European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 04, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 18 the stars and stripes monday november 4, 1985 columns &,c6mments today s crossword it s not a lie if s us not fhe Truffi by Ellen Goodman Boston the item on the menu was a fresh fruit salad. The item on the plate was not. By the time the peaches pineapples grapes and Maraschino cherries arrived at my table they had spent months wallowing Over their combined misfortunes in a tin can. Not to be too much of a fuss budget this was an Airport restaurant after All i asked the waitress what precisely had happened on the Way from the menu to the plate. I ordered fresh fruit salad i reported gently of Honey she responded cheerily that s just what they Call this Small bit of dialogue might have left As fleeting an impression on me As the salad except that it sounded so familiar. Frank Mankiewicz political Honcho an word Buff had just told me a similar tale about his brother s culinary adventure at a race track. His brother had sidled up to a boldly labelled hot pie cart. He bought one and bit into a cold pie. When he mentioned this discrepancy to the owner of the cart the Man said brusquely hot pie is just the name the what struck me in both cases was How unabashed the waitress and the Vendor were. It was As if we had or dered hot dog and then been surprised not to receive warm poodles. It was perfectly Normal in their minds to Call something by another name Only the Picky think ers let alone eaters would object. Now i Grant you that there is a tradition that led to this National identity crisis. We Don t take our own titles As seriously As in the past. Every Taylor Goldsmith Cooper is no longer a tailor Goldsmith or Cooper. I am not a Goodman. That s just my name. But there is More than Sloppy linguistics lurking in a portion of conned fresh fruit. We have gotten so casual about names that we barely expect them to mean any thing and rarely hold anyone to the one they use. Consider the current Case of the Vidalia onion. At this very moment a Georgia court is trying to legally define this highly Sweet and highly profitable vegetable named after a town in Georgia. Vidalia population about 12,500 is the Center of the onion s Low Fulfur Home turf. But one Raymond Scott was on trial there recently for Selling out of state onions As genuine Vida Lias. Scott had the Gall to claim that Vidalia was just the name of a Type Konior. It was the same old Al yellow Graney 33 hybrid wherever it was grown. In other words it did t have to be Vidal Ian to be a Vidalia. It s just the onion s name. In the course of reporting on this trial by the Way i discovered hat the real Vidalia onions came with a registered tag from Georgia s growing area. What Are they called i suspect that this whole trend began with Advertis ing. The name of the game the advertising game is hype As in hyperbole. It May be Agai Ait the Law to lie in an and but it is not necessary to Tell the whole , a consumer would be considered foolish if he or she believed that Dodge had created a revolution in the streets or that Winston was America s advertising is a kind of fantasy which often spills Over into soft Core lying. We Are not expected to take an and literally which is to say truthfully. In this Atmo sphere no one objects if they Call a perfume opium or a cigarette Camel or a face Cream visible s just the name of it. Our consumer attitude toward truth in advertising slips Over and alters our attitudes toward truth in government. It is the sort of thinking that allows the govern ment to Christen a missile the peacekeeper and to Label Margaret heckler s dismissal to Dublin a indeed our expectations arc so Low our tolerance of hype and hedging so High that we even have new names for government Public relations. We Call lying disinformation and we Call massive errors of fact or and when for example Larry up cakes miss peaks and the press picks him up on it the Public considers us altogether too Picky. I admit to being Picky. It s How i got into the fruit salad business. But i find myself allergic to this entire line of non thinking. Indeed the whole thing is enough to make me cry right Over the Yum ions. C Boiton glow Pott phrases Shaf go Ripple Ripple smack by James Kilpatrick guest columnist in Usa today recently was Dis cussing attitudes toward abortion. Some advocates of Freedom of Choice said the columnist believe that any one who opposes abortion in effect supports compulsory pregnancies for 13-year-old rape it s not the sentiment that concerns me it s the the name of . White Theodore Bernstein and other Patron saints of style let us not use nouns a adjectives without compelling reason notice How that sentence can be improved by the single word Letus recast it to read compulsory pregnancies for 13 year old victims of you now have put a solid 6-by-6 beam into a rickety sentence on the verge of collapse. Instead of that weak two syllable Short vow eled victims you now end the sentence with the Strong one syllable the phrase goes Ripple Ripple smack. I Don t mean to Iveigh against the use of nouns a adjectives in every Case. Nothing it wrong with Street it would be silly to insist upon crossing Fordner instead of Deer but a Good working Rule of prose composition if to replace noun modifier with prepositional phrases. There is no reason to write about the Bentsen 25 percent Tariff surcharge Bill when we can write More gracefully of the Bentsen Bill to impose a surcharge of 25 business not Long ago i was defending Nape of la neck against a Reader s charge of redundancy. My correspondent noted that Nape by definition is the Back of the to write of the Nape of the neck he insisted is to write of the Back of the neck of the net so said i and i contended that Man readers May not know where the Nape is located and May place it somewhere to the comes a letter from e. Lee Mcmannus who teaches freshman English at Miami dad Community College. He asked 111 of his students to identify the Nape in the sentence he Liisse Dheron the fifty four students got it right 30 made guesses ranging from the forehead to the lower Back 27 gave me offer another Good working Rule of prose composition if you Are using words that fewer than halt of your readers understand find some better words. Readers need All the help they can get on the topic of redundancy . Ritch of i ,ala., writes to denounce past experience and past there s nothing wrong he remarks with re cent experience and ancient history but All experience and All history Deal with events at some Point in the past. The gentleman also objects with Good reason to fatal killing visible to the Eye and my own personal experience a Good working Rule is to go Over your copy before publication with a vie toward eliminating every unnecessary word. Several readers have twisted me for using the phrase As a general their Point is that All rules Are general but i would argue that their Point is ill taken. Afew rules Are inviolate in serious writing subjects and predicate must always agree. Other rules Are governed by a looser rein As a general Rule it is better not to split infinitives. Besides the years have taught me not to get uppity about the teacher who attempts to erect ironclad rules is walking on banana peels. 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