In case it might be useful, I’ve prepared a CV checklist that covers the main issues:



CV checklist

Presentation

• Restrict your CV to 2 or 3 A4 pages if possible.
• Make sure that the lay-out is clear and well ordered, and makes the text easy to read.
• The font, type sizes, size of headings, spacing and use of bold type and italics should be consistent throughout.
• Use bullet points for lists, but do not have more than 7 or so in one list.
• Keep related information on the same page.

Content

• Include your contact details: phone number, postal address and email address. Make sure that your email address is suitable; if not, set up a new one for your job applications.
• Make sure that your profile is clear and concise.
• List each job in chronological order, beginning with your most recent position.
• Concentrate on your two most recent jobs, as employers will not be much interested in earlier ones.
• List your job titles and the start and finish date of each position, and treat internal promotion as a new job.
• List your (2 or 3) most important responsibilities and achievements in each position. Use strong verbs such as: surpassed, managed, implemented). Mention the number of staff reporting to you, if applicable.
• List the main duties and skills that you can transfer to a new employer.
• Make sure there are no gaps in your work history (if possible).
• Mention any achievements outside your working life.

 Clarity and precision

• Write in plain English and avoid jargon and buzz-words.
• Make sure that the CV overall has a logical flow.
• Use strong, active verbs (eg, not ‘was set up by me’ but ‘I set up’).
• Make sure that the grammar and syntax are correct, and that there are no spelling errors. Do not rely on a spell-check (it will not distinguish, for example, between ‘form’ and ‘from’).

It is hard to proofread your own work, so ask a reliable person (better, two reliable people) to check it for you, or use a professional proofreader/editor.

“I am a professional writer with thousands of books in circulation …”

Poor old James Joyce wrote only three or four!

Yes, it’s the age of ‘instant content creation’. But I rather like the words of Rilke in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: “… with poems one accomplishes so little when one writes them early. One should hold off and gather sense and sweetness a whole life long, a long life if possible, and then, right at the end, one could perhaps write ten lines that are good.”

Milan Kundera wrote The Book of Laughter and Forgetting long before the days of a few million blogs coming online every second. But the trend of ‘graphomania’ is not a new one:

“The irresistible proliferation of graphomania among politicians, taxi drivers, childbearers, lovers, murderers, thieves, prostitutes, officials, doctors, and patients shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: ‘We are all writers!’

“For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.

“One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.”

Got to go now. I need to send my 52^nd novel off to the publisher …

“Lousy copy, please, stuffed with keywords …”

It’s not so often said that clients need to listen to those who provide services. One website owner who contacted me wanted his web copy stuffed with keywords. I explained that not only would this not be effective as search-engine optimization, but it would lead to bad copy – contrived, boring to read, and unreadable. I sent him a sample of good copy, but it was not what he wanted. He had no doubt that what he needed was unreadable copy that the increasingly sophisticated search engines would reject without hesitation.

In his ‘Politics and the English Language‘ essay,he offered “five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written”. Apart from their “avoidable ugliness”, he wrote, two qualities were common to all five examples.

“The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision.” What was most characteristic of modern English prose, he added, was a “mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence” – abstractions, hackneyed turns of phrase, phrases “tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse”.

He uses three categories to define the problem: dying metaphors (eg, stand shoulder to shoulder with), operators or false verbal limbs (eg, serve the purpose of), and pretentious diction (eg, phenomenon, constitute, expedite, ameliorate).

Innocent days! Is that really the worst he could come up with, back in 1946? No commingled containers and suboptimal outcomes?

Our speciality – pretentious diction

What is striking, though, is that our current linguistic disease fits mainly into his third category, pretentious diction. Yes, we have our plethora of hackneyed words and phrases (touch base, take a rain check, push the envelope) and love our false verbal limbs, but above all we specialise in pretentious diction.

Often, it’s because we’re using words to (as Orwell puts it) “dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements”. Leo gives an example of this: the terms ‘intellectual harassment’ or ‘semantic violence’, used to describe simple criticism.

There’s no biased judgement, though, behind ‘disposable mucus recovery units’ and ‘ground-mounted confirmatory route markers’. There’s just an insane compulsion to load ordinary things with a huge weight of scientific and technological credibility.

In the Leo examples quoted in my last post, that is the common trend. Orwell’s “pretentious diction”, in its virulent modern form, is ‘pretentious scientifico-technological diction’. We might expect it in one of the more insecure disciplines such as sociology, but some of the worst sinners are people writing about English literature.

To explain it all, I expect we’d have to examine our worship of science and technology, and of course our analysis would have to be rigorously evidence-based. But that will have to be for another day, because I’ve got to go and do some domestic engineering.

