{"id":944,"date":"2014-04-12T10:52:26","date_gmt":"2014-04-11T22:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=944"},"modified":"2014-04-12T11:55:53","modified_gmt":"2014-04-11T23:55:53","slug":"maybe-you-dunno-but-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=944","title":{"rendered":"Maybe you dunno. But I do."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dunno\"<\/a>A few years ago, we had a chap on our team who was rightly acknowledged to be \u2018Educated\u2019.\u00a0 That\u2019s Educated with a capital E.<\/p>\n

Malcolm held degrees from three of the world\u2019s top ten universities.\u00a0 He was fluent in Latin and Greek.\u00a0 And he was able to converse effortlessly in French, Spanish, and Portuguese.<\/p>\n

And yet he never quite managed to come to terms with colloquial English.\u00a0 His \u2018pub speak\u2019 was always more akin to \u2018high table speak\u2019.\u00a0 Not that his friends minded.\u00a0 Not one bit.\u00a0 But he did find it difficult when it came to verbatim reporting.<\/p>\n

\u2018I know what he said,\u2019 Malcolm would say, \u2018but I\u2019m sure that\u2019s not the way in which he meant to say it.\u00a0 At least I hope that\u2019s not the way in which he meant to say it.\u2019<\/p>\n

I remember an occasion on which we were asked to prepare an executive summary of a qualitative study into the likes and dislikes of people using a particular credit management service.\u00a0 One of the objectives of the study was to help the service\u2019s managers to understand what their customers really<\/i> thought about their service.\u00a0 Or at least what they really<\/i> said to others about the service.\u00a0 And, partly for this reason, the report was to include a selection of telling verbatim comments.<\/p>\n

For a couple of days, Malcolm toiled away and, at the end of it, turned in 3,000 or so words of immaculate prose.\u00a0 Unfortunately, not only had he edited the stutters and stumbles from the verbatim comments, he had recast each and every one in language that would have made the most pernickety Oxford don proud.\u00a0 He was crestfallen when we suggested restoring the original comments.<\/p>\n

Malcom died almost four years ago.\u00a0 But I was reminded of him, just the other day, when I was reading a critical assessment.\u00a0 The author, a chap who clearly understood the need to speak to his audience in language they understood, was doing an excellent job of avoiding passive academic constructions.\u00a0 And then he blew it.<\/p>\n

He had just reported another critic\u2019s (slightly controversial) opinion.\u00a0 And, in the very next sentence, he said: \u2018I dunno about you [\u2026].\u2019\u00a0 And I stopped reading.<\/p>\n

Dunno?<\/p>\n

It is not necessary to say \u2018do not know\u2019.\u00a0 \u2018Don\u2019t know\u2019 is fine.\u00a0 But \u2018dunno\u2019? \u00a0In serious writing? \u00a0That’s just asking for trouble.\u00a0 I\u2019m pleased that Malcolm didn\u2019t have to read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, we had a chap on our team who was rightly acknowledged to be \u2018Educated\u2019.\u00a0 That\u2019s Educated with a capital E. Malcolm held degrees from three of the world\u2019s top ten universities.\u00a0 He was fluent in Latin … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":946,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions\/946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}