fancy language in dpreview news teasers - why?

trying tae understand what these sassenachs gang on aboot.

It's a sair fecht.

Achtung, dpreview versteht alles! ;-)
--
Lars Rehm, dpreview.com

It's known as good journalism and/or humour to those with decent comprehension. Surely we don't need this dumbed down to fit the lowest common denominator? The mince-pies gag was about the best thing I've read in the reviews for some time.

Surely it can't be the case that jokes are banned to suit anyone that can't understand them for whatever reason. Even if that reason is because the reader is not reading their first language and/or because the author's first language isn't that of the reader (same thing put another way), why should the rest of us have to suffer?
It's not my fault you can't understand...

I'm not completely unsympathetic. To some degree, it is good to use 'plain English'; but as long as the language used doesn't affect the technical info in the article, please allow all involved authors and readers the opportunity to enjoy themselves - esp at Xmas.

--
If we do it right the first time around, how will we sell the upgrade?!
Keep photography wild.

Where is that Sony 'flagship' anyway? And more importantly, will it come in pink?! Lol.

I prefer a little attitude here. This language is not "fancy" it is colloquial, which means there will be the occasional reference to a mince pie.

The literary affectations are quite restrained here and seldom get i the way of information or technical evaluation.

I personally vote (oh, that's right there is no vote on this) to continue the current tone of voice. A little mince pie won't hurt you.
--
-wick

porentief said:

Am I the only one noticing a shift in the wording style of dpreview's
news teasers?

I appreciate the RSS feed to not miss anything, but I do notice since
a while that for one the information content of the teaser is rather
minimal - ok I guess that's intentional to get one click through to
the page. But also the phrases used are (at least to me as a
non-native speaker) sometimes a bit puzzling - I can only guess what
the author had in mind when writing:

• "...polish off the last of the mince pies..."

• "Hardly the end of the world then but as ever Ricoh is right there

with a fix, good on them we say."

• "...can the S8000fd be all things to all people?"

• "Kudos to Ricoh for giving its existing cameras a new lease of

life ..."

No offence please - I appreciate this site and the work you guys put
into it, and I do realize that non-native English speakers are in a
minority here. I'm also more passively reading this site than
actively contributing, and that gives me even less right to criticize

• so it's more intended as a little feedback from "the rest of us".

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Rainer

Click to expand...

Rainer, a few additional thoughts on your post:

-I don't see that the language is in an way fancier. Hackneyed expressions such as "all things to all people," wildly overused words such as "kudos," and other expressions read too many times by serious readers are distasteful to these readers, but may appeal to readers who want the french fries but never eat potatoes otherwise. There is no denying that commercial magazines feel some need to add more popular "fluff" to gain readership.

-That may be what is happening on dpReview, but I hope not. DPReview really is the best of the breed, but it can certainly fall quick enough if it puts readership acquisition above sound content.

-A tragic illlustration: Scientific American magazine was my favorite periodical for nearly twenty years. This magazine was actually considered authoritative by actual scientists. Part of its content still is. However, its journalistic style has been watered down radically in the last decade or so. Today, to get the actual science, the reader often has to wade through the pop-culture, cutesy language of the popular press. Rhyme and alliteration all all the rage, and are used to a nauseating extent. Example of silly rhyming, the heading, "More to Explore." An inquisitive, mature reader does not need this sort of confection sprinkled onto expository writing. Now also, there is a pun at the end of most or many articles and news features.

Maybe it seeks to be "cool." Throughout my high school years, ending in 1959, the ubiquitous expression involved any use of the word "cool." My tolerance for that expression was exhausted long before the pop-culture re-discovered it in recent times. I am anything but a follower of Rush Limbaugh. I disagree with 98% of what he says. But, I admire two things he has said, one of which is immaterial to this discussion. The other is: (something like) "I am not cool in any way whatsoever. I am as un-cool as any person I know. It is my intention to remain "un-cool" in every way, as long as I can."

-I have dropped my subscription to Scientific American for the first time in 15 years. I miss it sorely, and want to re-subscribe. Yet, the whole magazine, with the exeption of a few "serious" articles, reads like Time or Newsweek. This is a sad decline for a long-respected publication. I hope Scientific American will change its direction.

-Stereo Review, High Fidelity, and Audio magazines followed this same predictable path to commercialized garbage, and ruin in the end. Yes, they increased their readership for a while, until they lost their educated reader base. After that, their decline was inevitable. It may be worth noting that, correct me if I am wrong, all three of these audio magazines declined after being taken over by a larger company.

-I hope DPReview will not take that bad direction.

