Right in the centre - Words are still important

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Published on Friday, January 21, 2022

By Ken Waddell

Neepawa Banner & Press

I think I have used a title similar to this before. It was taken from the title of a junior high work book from days gone by. It speaks of a long neglected art, that of actually knowing, understanding and using the meaning of words.

Words are important in daily conversations, in radio broadcasting, on TV newscasts and in newspapers.

Words are frequently being misused, both intentionally and accidentally. These past few years, many words have been misused and it seems actively intentionally or maybe passively intentionally.

We have had some examples in the past little while. The most recent that comes to mind is “most vulnerable”. In the COVID-19 situation, it has been rightly used to describe elderly people with health problems that may get C-19, as well as for other people that may have compromised health. It is a good pair of words. However, it’s being misused when it is applied to most school children. No one wants anyone to get sick, especially children, but it seems to be clear that COVID-19 has only mild effects on kids, except in rare situations. Recent statistics show that even though some kids who tested positive for C-19 were hospitalized, the majority of them had other conditions that were creating the harm.

The words “most vulnerable” have come to be distorted and misused

Another two words are “mass graves”. A mass grave is one where a number of bodies are buried in one larger excavation. It might be deep, it might be shallow, it might be obvious or it might be hidden. While “mass graves” may exist in certain places in Western Canada, they are very rare. To listen to some media, one would think they were common place when they are not. A collection of individual graves, dug over a period of years, are not a mass grave.

Two more words, “unmarked graves” are in frequent use. There are thousands of unmarked graves across Western Canada. They might be private burials, such as my infant uncle at an unknown rural location near Wapella, SK. They might be burials that took place hundreds or even thousands of years ago. They may be graves they were dug a long time ago, perhaps were marked and by now the markers have disappeared. There are many unmarked graves, but just because a grave is not marked now doesn’t mean it was always that way.

“Worst in history” is a phrase that gets tossed about loosely and, in many cases, incorrectly. The word “outstanding” is used very freely and is, of course, subject to definition. If I were to run a very fast race, that might be outstanding for me, but at the speed I run, it would certainly not be outstanding by normal athletic standards.

There are very few editors anymore, those individuals whose job it is to actually check writers’ work. The few that are left aren’t catching a lot of misused words.

What is worse is that news media outlets adopt a narrative. For example, there is an assumption that politicians are corrupt. I have known a lot of politicians and some have seemed a bit arrogant, a few self-important, but I am not sure I have actually met a corrupt one. It is just easier for news reporters and columnists to assume things and repeat them in the hope they can meet their word quota and deadlines and hope nobody calls them out.

In a world where we are flooded with information, far more than we can absorb in a day, it is important to understand when words are being used correctly.

The bottom line is we have to have reliable sources of information. I am truly biased, but the local newspaper should be the gold standard. For one thing, local is the most important, as it’s local news that affects us most directly. Local newspapers should be reliable and there is a stark safeguard to that reliability. We have heard a lot about fake news in recent years. If a local newspaper were to try and spread fake news, it would be challenged very quickly, as in within 24 hours. Local newspapers are pretty close to their sources and most of their news is observed firsthand.

Yes, words are important, printed words are more important than spoken words, as they are permanently recorded. That makes newspapers the best source of important words for people everywhere.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the Banner & Press staff.