Education: Two-Minute Lesson

Manhattan's tabloid News educates more people—and knows it—than any college in the country. For one thing, its single editorial column is written in a hoarse, impudent lingo that every one of its readers (2,275,000 on weekdays and 4,375,000 on Sundays) can understand. One day this week the News's editorial headline bazooed: IT AIN'T THE LENGTH, IT'S THE OBSCURITY. The News was barking in sidewalk scholars for a two-minute lesson on the use of the English language.

Some reader, it seemed, had yapped that the News, which loves to scoff at "big $7 words," had itself been guilty lately of such windy words as "intolerable," "incompatibility," "vulnerable," and "genocide." Asked the reader: "Ain't going highhat on us, be ye?"

"Nope," the News swore, "we ain't." Then it pointed out that a four-letter word isn't necessarily simpler than a twelve-letter word. "For illustration, here are some shorties which we'd call real $7 words, and wouldn't use here at this time without explanation: adit, erg, ergo, ohm, gloze, cozen, griff, modal, mure, snash, viable." On the other hand, the News thought that most of its readers would understand fairly longish ones like "intolerable" (though "unbearable" was better), or "incompatibility" (because of divorce cases), or "vulnerable" (because of bridge being so popular). The News conceded that it should have explained "genocide."

Since the subject had come up, it seemed a good time to list a few of the "big, fat blimps of words" the News was really against: puff balls like "quadripartite," "unilateral" and "directive." "Why the boys can't just say 'four-party,' 'one-sided' and 'order' is beyond us . . ."

The real object of the kind of language the News believes in, said the editorial, is to say things so the public can understand them at a glance, "without having to go grubbing into a dictionary to find out what in the blue blazes you are trying to say."