Junk English

"Junk English is the linguistic equivalent of junk food," says Ken Smith. "Ingest it long enough and your brain goes soft." Given the ubiquity of "junk English"--which includes pretentious, meaningless, euphemistic, and bloated language--we all likely suffer already from mushy minds. In Junk English, Smith uses real examples to illustrate 120 types of language abuse, including cheapened words (visionary, revolutionary), distraction modifiers (low, just, only), "fat-ass phrases," "free-for-all verbs," "jargon gridlock," "mirage words," "palsy-walsy pitches," "secret snob words," and "tiny type messages." If linguistic abuses were ticketable offenses, Officer Smith would fill his quota before he reached the second paragraph. While the greatest perpetrators of junk English may be business and advertising folk, we're all guilty. So take this as a reminder to say what you mean, and mean what you say, and leave the battlefield language and spiked clich s behind. --Jane Steinberg