Chinese Proverb: Unless we change our direction, we will end up where we are headed.

Best to All,

Lovintheview

In your phrase "An inquisitive, mature reader does not need this sort of confection sprinkled onto expository writing" the word confection surprises me.
Wouldn't 'confectionary' or 'confetti' have been a better choice of words ?
Inasmuch as english is not my first language I could be wrong of course.

LeRentier said:

In your phrase "An inquisitive, mature reader does not need this sort
of confection sprinkled onto expository writing" the word confection
surprises me.
Wouldn't 'confectionary' or 'confetti' have been a better choice of
words ?
Inasmuch as english is not my first language I could be wrong of course.

Click to expand...

Hello, LeRentier, of French-language persuasion, I presume.

It is nice to have a response from a careful reader. I thought the first post I might evoke would be on my first-line typo, showing "an" rather than the intended "any."

The fact that I am a native speaker of American English, at age 66, still leaves me open to mistakes, which I make in spades. In this case, I think my usage is appropriate.

My favorite dictionary is the Random House Unabridged, Second Edition, now absurdly renamed the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary for the v2 CD edition, because the average US person thinks the name "Webster" confers a special property on any dictionary.

I have the CD version on my desktop, and use it frequently. I also love the hardbound version. I also have the microprint version of the Oxford English Dictionary, but find it hard to use, and realize that it does not report contemporary usage in the original version. I checked Random House for the various nouns, adjectives, and even a verb, starting with "confect-", being from the Latin "cum+facio." It still looks like my use of "confection" applies well in my sentence.

Unfortunately, my computer version of Random House does not let me copy and quote, or I would send you its definition of "confection."

If French is your first language, I would say that your English is superlative. Let me know what your dictionaries say. I love to learn, even from my mistakes, and those point them out to me.

Words are an infinite source of pleasure for me, as they must be for you.

Best of the season to you,

Lovingtheview

oooh beautiful hungary. Lanchid of Buda & pest.
Das Balaton-mer, badewanne fuer die arme leute.
Hol vannak szépek lanyok Magyar?
LOL

Is the only sentence I still remember from a holiday over there 20 years ago, just when "the wall" came down.
Wished I had my camera then. Beautiful and genuine friendly people.
Gorgeous women. Unlike the rest of Europe LOL.

Best wishes to all for the new year.

Hi lovingtheview - thanks for your interesting and balanced view! You put most of my thoughts in way better words than I could do. Reading your post is fun, you use the right words carefully and manage to "paint a contrasty and well saturated picture, no overexposure or over-sharpening!"

I too notice this to be happening in several places (online / offline mags) and it looks like a trend to me - after it "reached" dpreview I thought I would speak up. I seem to be in a minority and more people are enjoying it rather than being annoyed. In the end that's what I wanted to find out - dpreview is not there to please ME.

Interesting that you mention TIME - every once in a while this mag falls into my hands and I do have the same problem there: What the heck are they saying? It uses English words but I still don't understand it. So far that has held me off from buying ...

best regards!
Rainer

Mr.Webster confirms that your use of confection looks quite right.
I suppose I now must put a sock in it ...
gelukkig nieuw jaar.

D Q E said:

No such thing. It's just plain English.

Click to expand...

There are in fact many different kinds of English across the world. Hispanic speakers use Spanglish, Japanese use Jinglish, Singaporeans use Singlish, Malaysians use Manglish - lah! And there are many others. English is a family of related languages which will probably separate out further though probably not as widely as Latin did after the fall of Rome when it morphed into Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese. (Apologies if I've forgotten anyone.)
--
Laurie Strachan

porentief said:

• "...polish off the last of the mince pies..."

Click to expand...

rofl - that's a great one, haha - go Phil!

I think you need to lighten up. If you want a completely stodgy site (like bad mince pies) there's plenty out there.

Laurie Strachan said:

Laurie Strachan said:

No such thing. It's just plain English.

Click to expand...

There are in fact many different kinds of English across the world.
Hispanic speakers use Spanglish, Japanese use Jinglish, Singaporeans
use Singlish, Malaysians use Manglish - lah! And there are many
others. English is a family of related languages which will probably
separate out further though probably not as widely as Latin did after
the fall of Rome when it morphed into Italian, French, Spanish and
Portuguese. (Apologies if I've forgotten anyone.)

Click to expand...

English is not a family of anything. Care to explain to me what "British English" is, exactly?

