Oh really? Or does that actually mean you hold others to unrealistically high expectations you wouldn’t impose upon yourself? Rather than strive for perfection, shouldn’t we all strive for excellence? That leaves room for recognition for jobs well done, even when they aren’t perfect.

I’m fortunate to communicate most often in writing. That enables me to choose more carefully the words I use. Or is it assess or select? There are a lot from which to choose. By one estimate, there are more than 750,000 words in the English lexicon. Many are versatile. Few are interchangeable. The American writer and humorist Mark Twain supposedly equated the difference between the almost right word and the right word to the difference between a lightning bug and lightning.

As a newspaper editor and mystery novelist, I advocate for clear and compelling communication. I admit, though, I’m seduced by obscure words even though I know I should avoid the huckmuck that results from ackamarackus or nitwittery.

Go ahead. Look it up. If you’re as much a student of language as I am, I bet you want to.

Given trends, when will a terminator come for my job?

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Like most members of my nearly geriatric generation, I watched on TV and in movies the evolution of artificial intelligence. The robot that warned Will Robinson about impending danger on “Lost in Space.” The HAL 9000 computer that refused to open the pod bay doors in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” And, of course, the eponymous T-800 that wreaked so much havoc in “The Terminator.”

That was science fiction, though. Thoroughly entertaining. Even thought-provoking. But scarcely credible. I’ve since learned if you wait long enough, truth becomes stranger than science fiction. And sometimes more troubling. In particular, the latest, real life iterations of artificial intelligence and their implications for, well, real life.

Not to downplay the significance of existential threats on a global scale, but what about me? What about the use of AI to write news stories or, for God’s sake, fiction? Count me among the nervous newspaper editors wondering when an almost indestructible job-killing machine will come along to terminate us. As if that wasn’t bad enough, now I’ve also got to compete with computerized novelists penning mysteries? C’mon.

Like so many advances going all the way back to fire, technology offers the promise of both prosperity and destruction, of life-sustaining warmth as well as deadly conflagration. It all depends on how technology is used.

In the case of artificial intelligence and journalism, the Associated Press and other news organizations already use AI to report corporate earnings and sports scores — functions deemed important, but also formulaic enough to complete without humans. That’s one way to use the tool. To take on tedious tasks and devote precious time and resources to more useful purposes.

But AI also has been used to create other types of content. And here’s the concern. There’s an incentive for companies that make money to create content to use AI to cut costs and, therefore, make more money. One technology news site published stories written with the help of AI that contained errors and were subsequently discovered to have plagiarized other content. While AI might mimic human-created content, it also can produce what’s been described as pink slime journalism. Yuck. That’s another way to use the tool.

AI similarly has been used in various ways to produce fiction. Mostly in analyzing work and suggesting what could be helpful changes. But also in more profound ways. By one estimate, AI wrote 95 percent of a murder mystery with the ironic title “Death of an Author.”

I’m no Luddite. I have no desire to return to good old days that were anything but. Banging out news stories on typewriters and editing copy with a pencil. For that matter, I wouldn’t trade my trusty MacBook Pro for anything when it comes to the ease the computer affords in writing and researching. Technology has made my work far more efficient and my job far easier.  

Still, I’d argue journalism and fiction should remain human endeavors. 

A thoughtful process is required to not only report news stories, but also convey an understanding of what those stories are about. What’s important. Why it’s important. That’s not to mention the thought that should go into determining what stories to report in the first place.

I’d also like to believe I imbue every page of my fiction with the stuff of human experience in all its glory and shame. Triumph. Failure. Joy. Sorrow. Amazing grace. Despicable assholery.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence continues to evolve in TV shows and movies to portend dystopian futures, including one in which AI turns humans into batteries. That’s still science fiction. But also a real-life prospect that’s raised growing concerns.

I’m concerned myself. There’s danger. And not just for Will Robinson.

Will technology warn us of our peril? Or be the cause of it?

Literally a problem that makes my head explode

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I loathe the imprecise use of words. My head literally explodes at the mere thought of it. 

I’m exaggerating, of course, to make a point. But no less so than the growing number of people who use literally when they mean figuratively.

I admit it. I’m a grammar curmudgeon whose knickers twist over matters important only to English teachers, newspaper editors and certain mystery novelists. Confusion over there, their and they’re. Subject-verb disagreement. Incorrect capitalization. Don’t even get me started on Oxford commas. I loathe them, too.

Lest my latest lament go unheeded as yet another screed from a supercilious word nerd, consider the impressions people make with words spoken and written. I’m not foolish enough to judge people by the ways in which they talk and write. I contend nonetheless there are benefits to precise communication. If nothing else, it increases the likelihood of getting what you ask for — whether that’s a raise, a bank loan or a date on a Friday night.

That brings me back to what’s literally the most misused word.

By strict definition, literally means in a literal manner or sense. But literally also has come to serve as a replacement for figuratively as well as an intensifier intended to add force to another word.

Given trends in popular culture, it’s understandable to believe the misuse of literally constitutes a recent compulsion. But literally has been used in a figurative sense for hundreds of years.

Even famous authors used literally when they meant figuratively. Take a scene from “Little Women” in which Louisa May Alcott described an outdoor supper in a land literally flowing with milk and honey. Really? Wouldn’t that make it difficult to eat, not to mention awfully sticky? Or a line from “The Great Gatsby” in which F. Scott Fitzgerald stated his eponymous protagonist was literally glowing. From what? Exposure to radiation on Long Island? Even Mark Twain had Tom Sawyer literally rolling in wealth after duping a group of boys to pay him for the privilege of whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence. Better wealth than something else, I suppose.

