gobbledegook

gobbledegook

1. The term, though not the concept, was unknown to Fowler (1926); Gowers (1965) knew it, but like Fowler put his material in an entry called jargon. Gobbledegook (or gobbledygook) is the extensive use of unintelligible jargon in printed information that is intended for a general readership. Jargon within particular fields of study, such as computing or linguistics, is quite legitimate; it becomes gobbledegook when ordinary people not experienced in those domains are expected to understand it. The term is first recorded in America in 1944, and was probably coined as a representation of a turkey-cock's gobble.

2. The following passage from an American policy document about transport plans (as reported in a Chicago newspaper of 1995) shows gobbledegook in its most potent form: While EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency] will solicit comments on other options, the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking on transportation conformity will propose to require conformity determinations only in the metropolitan planning areas (the urbanized area and the contiguous area(s) likely to become urbanized within 20 years) or attainment areas which have exceeded 85 percent of the ozone, CO, NO2, PM-10 annual, or PM-10 24-hour NAAQS within the last three, two, one, three, and three years respectively. Doubtless the statement made good sense to members of the EPA, and its accuracy is not in question. The fault lies in its inability to make any more than laborious sense to the general public to whom it was addressed.

3. Dr James Le Fanu, medical correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, reported (in 1995) a much more worrying case of the result of a cervical smear test sent to a patient in the following form: The results of your test showed early cell changes (mild dyskaryosis suggesting CIN I) and wart virus changes. The patient was advised to have a repeat test in six months, but no further explanation was offered. She turned to Dr Le Fanu, and he translated it for her as follows: There are some funny-looking cells (‘dyskaryosis’) which may or may not indicate the very earliest signs of pre-cancerous change (‘suggesting CIN I’) which almost always returns to normal with no treatment. However, when associated with evidence of infection with the wart virus, it is slightly more likely to progress up through grades CIN II and III —at which point something may need to be done, hence the need for a further test in six months' time. Dr Le Fanu concluded that until those responsible for sending such reports to women include a translation of what they mean, ‘tens of thousands of women every year…will continue to be unduly and unforgivably frightened’.

4. Other areas of information that are vulnerable to gobbledegook include law, social services, welfare, taxation, banking, local government, and technical subjects (including art and literary criticism). In some domains, especially law, complex language arises from a need to achieve detailed precision and to avoid the ambiguity or uncertainty that can result from using everyday language. Efforts are being made to improve the clarity of public documentation, and have been furthered by the work of writers such as George Orwell, Sir Ernest Gowers (The Complete Plain Words, 1954 and later editions), and others, by writers of several manuals entitled Plain English for Lawyers, and by the work of the Plain English Commission (see M. Cutts, The Oxford Guide to Plain English, 2nd edition, 2004). The following from the arts pages of a modern newspaper shows that gobbledegook is not confined to the world of officialdom: In some ways, the notion of longevity has become eccentric, or proposed as simply an example of historical signage: the breadth of Proust's fiction, for example, or the gravitas of Henry Moore's sculpture. Culturally we tend to be more focused on the neurasthenic effects of the short-term, than the vista of the long term. Within an increasingly secular and fragmentic [sic]

• society, the notion of sacred or civic art has been replaced by a culture of commentary and reaction to a culture, in fact, which is more linked to topicality than to longevity —Independent, 2003.

The newspaper's own chief copy-editor commented a few days later: ‘I won't try to translate that into plain English. Anyone who thinks that they can is cordially invited to have a go.’ It appears that no one ever did.

5. See also jargon, officialese, Plain English.