--
--
mumbo jumbo

lovingtheview said:

Maybe it seeks to be "cool." Throughout my high school years, ending
in 1959, the ubiquitous expression involved any use of the word
"cool." My tolerance for that expression was exhausted long before
the pop-culture re-discovered it in recent times. I am anything but
a follower of Rush Limbaugh. I disagree with 98% of what he says.
But, I admire two things he has said, one of which is immaterial to
this discussion. The other is: (something like) "I am not cool in
any way whatsoever. I am as un-cool as any person I know. It is my
intention to remain "un-cool" in every way, as long as I can."

Click to expand...

As one who was a couple years ahead of you--'57--I noticed one difference in "cool" then and now: in those days, if you tried to be cool, you couldn't--one absolute requirement was that you couldn't care about being cool; today, all you have to do is buy some piece of junk, clothing, electronic gadget or whatever and the kids (under 45) consider you cool.

The final exam is now being marked on a curve slanted to the low end.

lovingtheview said:

Chinese Proverb: Unless we change our direction, we will end up where
we are headed.

Click to expand...

Yeah. Sort of like, "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a sign of insanity...or working on AOL."

--
Charlie Self
http://www.charlieselfonline.com

René Schuster said:

René Schuster said:

• neuen Auftrieb bekommen
• Neustart
• Auffrischung
• etw. wieder in Schuss bringen

Click to expand...

here we could add the Leo translations:

• neues Leben eingehaucht haben
• zu einer Renaissance verholfen haben
• neuen Nährboden geboten haben
• etwas wiederaufleben lassen.

Gruß

René

Click to expand...

Seit Jahren schon versuch ich meinen lieblings Satz ag Englich zu uebersaetzen.
Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.

Everything has an end......but the sausage has two. Oh mann, haut niemals richtig hin.

--
Cheers Suby
Melbourne, Australia.

SUBY said:

Seit Jahren schon versuch ich meinen lieblings Satz ag Englich zu
uebersaetzen.
Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.
Everything has an end......but the sausage has two. Oh mann, haut
niemals richtig hin.
Cheers Suby
Melbourne, Australia.

Click to expand...

hehe, sorry, aber bei diesem Satz kann ich dir auch nicht weiterhelfen! Auch in einem Leo-Forum kamen sie zu dem Ergebnis, daß es diesen Satz im Englischen so wohl nicht gibt:

http://dict.leo.org/forum/viewUnsolvedquery.php?idThread=130787&idForum=1&lp=ende&lang=de

But there are quite a few which you can´t just simply translate word by word.

I´ll never forget the expression in my (American) ex Mother-in-law´s face, when I tried to translate a sentence printed on a birthday card I had just given to her daughter (who understood my German) : "Ich hab´ dich zum Fressen gern!" (Didn´t know an English word for "fressen" so I translated the word "essen").

Was too funny!

Cheers René
near Bitburg, Germany

(where "Bitburger Pils" is brewed, the best German beer; several places in Melbourne sell it, too).

an said:

D Q E said:

D Q E wrote:

Click to expand...

English is not a family of anything. Care to explain to me what
"British English" is, exactly?

Click to expand...

British English is the form of English spoken and written by the British, as opposed to Americans, Japanese, Malaysians etc. I should have thought that was obvious. Take a look at the list of language options on many computer programmes (British usage, you will note) if you don't believe me.

The fact that you don't know about something doesn't mean it doesn't exist - it simply means you don't know about it. If you had paid any attention to discussions about the English language in recent years,none of this would be the mystery it obviously is to you.

--
Laurie Strachan

Laurie Strachan said:

Take a look at the list of language
options on many computer programmes (British usage, you will note) if
you don't believe me.

Click to expand...

In Britain the correct usage is "computer program" though the word "programme" is correct in other circumstances.

Still, the use or mis-use of terminology in computing can hardly be taken as defining the external reality.
Regards,
Peter

I agree to an extent, just two points:

first, what you complain about is conversely The English of Reviews - yes, you can argue if it is appropriate in a technical arena like dpreview. Compare a book, movie, restaurant review...

second, being eng-2nd-lang speaker myself, I woul rather have a bit of "local" language in an review than turning it into soulles "Brussels" International English!

I like the challenge to encounter new collocations or phrases in a text, unless it is an crucial legal clause - which luckily a review teaser is not (anyway the examples you used IMHO serve their purpose well and aptly).

To cheer up the audience: I still prefer this style of seldom poetical-informal phrases rather than this disaster

http://www.digitalcamerareviews.org.uk/casio-digital-cameras/casio-ex-z850-digital-camera/ -quite possibly the WORST "review" I have ever read about a box that that takes digitized pictures :-D
--
Oo.