A friend of mine was reading a print-out of some of my Wordcage columns the other day. “Too damned colloquial,” he told me. “Too many didn’ts and haven’ts, too much I’m and you’ve and he’d. Too many would-be sentences without verbs. Too many one-word interjections. Overdone. I wouldn’t write like that.” All of which was pretty colloquial itself, and a fair example of the very things he was complaining about — but in its proper place, colloquy, conversation.

I thought his criticism not so much overdone as misplaced. My own criticism of my prose style is rather the opposite: too many long sentences, often with too many interjections, in brackets or between dashes, in the middle of them. You can always make sense — and you probably will — of a sentence (for example, the one you’re now reading, if read it you do) that suffers from these faults. But they don’t help: the sentence above would have been easier to understand if I’d written You can always make sense of a sentence with those faults. And you probably will, if you read it at all.

If my friend had made that complaint, I’d’ve had to agree. But colloquialism? What’s wrong with that? I’d’ve may be overdoing it, but it’s exactly how I’d pronounce the words I should have. Would spelling such phrases out in full really help? I don’t think so — and in some phrases it would add the usual ambiguity between I should meaning I ought to and I should used merely as the conditional of I shall.

Solemn words

As for the notion that any phrase between two full stops must include a main verb to be a genuine sentence — well, it’s dear to pedants, but it’s poppycock. (And, just by the way, would that sentence have been improved by writing it is in place of it’s? Not in the least, in my view. Which in turn itself is a seven-word phrase between full stops, with no verb, yet perfectly intelligible and in my view a sentence. And I’ll defend that use of which too, let pedants snipe as they choose).

Not that I’d argue for colloquialism in all circumstances. There are many levels of language, written or spoken, and for some it is inappropriate. Statute law doesn’t include words like it’s or poppycock. It’s often poppycock anyway, and almost always would be less so if it used simpler language; but not of that sort. Solemn occasions mostly call for solemn words: the marriage service of the old Church of England prayer book begins with the words, Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of God... and albeit that book is 350 years old, it is not only for that reason that we are isn’t written we’re.

Sound advice

Those 350 years are, of course, one factor. Nearly all writing in the past was more formal than today’s, just as my style is than today’s text-speak (or do I mean txtspk?). Equally, there are people living in the past, and if you want to be hired to teach English in a school run by aged pedants (or me), you’d be wise to keep txtspk out of your job application. While if it’s a research fellowship that you’re after, remember that in much of academe jargon, obscurity and professorships tend to go hand in hand.

But newspapers — let alone by-lined columns in them — are not academic papers, nor their readers mostly post-graduates. Too often we journalists are long-winded, at times pompously so. Many of us would benefit from six months in the British tabloid press, which has made a fine art of brevity and punch (even if, alas, of dishonesty too). And in any walk of life, keep it short, keep it plain and keep it conversational is usually sound advice. I often wish I listened to it more carefully myself.