No capisce?

Over the last couple of decades I have been pushed further into Grumpy Old Editor territory by the claims of political correctness, as it was once known. From the time I heard that African American would no longer be hyphenated but Irish-American would, I knew something was going on that was not dictated by logic or reason but by emotion and power. And indeed, from those humble beginnings have come no end of mischief. (I refer to the reader to my discussion of AFABs and AMABs in April, for example.)

One preference that irritates me for very practical purposes is this: that foreign words are no longer supposed to be set in italics when appearing in English text. You surely have seen passages like this in books in the past:

"Pardon me, Passepartout, have you seen the ticket office for the next stage of our journey?" 

"Alas, M. Fogg, la billetterie is shuttered for the day." 

In this pretend passage from the Verne work, we can gather what Phileas's helpful companion is saying and we have possibly learned some French vocabulary as well. But the insidious thing I have done with italicization is othered the French by making their language look like some weird -- well, foreign thing. And boy, won't the French be mad! I'm sure they never do anything like that to non-French words in their own text!

My point is, the italicization of a foreign word was never intended to make any non-English speakers feel like they didn't belong; it was intended to alert the reader that the word is in another tongue and help the clarity of the text. 

There are a number of foreign (I'm sticking to foreign over non-English) words that look the same as English words but are not -- and that's where clarity is threatened. Try this passage:

Mr. Van der Plotz ran up to me in quite a state of distress. "You shall not believe this!" he said. "I was minding a beer near the stream when suddenly an angel pulled at my shirt! I was slim enough to realize it was a roof! Fortunately, the man was aloud, and I was able to leap into the stream, escaping with no more than a bad, although my boots are coated in blubber. It quite upset my rooster!"   

From our example, it seems Mr. Van der Plotz has lost his senses. But let's identify which words were actually in his native Dutch by the use of italics.

Mr. Van der Plotz ran up to me in quite a state of distress. "You shall not believe this!" he said. "I was minding a beer near the stream when suddenly an angel pulled at my shirt! I was slim enough to realize it was a roof! Fortunately, the man was aloud, and I was able to leap into the stream, escaping with no more than a bad, although my boots are coated in blubber. It quite upset my rooster!"

"Oh!" I said. "You were watching a bear when a fishing rod snagged you? But you were smart and saw that it was an attempt at robbery! The man was elderly, so you were able to escape into the stream, suffering only an unexpected bath and muddy boots. And now your schedule is all upset."

"That's what I said!" he huffed. 

Yes, this is a silly example, but I hope it makes the point -- we treat foreign words as foreign in text because they are. We'd all like to be able to read any language, but that's not how life works. In most nations on Earth you will find only one or two common languages, and having limited language in a populace is useful for -- what's that word again? Yes, clarity. In a book, a reader needs a helpful indicator that a word has arrived from a language different from that in which the bulk of the text is written.

The war on precision and clarity in the supposed service of removing offense is itself offensive. This nonsense is brought to us from our universities, of course, paid for by tax dollars, outrageous tuitions, and rich people who should know better. If the intent was mainly to sow confusion, what more could the academicians do? The ivory tower has become a Tower of Babel.