In comparison to such literary luminaries, who am I to question the uses of literally in some of the best novels ever written? A persnickety wordsmith. That’s who. One who remains unconvinced. I’m more like another famous author,  Ambrose Bierce, who decried: “It is bad enough to exaggerate, but to affirm the truth of the exaggeration is intolerable.”

I confess. I’ve given in on occasion to the temptation to use literally. I’m particularly fond of what I deem a well-turned phrase describing someone who literally wrote the book on the subject. But only if it’s true in a literal sense. The person actually wrote a book and wasn’t just an authority in an idiomatic sense.

What annoys me is the more widespread misuse of literally with such disregard as to render the word meaningless and those who do so almost comic.

Here’s the thing about English. If a word is used incorrectly often enough for long enough, it gains acceptance and new meaning. By some estimates, literally has entered the third or fourth stage of a five-stage scale. In the first stage, mistakes are widely rejected. By the time a word reaches the fifth stage, its misuse has become so ubiquitous only people derided as eccentrics reject it.

Count me among the eccentrics.

It’s impossible for people to claim their heads literally exploded. Even if they swallowed the dynamite that caused the blasts.

But it’s no exaggeration to complain I loathe the imprecise use of words.

I do. Literally.

The debate rages on: Who’s got the write stuff?

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Who’s your favorite writer?

It’s something of a dubious question. Isn’t it?

It’s like asking who’s your favorite rock ’n’ roll guitarist. Is it Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton or Mark Knopfler? What about Eddie Van Halen? Or Chuck Berry for heaven’s sake? How about your all-time favorite situation comedy on TV?  “The Honeymooners?” “Friends?” “Seinfeld?” What about “The Simpsons?”

Here’s the problem: There are too many good ones from which to choose to make any kind of intelligent judgment.

I can think of dozens of favorite writers off the top of my head. Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, E.B. White, Ray Bradbury and Robert McCammon to name a few. Harper Lee created some of the best characters — not to mention character names — in American literature in Scout and Atticus Finch. Of course, Stephen King ranks for many readers as the greatest writer of all time. I wouldn’t dare argue based on the quality or prodigious quantity of his work.

For that matter, the eclectic group of writers with whom I’m privileged to meet once a week have become favorites as well. Although I’m envious of their flagrant talents.

As if choosing a favorite writer wasn’t difficult enough, I recently came across a list that takes the debate to another level: Who’s your favorite fictional writer? By fictional, I mean writers who appear in literature, movies and television. Think Jo March in “Little Women,” Jessica Fletcher in “Murder She Wrote” and George McFly in “Back to the Future.”

Emily Temple compiled a list of no less than 50 fictional writers for the Literary Hub website. As Temple points out, writers love to write about writers.

Some of Stephen King’s most popular novels feature writers as prominent characters — Jack Torrance in “The Shining” and Paul Sheldon in “Misery.” King even turns a killer for hire into a writer in “Billy Summers.” Torrance ranks 34th on Temple’s list, by the way. And Sheldon 12th.

As for the top-ranked writer on Temple’s list, it’s Benno von Archimboldi from the novel “2666” by Roberto Bolaño.

I realized as I was writing this blog I’m no less in love with writing about writers in my mystery novels. To wit: Tucker Preston, editor of the White Mountain Mail.

I’m reluctant to believe I’ll ever become someone’s favorite writer. Or Tucker will ever make the list of the top fictional writers. But it’s something to which to aspire. Something to keep me herding words on nights and weekends.

So tell me. Who’s your favorite writer?

Ding dong: It’s the Bard of Avon calling

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My day job as editor of a business journal makes me by necessity a student of language. I deploy language — words on newsprint and a website — to report on businesses and business issues. Nights and weekends I herd still more words into mystery novels. And, I’d like to believe, at least a few well-turned phrases. Consequently, I remain vigilant for the best ways in which to convey information in the most compelling fashion.

As a student of language, I’m also a fan of a William Shakespeare and the remarkable ways in which he conveyed information. There’s an undeniable beauty in Shakespeare’s writing, but even more so the fundamental truths he revealed about the human condition.

Were I but half as clever, I’d try to imitate the Bard of Avon. Although I’m uncertain of how that’d work in a business newspaper. A story, perhaps, about an entrepreneur contemplating a new location for a growing venture? To build, or not to build? That is the question. It would be far easier to emulate Shakespeare in writing mysteries. Imagine the murderer frantic to wash blood-stained hands. Not unlike Lady Macbeth. Out damned spot! Out I say!

At the same time, it’s tempting to make fun of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan English. Bill Watterson did so ingeniously in one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. Calvin’s mom catches him as he’s running out the door and inquires: “Wither goest thou young rogue? Can there yet remain some villainy thou has not committed?” Calvin answers: “Thou dost wrong me! Faith, I know not where I wander. Methinks the most capricious zephyr hath more design than I.” The exchange became something of a standing joke whenever I asked my two teen-aged sons where they were headed on a Saturday night.

But here’s the thing — and, at long last, my point. Many common descriptions and phrases come from Shakespeare plays. People imitate Shakespeare every day whether they realize it or not.

A post that appeared on the Mental Floss online magazine enumerated some of them, including fair play, lie low, kill with kindness and good riddance. The Sherlock Holmes catchphrase “the game is afoot” originated with “King Henry V,” not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

But wait, there’s more. If you complain about a wild goose chase or that something confusing is Greek to you, you’re reciting Shakespeare. Even knock, knock jokes originated with the bard.

As envious as I am of Shakespeare’s unmatched abilities, I doubt I’ll try to imitate them as editor of a business journal. Or, for that matter, a mystery novelist.

But as a student of language, I’m no less appreciative. The live long day.