George Orwell’s essay, ‘Politics and the English Language‘, begins: “Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way …”

He wrote that in 1946. If language was “in a bad way” then, what way is it now in? According to John Leo, a writer and contributing editor at The Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, it’s in a “much worse” way.

In a recent article, ‘On Good Writing‘, adapted from a speech he gave at Ursino College in Pennsylvania, he refers to Orwell’s essay and comments: “Orwell offered five examples of sub-literate prose by known writers. But these examples don’t look as ghastly to us as they did to Orwell, because language is so much worse today.”

To back up his claim, he offers some examples and his translations:

commingled containers – (the label on a bin at Leo’s local recycling centre) otherwise known as ‘cans and bottles’

suboptimal outcome – if ‘achieved’ by students, it means that they failed, Leo writes; in a hospital, it means that the patient died.

hull loss – sometimes used by the airline industry, meaning ‘a plane crashed’.

access controller – a doorman

director of first impressions – a receptionist

thermal therapy unit – a hospital term meaning an ice bag

disposable mucus recovery unit – also a hospital term, which, as you’d expect, refers to a miracle of modern technology: a box of paper hankies.

ground-mounted confirmatory route markers – (found in a US government document) yes, you got it: road signs

non-traditional students – older students

Leo also tells of city officials in Oxford, England who decided to “examine the feasibility of creating a structure in Hinksey Park from indigenous vegetation”. They were, he says, “talking about planting a tree to get some shade”. He offers his own version: “a solar-shielding park structure from low-rise indigenous vegetative material”.

All this reminds me of what an English woman, who had just moved to Calgary in Canada, told me years ago: when she was asked for her occupation at a bank, she said “Housewife”, and the bank official wrote down “Domestic engineer”.

In comparison with these horrors, the examples that Orwell gave are mild. If the state of English in 1946 distressed him, he’d have a fit if he could see how pathologically it has declined.

What’s the reason for all this linguistic lunacy? See my next post.

Earlier this year, their father, Kabir, was taken away by officers of the Garda National Immigration Bureau and deported. Kabir is one of many fathers who came to Ireland seeking asylum a few years after their wives moved here and gave birth.

The official and legal justifications

So what did the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, have to say? He said that Ireland operated “probably one of the most progressive immigration laws in western Europe” but “our system must also be robust”.

The High Court rejected a challenge – based mainly on the Irish Constitution’s protection of families and children – to Kabir’s deportation order in December 2009. Judge Maureen Clark said she was satisfied that deporting Kabir would not “impact in an excessive way on the personal and family rights of his wife and children as there were no insurmountable obstacles to their going with him to Nigeria”.

She also said that Miriam would not be “excessively inconvenienced if her husband returned to Nigeria”. After all, she pointed out, Miriam had managed to live without him for three years.

Let’s see what “progressive but robust” immigration laws and “no excessive impact” on the rights of wife and children mean in human terms.

The family’s feelings

The family were interviewed by Irish Times Social Affairs correspondent Jamie Smyth (3 April 2010, Irish Times). Eleven-year-old Juwon said he greatly missed his father. “He used to play football with me every day and help with the local team that I play for here in Lusk.”

Five-year-old Tai said: “I like Ireland and my school, but I miss my daddy. I want him back.”

Miriam does not want to return to Nigeria. “The education they get in Ireland is much better than in Nigeria. My children are also integrated into Irish life and I have to think of them first, so we will stay.”

She added: “The children have cried a lot since Kabir was taken away, and they get angry a lot.”

Barnardos advocacy director Norah Gibbons commented: “One day your father is there with you in the family and then a hand reaches in and removes him. This is bound to make a child feel unsafe. It could lead to disruptive behaviour, poor performance at school and make it difficult for a remaining parent.”

She added: “We claim in this country to cherish all children equally.”

Henry and Gillian

In another case (also reported in the same article by Jamie Smyth), Henry Olabode was bundled on to a charter jet at Dublin Airport in March, and flown to Lagos. He had come to Ireland in 2007 and applied for asylum, claiming his life was in danger because he had campaigned against hostage-taking in the Niger Delta region in Nigeria.

While waiting to be ‘processed’, he met an Irish woman, Gillian, who lives in Athlone with two children from a previous relationship. She and Henry married shortly before his claim was rejected. They lived together for nearly one year.

Gillian told Jamie Smyth: “I met him when I was out for a few drinks with friends, and we clicked right away. They took him away from me without interviewing us or asking any questions about our marriage.

“I’m heartbroken and will fight to get him back into the country. This is unfair. Why can’t an Irish citizen choose who to marry?”

Stop complaining, Gillian. Irish immigration laws may be robust, but they are progressive. And remember: you may be heartbroken, but you are not excessively heartbroken.

