On today's memo from the DoS

I was surprised this morning to receive a Provisional Conversational Linguistic Guideline from the Department of Style, quiet as they’ve been since removing the serial comma from each of their offices’ titles last spring. The memo comes from the Office of Corporate Vocabulary, Usage and Rhetoric, and I dare say it’s been a long time coming. As ever, I must clarify that I am no proponent of constricting the allowed content of speech in any form or fashion; I do welcome, however, any and all standards that might help us communicate with increased clarity and concision. Some view language as a forest, characterized by random growth and governed only by evolutionary forces. I think it a garden, whose blooms may require occasional pruning to flourish to their utmost.

This morning’s memo nips in the bud a particularly irritating branch. Its core recommendation, which is expected to be ratified into the National Style Guide by the end of the month, reads as follows:

Organizers of meetings or conferences in professional settings, when said meetings or conferences conclude prior to their scheduled termination, are strongly discouraged from insinuating that, by electing to conclude the meeting early, they are “giving” or “gifting” the remainder of the scheduled time to the attendees of the meeting. The Office of Corporate Vocabulary, Usage and Rhetoric finds this language both misleading and distracting, and instead encourages meeting organizers who find themselves in such situations to confirm that all attendees are comfortable adjourning early, and to wish their coworkers a good day if so.

It may be noted that I am not fond of the current administration in the Office of Corporate Vocabulary, Usage and Rhetoric. Under their watch, professional writing has experienced an epidemic of runaway metaphors and exaggerations (the salaryman is down in the trenches, while his manager provides air cover, and when they fail to find a silver bullet for their problems, they meet in a war room to conduct a post-mortem; will our national resting heart rate ever return to historical levels?). However, I am neither too proud nor too political to withhold praise when it is due, so I will be the first to say that today’s guideline relieves a long-lived pain and couldn’t be better formulated.

On both the desired change in language and the rationale, the OCVUR and I seem to be in rare agreement. Professional meetings are an indignity we all suffer under duress of employment. Any linguistic artifice we erect around them should either honor our shared humanity or provide a buffer or lubricant around workplace rituals. Turns of phrase like those targeted by today’s recommendation do neither, instead calling attention to the gross necessity of the 9 to 5. As the deputy secretary of the OCVUR explains in the guideline’s Rationale and Detail section (available in full on their website), “Language which conveys ownership or compensation of time itself underscores the adversarial nature of the relationship between employee and employer. Even when a meeting’s organizers and attendees are hierarchical peers in an organization, usage of such vocabulary runs the risk of reminding attendees that the time they are being ‘given’ has already been taken from them and will never be recovered.”

The guideline, in its provisional form, leaves room for certain exemptions, such as when a long-standing recurring meeting is no longer deemed necessary, or when a non-organizer pre-empts a meeting entirely with the timely sharing of new information. Whether such qualifications make it into the National Style Guide or the recommendation remains in its abridged form is ultimately up to the Editor General. Whether the guideline is amended or not, I think we all stand to benefit from a cleaner rhetorical palette in our conference rooms/calls.

Now, if no readers will take issue with an abrupt adjournment, I wish you all a good day.