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John Davies's avatar

So what's wrong with using plain, simple English? (Well, it might be clearly understood, and that might prove embarrassing.) We used to have a textbook in some branches of the civil service titled 'The Complete Plain Words' whose aim was to overcome the kind of jargon which is used to obfuscate the hearer / reader.

Andrew Brown's avatar

I think David Turnbull has answered that: when you are trying to lawyer-proof an accusation of bad conduct, obscurity is your friend.

John Davies's avatar

There's a further problem - Christians often use everyday words which they've endowed with very specialised meanings that other (ordinary?) mortals don't, and this doesn't help. Someone once asked if I truly believed I was degenerate; he got rather abrupt when I said I hoped not. Catch was, he was using the word in a spiritual, Calvinistic sense - ie morally and spiritually dead and degenerate unless I'd been 'born again' - without checking that I understood what he meant. I was using the word in the more common sense of being seriously morally lax. That wasn't the only time its happened!

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Jan 31, 2025
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Andrew Brown's avatar

But that is exactly what the church is aiming for (entirely misguidedly) — a process which concludes, algorithmically, and whose results no one can be held responsible for.

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Jan 31, 2025
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Andrew Brown's avatar

OK. The school jargon absolutely defeated me.

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Jan 31, 2025
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Jessica's avatar

The two phrases are used when marking children's work by some schools. What went well, often abbreviated to WWW, ie what the child did a good job with, and then even better if, EBI, what they could have done to make the piece of work better. (Former primary school teacher)

Andrew Brown's avatar

Ah. Thanks.

WWW: The shuttle launched successfully

EBI: It hadn't blown up shortly afterwards.

Like that?