Plane English a la Michael O’Leary

“We need a recession. We’ve had 10 years of growth. A recession gets rid of crappy loss-making airlines and it means we can buy aircraft more cheaply.” (3 November 2008)

In economy no frills; in business class it’ll all be free – including the blowjobs. (Talking of plans for a transatlantic service: 2008)

You don’t see the government confiscating lipsticks and gel-filled bras on the London Underground. Most of them couldn’t identify a gel-filled bra if it jumped up and bit them. (Complaining about increased airport security checks: 2006)

At the moment the ice is free, but if we could find a way of targeting a price on it, we would. (October 2005)

Every idiot who gets fired in the industry shows up as a consultant somewhere. Shoot consultants and advertising agency specialists. (October 2005)

I’m probably just an obnoxious little bollocks. Who cares? (2006)

Some people are so ideologically opposed to O’Leary that nothing he says could amuse them. Perhaps, though, they might admit that he always achieves rapid lift-off.



Official spokespersonese, Ryanair-style

In contrast, some of his spokespeople indulge in the kind of officialese that is so loaded with heavy baggage the verbal machine remains firmly stuck on the ground.

Recently, a 52-year-old ex-Viking from Norway had a little problem about a “chicken premium sandwich” he was presented with on a flight from Berlin to Rygge. Since the meat was made out of rubber, he refused to pay for it. The flight attendant threatened to call the police. He assumed she was joking and fell asleep.

At Rygge airport, three men in orange police jackets came on board and took him off for questioning. The Rygge police confirmed later, reportedly with chuckles (yes, Norwegians are capable of chuckling), that they’d never been called out for a passenger complaining about a sandwich. No charges.

A Ryanair spokesperson explained: “The captain on flight FR8904 requested police assistance on arrival after a passenger became disruptive in flight. This matter was addressed with the passenger by police on arrival. Ryanair crew only request such assistance when deemed absolutely necessary based on their assessment of the disruptive passenger behaviour and their reading of the situation.”

No, it’s not the worst example of officialese, but it’s surprising (and inconsistent) that bossman O’Leary doesn’t charge his spokespeople for each wasted word, and also for each long word that is not “deemed absolutely necessary”.

How would O’Leary himself have put it?

“We had to call the police to deal with this Norwegian bollocks who’d refused to pay for his *x!king sandwich. Yeah, maybe we flew off the handle a bit, but what do these gobshites expect on a Ryanair plane – a Michelin five-star?”

No? Nor did I, until today.

On its website, it shouts out its key message – in capital letters (but gentlemen shouldn’t shout, so I won’t inflict them on you): “Good English matters – the world uses it – we must keep it safe from declining standards.”

The Queen’s English Society was established about 40 years ago, but it has now announced (June 2010) its plans to set up The Academy of English, an English version of the French Academie francaise, aimed at keeping the language pure.

The society’s press release said: “Other languages, French and Spanish for example, have supreme authorities that try, while moving with the times, to define what is good and acceptable usage and what is not. They do not stop the language from changing over the years, but they do provide a measure of linguistic discipline and try to retain valid and useful new terms, while rejecting passing fads.”

The academy would “set an accepted standard of good English” in our “hectic, modern, digitalised world.” It would protect the Queen’s English from alien impurities, bastardisations and text-speak horrors.

Poxridden and pathetic

Stephen Fry was slightly dubious about the idea. He tweeted: “Of all the foolish, ignorant, poxridden, pathetic and tragically misbegotten notions, this one beats them all.”

A London Times report gives an insight into the mentality of the founder of the academy, Martin Estinel; he said he still used the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘happy’ but “grudgingly accepted that its newer definition was now in the dictionary”.

There are a number of problems about this plan, apart from the poor use of English in the press release (what, for example, is a ‘fad’ that does not pass?).

One of those problems is that English is spoken by quite a number of people, who are not, incidentally, subjects of the woman of German origin who sits on the throne of England, such as more than 250 million Americans, 79 million Nigerians and 49 million Filipinos.

It also happens to be a near-universal language, spoken by millions more as a second language.

In their use of the term ‘the Queen’s English’, the people behind the academy seem to think that English is owned in some way by a feudal relic who rules over a small corner of the English-speaking world (and who probably still believes in ‘the divine right of kings’). Not any more, chaps.

The anarchic millions

Certainly, current English displays a lot of sloppiness and execrable jargon, but it’s not likely that a group of stodgy verbal police will be able to exert much control over those anarchic millions. In particular, it’s unlikely that the academy will make much headway in getting all those millions of American linguistic vandals to speak the Queen’s English, since they and their forebears have been doing their own independent thing now for a few centuries. (For Pete’s sake, they can’t even spell ‘colour’.)

No, the new academy won’t even be able to control the tongues of the majority of English people, who refuse to ‘speak proper’ (after all, the BBC has to keep them off the airwaves in case they offend polite people). But they’ll go on doing their thing, committing appalling grammatical and syntactical crimes in strange local accents.

