Do I mean what I say and have I said what I meant?

Do I mean what I say and have I said what I meant to say? This sounds like a Lewis Carroll quote - probably from the Mad Hatter - but it’s actually something that my old journalism teacher used to say. Although he probably wouldn’t appreciate being called old (sorry Darren!) It refers to an important principle in journalism, that of accuracy.

You have to be sure that what you have written is what you think you have written. At the time, the lesson was designed to illustrate that it was possible to be commit libel without being aware of it, but that this was no defence in law. It’s important to re-read your copy (work) to make sure there are no other ways of reading it that might give it a meaning you don’t intend it to have. Sometimes these alternative readings can be harmless, but sometimes they are not.

Newspapers employ solicitors to ‘legal’ the final proofs before they are printed, but they are human too and can miss things, so it’s better if journalists have at least a basic understanding of how the law works, if only to cut down on the amount of work the lawyers have to do at the other end.

(I seem to recall, the humorous anecdote that went with this concerned a successful law suit brought against a newspaper when it printed a picture of a woman attending a dog show. If I recall correctly, she was pictured on her own, but holding a poodle or dog of some kind. The caption under the picture read something like “Mrs J Doe, left, with her dog fluffy.’ Can you spot the libel? She sued, claiming that the implication that she couldn’t be told apart from her dog without a caption was libellous and damaged her reputation. Technically this is a libel by juxtaposition. Is this opportunistic or what?)

Anyway, the reason I am blogging about this today is that in the last few days I’ve seen people write things on the net in web pages and on discussion forums that are libellous and damaging to others and just plain nasty. In some cases these people have done this deliberately, but on others, it’s accidental. They are not good communicators and have never been trained properly in how to communicate using the written word.

One of the first lessons in journalism is to reread everything several times before you file it. This is just basic professionalism but you can always spot an amateur because of the number of stupid mistakes in their copy. (There are lots of other ways to spot an amateur - this is just one of them.) However, people today don’t do this. They just type and hit ‘post’.

In some ways, the net has been fantastic for reintroducing the lost art of correspondence, but sadly, it’s not always practiced at a very high level. Before the telephone largely killed letter writing off, the ability to write a letter properly was considered the mark of an educated person. Indeed it is through the correspondence of some of history’s most notable politicians and public figures that we have the degree of detail that we do about times gone past.

Today, though, there are many people sitting in front of computers as part of their day to day jobs and they spend hours conversing with others online. Sadly, they do not have the contextual training in order to do this clearly and concisely, through the correct use of language. The good news is that I think over the next fifty years this will be a self correcting problem. There won’t be less text based correspondence, there will be more and people will do it from an early age and continue their entire adult lives.

Technology will only aid this, not replace it. This morning I got a phonecall from a third party (My mum) regarding a friend in China who was looking for an IT job. Before I got a chance to mail him, he skyped (www.skype.com) me via text and we discussed the matter before I popped a mail off to another friend in Tokyo that runs a recruitment company specialising in the industry my friend in China works in. Other than the initial call, it was all done via text in a way that was not just cheaper than using the phone, but actually easier and more convenient.

I can’t see how this will change in future. I don’t always want to talk face to face with someone, as that involves time wasting pleasantries that I don’t always have time for in the middle of the working day. Sometimes text is best, but for the good of the language and human communication, I believe all of us should take the time and effort to make sure we are good communicators.