Okay, so right now I’m reading Jacques Barzun’s _Simple & Direct_, at first on advice of Tim Ferris, then because it turned out to be well written with lots of good advice–and a few ridiculous bits, like complaining about every-day use of “osmosis,” as an example of “wider application of technical speech, for purposes not of clear designation but of sounding deep or showing off special knowledge.” No, every day use of “osmosis” is just metaphor for those who remember high school biology. But anyway…

One of the most entertaining parts of the book are the examples of bad English which Barzun asks his readers to try to correct as exercises. Some of the quoted prose is simply incompetent, but other examples are more interesting:

(1) The residence experience could be a revelation to you, too.
(2) They said they had sought a meaningful dialogue on their demands which, as they made clear before, are non-negotiable.
(3) The attorney in requesting a suspended sentence asked the judge not to engage in genocide of minority groups.
(4) Saying Yes to Life can arouse inner forces to help discover new dimensions.

All these sentences are relatively easy to translate into Barzun’s “good English.” (1) Becomes “You could learn a lot from living here.” (2) is trickier, but perhaps could be given as “They didn’t insist on having their demands met right away, but asked their opponents to engage in a vague submissive ritual.” The trouble with such translations, though, is they are useless for the function of the original sentence, which only do any good to say if they are worded “badly.” The strangest thing is that they still same to work even if they elicit silent chuckles: an RA who announces “The residence experience could be a revelation to you, too” to her residents may not win their respect, but she has let them know she’s outwardly committed to doing whatever bit of nonsense her employers tell her too, and therefore given them reason to fear her.