Ah well, maybe English will survive. After all, it’s a uniquely rich language thanks to the fact that it’s really two languages – a Germanic foundation hugely enriched by the French during the century or two when they ruled England. And then there are all those added riches contributed by foreigners who immigrated to Britain and that were absorbed during the centuries that English wandered around the world.

Yes, English will go on growing and changing and surviving linguistic crimes as it continues to spread – and Mr Estinel is going to be very ungay when he realises that there’s nothing he can do about it.

I just came across a message sent to a LinkedIn group from someone anxious to publicise his new CD:

“I’m proud to announce that my inspiprational and motivational “Amplify Your Success” CD is now available.”

The CD is titled: ‘Highly Effective Back to Basics Approach for Building Your Confidence & Achieving Success’.

We mustn’t get too pedantirrational about such little errors. But the subject of track No. 7 on the CD is: Make A Great Impression. (Let’s ignore for now the subject of track No. 8, which is ‘Confident Communication‘)

Nice suit, pity about the stains

Imagine someone standing before a group of wide-eyed people keen to learn the Secrets of Success. He’s wearing a well-cut suit, smart tie, sparkling cufflinks. He looks smart – and successful – from a distance.

It’s a bit draughty at the back of the room, so you move up to a front seat. You get a closer look at Mr Successful Guru. A little white stain on one of his lapels. Hm, careless … happens to us all. Then you notice another little stain on one of his sleeves … and then another on his trousers. You start counting them – seven in all.

You haven’t heard a word he’s been saying for a minute or two, so you focus back on his words – in a slightly sceptical frame of mind.

Little thing, big effect

Like stains on one’s clothes, spelling and other types of errors in our writing are little things that can have a big effect.

One or two minor errors don’t matter much (we all do it). Consistently making errors is another matter.

Say someone is offering website services. The marketing message is: Fantastic. Best in the business. Unrivalled service. But the copy is riddled with mistakes, so a secondary message is being conveyed: Sloppy. No attention to detail. Unprofessional.

Yet everywhere you look you see errors – in LinkedIn discussions, forum comments, marketing material, website copy – committed by people who are trying to promote themselves.

A lot of the writing is so slipshod you can’t even work out what the person is trying to say. But that’s a matter for another day.

Yes, I know, this is not a very inspiprational bit of writing, but we need to remind ourselves to pay attention to our words before they go public. If we do, we’re more likely to Make A Great Impression.

(Meanwhile, if you’re doing some public speaking and want to Communicate Confidently, don’t forget to check your clothes before you go on stage.)

That is the current fate of the word ‘significant’, which has been so over-used that it now means ‘insignificant’. That’s some achievement, isn’t it – to render meaningless a word that means ‘meaningful’.

Here are some examples:

• A senior police officer says there will be “significant arrests” of those involved in a riot in a British city.

• A youth-justice organisation “reveals significant achievements and improvements in the youth justice system over the last year”.

• The US Department of Education issues a list of “significant guidance documents” – as distinct from a list of “insignificant guidance documents”.

• Police report a “significant” drop in crime. By how much, do you think? 4.6%? 9.9% 15% 22%. As it happens, 8.3%.

• The BBC announces a “significant change” to its online news offering.

• A police officer is killed in Ottawa. The president of the Canadian Police Association says: “This is going to be a significant, significant loss.” (More precisely, he also said: “His death will have a profound effect on the force.”)

• Engineers make “significant progress” towards putting a new cap on BP’s leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

• NASA discovers a “significant amount” of water on the moon. How much would that be? Fortunately, the scientist announcing the discovery offered a significant illustration, holding up several white plastic containers and adding: “about a dozen, two-gallon bucketfuls”.

What does the damn word mean?

Now, according to the Oxford Dictionaries online, ‘significant’ means (in two senses):

“1 sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention; noteworthy …

“2 having a particular meaning …”

If you announce something, then, it is presumably “sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention”, so you hardly need to say it is “significant”.

It’s almost automatic to say or write ‘significant’ now to save us from the effort of being more exact. Small, very small, minor, big, major, huge? Damn it, significant will do.

What a relief it is to find the chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank acknowledging that the Irish government’s bailout for his bank involves, not a “significant”, but a “staggering amount of money” (Irish Times report, 1 April 2010). He correctly realised that corporate euphemistic generality and vagueness would not suffice.

‘Significant’ does, of course, have an exact meaning in statistics (look it up if you wish). And, according to my calculations, in non-statistical texts the word is used in an insignificant (that is, meaningless) way in 87.56% of cases.

So, next time you’re about to use the word ‘significant’, stop for a second and do something significant for the health of the language: use a different word.