LL-L "Orthography" 2006.02.11 (03) [D/E]

Sat Feb 11 20:34:13 UTC 2006

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   L O W L A N D S - L * 11 February 2006 * Volume 03
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2006.02.09 (02) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> Folks,
>
> In one of today's local newspapers I found in a headline an
> interesting example of ambiguity due to omission of orthographic
> compounding (including hyphenation):
>
> "Unemployment Benefits Hearing"
>
> In the spoken language there would be no such ambiguity because of
> stress (emphasis):
>
> (1) unemPLOYment benefits hearing
>      (an inquiry or trial deliberating whether or not an unemployed
>      person should receive financial support)
>
> (2) unemployment benefits HEARing
>      (being unemployed is good for your sense of hearing)
>
As someone familiar with Deaf culture I read this completely
differently: "If you're not deaf you're better off unemployed"!

Of course the prime directive in composing newspaper headlines is that
as many words and even punctuation marks as possible should be deleted
so that the lettering can be done as large and loudly as possible in the
space available. The meaning becomes clear when you get down to reading
it or even just when you've had a moment to think about it. Thus it's
number (1) above because it makes better sense.

> No ambiguity in (1) by use of hyphen:
>
> "Unemployment-Benefits Hearing"

But slightly smaller lettering with the hyphen in, that's the problem.

See, it's very easy to knock the newspapers for this but making a splash
with the headlines is more important than being unambiguous. I often
also groan at the content on the very rare occasion when I dip into a
tabloid that has parted some other fool from his money - what's
happening in the soaps, which celebrity has come a cropper in the Big
Brother house or the jungle now, royalty, Hollywood, what do I care?

But people keep on buying those papers, so I suppose I should just do my
job, and let the journalists to theirs  :)

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2006.02.10 (08) [E]

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> Ha, die Henry!
>
That's me being slowly crushed as the walls of death close in too then,
not that it hasn't happened before. I should have read all the emails
before I started answering!

>> But things are
>> always in a certain context, which eliminates the ambiguity.
>
> You see, too much noise at the workplace makes unemployment beneficial
> to your hearing.  ;-)  But of course this wasn't what was meant.

But I have a cunning thought which may be my salvation!

We want to grab as many non-regular readers as possible, and so far
we've managed to cast our visibility net slightly wider by dropping the
hyphen and enlargening one of the words.

So we've caught the attention of 0.001% more people by making that word
slightly bigger, but in the UK this is potentially an extra 70,000 people.

This makes it ambiguous, but who says ambiguity is a bad thing in this
context? What if people tend to interpret ambiguity in the way that
interests them most? Then the ambiguity is going to draw in passers-by
from people interested in either subject, and more newspapers will sell
because once they've got the paper in their hand, they might buy it for
some other reason (they see something inside that's interesting or they
just want something to read on the bus/train) even if the article isn't
about what they thought.

I think with newspapers that aren't trying to pretend respectability
(for readers who like that), the size of the headline is in fact a prime
consideration, and they probably don't care about ambiguity as it
probably just makes more people curious.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Henry Pijffers <henry at saxnot.com>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2006.02.10 (08) [E]

>> But things are
>> always in a certain context, which eliminates the ambiguity.
>
> Sure.  And there was a context ... or ... yes and no.  It was a
> newspaper headline that stood out.  You had to read the actual article
> to find out, because the context of the page it was on could have
> accommodated either meaning.  My first reaction was, "Hũh?!" ("huh?!"
> said nasally).
>
> You see, too much noise at the workplace makes unemployment beneficial
> to your hearing.  ;-)  But of course this wasn't what was meant.
>
The writer could have avoided that ambiguity by writing "Hearing on
Unemployment Benefits", couldn't he?

Henry

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

Thanks for throwing the Deaf perspective into the mix, Sandy!  Nice one! 
And congrats on a lovely save!

Your theory of money-motivated intended ambiguity may come off as a 
conspiracy theory to some, but I have a feeling it does apply in some cases. 
In this case it may or may not apply.  It's a free-of-charge weekly 
"off-beat" newspaper that is supported only by advertising.  It's one of the 
best sources for entertainment schedules with its focus on the "alternative 
scenes."  It seems to pride itself for being on the unconventional, 
avantgarde and oftentimes audacious and risqué side, apparently directed 
mostly at people in the 20s and 30s and unconventional and artsy folks that 
are beyond that.  So if there was any intention at all behind the wording of 
the headline it may have been to puzzle and dazzle the reader with a 
smart-alecky twist.  However, I have a feeling that in most such cases the 
alternative reading of headlines does not occur to journalists, since they 
know what they mean and focus on it.

Cheers!
Reinhard/Ron

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From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L Orthography

Several news media plan to develop their own orthography of Dutch.

Below: a text from the website of "Het Belang van Limburg "
(http://www.hbvl.be/)

Regards,

Roger

11/02 Groene Boekje krijgt concurrentie
Het Groene Boekje krijgt vanaf augustus concurrentie van het Witte Boekje,
met alternatieve spellingsregels. Dagblad Trouw en de Volkskrant hebben dat
zaterdag gemeld.

Samen met een reeks andere media, waaronder het NOS Journaal, Vrij
Nederland, Planet Internet en NRC Handelsblad, verzetten de kranten zich
tegen de komst van nieuwe spellingsregels per 1 augustus. Het Genootschap
Onze Taal doet ook mee. Het witte boekje gaat bestaan uit een regeloverzicht
en een woordenlijst, die via www.spellingwijzer.nl toegankelijk zijn of
moeten worden. Er komt ook een papieren nieuwe Spellingwijzer Onze Taal. "De
regels worden eenvoudiger uitgelegd en soms iets anders toegepast dan in het
Groene Boekje", aldus de initiatiefnemers op www.dewittespelling.nl. "We
richten ons op gebruiksgemak, en gaan daarbij meer uit van de praktijk dan
van de theorie".

De Nederlandse Taalunie, waarin Nederland, Vlaanderen en sinds kort Suriname
samenwerken, stelde in april vorig jaar aanpassingen in de spelling van het
Nederlands officieel vast in een nieuwe Woordenlijst Nederlandse Taal (WNT).
Sinds oktober ligt het nieuwe Groene Boekje, de populaire benaming van de
woordenlijst, in de winkels. In het nieuwe Groene Boekje zijn 6.000 nieuwe
woorden opgenomen.

De ontevreden media vinden dat de officiële nieuwe spelling te veel
veranderingen bevat ten opzichte van 1995, toen de regels voor het laatst
werden bijgesteld. "Bovendien zijn de veranderingen veel ingrijpender van
karakter dan van officiële zijde wordt voorgesteld". "Aan tal van
spellingveranderingen liggen regels ten grondslag die te veel vragen van de
taalkundige kennis van de taalgebruiker om ze te kunnen toepassen", vinden
de bedenkers van het Witte Boekje. "De regels zijn niet leerbaar.
Voorbeelden: naast cao-overleg is het VUT-premie geworden, naast Suikerfeest
is het kerstfeest en naast 24-jarige is het 24 uursservice". 

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