We no speak Americano

My Dad died in 2009. That doesn’t stop him from hovering at my shoulder each time I put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) to point out that I have Americanised (not Americanized) my copy by accepting my software’s spelling and grammar suggestions. He also likes to remind me that I should be indenting new paragraphs and inserting two spaces after a full-stop, as he taught me when we first got a home computer in 1990.

Old habits die hard. Each generation develops its own sense of ‘rightness’ about linguistic and presentational rules and some of us (it’s your fault, Dad) have stronger feelings about them than others. When the next generation pushes back with a response along the lines of “That’s just how we do things now”, you can guarantee it won’t win the argument. To the reader who’s been ‘doing this since before you were born’, it suggests a drop in standards, a disregard for proper execution. I, too, will challenge my children and grandchildren when they tell me that no-one writes anymore and why can’t I just have a thought-printer installed and read things in HTML on the back of my iris like everyone else? But I’d be wrong. And right.

Language evolves. Communication evolves. That’s what makes it so fascinating and evocative. As cultural and societal changes occur, they feed into how we express ourselves with the written word. Take Shakespeare, for example. When he was writing, spelling wasn’t a thing. Willm Shaksp. Willm Shakspere. William Shaxberd. He never reached a final decision on how to write his own name, and that was just fine, for the time. Most people couldn’t read, anyway. The plays Bill wrote were to be heard, not read, so in his writing, he was invested in everything except spelling: rhythm, story, poetry and, crucially, getting the job done. That is to say – writing stuff down on parchment that guided actors to say the right words in the right order so that the crowds at the Globe could have a banging night out.

Another 150 years had to pass before Dr Johnson published his dictionary and some agreement was established about the rightness and wrongness of different ‘spellings’. Even so, not everyone subscribed to Johnson’s chosen letter ordering. Immigrants to the United States across the 15th to 18th centuries wrote words down as they sounded to them, and over time, as American English itself was standardised, it evolved to become more phonetic than its Grandparent language. Whilst British English retains spellings from French and German loanwords, American English speakers streamlined the exercise of writing, holding on to instinctively accessible word sounds and helping generations of children learn to read in the process. In that way, both written and spoken American English is arguably more like the pre-1750 English language that formed from the natural instincts of English people, rhotic ‘r’s and all. And so we come full circle.

The point is, language and its uses is a dialogue, an exchange, back through time and forward again; across continents, travelling with waves of immigration and emigration, carrying the rhythms of our ancestors and blending them with the influence of daytime soap operas, hip-hop and American spelling software. It might drive the older generation crazy (yes Dad – I used an American expression) but it’s nothing they didn’t do before me. Or their parents before them. And so on.

A great copywriter knows all this. They’re fascinated by language and its uses, its history and its power. They read a client and their style. They’re in touch with culture, both ‘high’ and ‘popular’ (and know when a phrase may have had its time), and they know, without having it spelled out to them, the linguistic choices that best connect with an intended audience. They know when to write according to established British English rules a la 1955, and when to let that language’s children and grandchildren trip through the door to play a little.

So, thanks, Dad, for keeping me company. I appreciate the history lesson. It matters. But forgive me if I write for this client, now, not just for you.

Sucks that ghosts can’t put the kettle on.