I remember back in the early days of the Crimestoppers program in Ottawa, one of the local TV stations did re-enactments, and I used to tune in not because I'm a big fan of crime or anything, but I used to like to hear all these synonyms for criminal that they used. They had "perpetrator" and "varlet" and all these [laughs] wild words when they just sort of meant "the guy we're looking for." Michelle?

A lot of that kind of talk falls into the category of "Officialese--I am an official in this position and these are the kinds of words I need to use." Often there's in law too they talk about the way words are redundantly doubled up like "to have and to hold" or "first and foremost," and the one I always love is when they say, "he had a weapon on his person." He had a weapon! It's that same kind of language and I think that often the more high-level and official-sounding the language gets, probably my instinct is the more the people speaking those words are trying to absolve themselves of some direct responsibility. The more distancing it gets, the fewer people you see.

That gets into the field I'm in. I'm an artist and I'm surrounded by critics who speak a language that I do not, and describe work in ways that I can't fathom. And I remember once a piece of mine was being criticized by someone, one of the A students, and when I said, "No that was not my meaning." To my surprise she said, "Well, you're the artist. You don't know what you're doing. You really meant to say this..."

Alright, thanks very much Hugh for your call this afternoon. We came up with all sorts of synonyms for criminals: culprit, delinquent, criminal, malefactor, misdemeanant, laggard, scapegoat, rascal, scoundrel, miscreant--I'm sure they used them all in those days. John calling from Carrying Place. John?

Hi how are you today?

Good. Who needs a lesson in plain language?

Two large groups of people. Computer software developers are the big deal. I can edit, I can modify, I can change something, but changing it is much easier and that is the spoken language rather than the language that they think I want to hear. I think computer software developers and others tend to like to use the large words, in order to justify themselves and/or put up their prices, and this occurs in a lot of technical jargon as well. No longer is the cable guy the cable guy; now he's a Telecommunications Installer Technician. And I think they use that largely to put up their prices and make people believe they can't do things themselves.

And you have to wonder in terms of the computer software people if they did make it more clear, how much money they could save on their 1-800 tech support offices, too.

Yes, when I go to write an e-mail--or when I write an e-mail, I should say--when I write an e-mail now they want me to "compose a letter." Now, I don't remember when the last time was that I composed a letter. I may have written a letter yesterday, but I certainly never *composed* a letter. And, it becomes a "document."

I don't handle documents in my everyday life. It's not a part of my spoken language, it's as simple as that. When I'm dealing with lawyers I'm dealing with documents, which is once in a lifetime, I hope.