Letter of Annoyance

Published in the Globe & Mail, 1998

Dear Members of the Media,

Like any other nasty fungus, we hoped it would just go away. Perhaps, we thought in vain, the sunshine of reason would come out from behind the damp scrim of foggy thinking. We were hoping, of course, that people would cease their misguided use of that pretender of a word, "proactive."

It is another fine example of management-speak -- the same cretins that brought us euphemisms such as "downsizing", the same grammatically deficient barbarians that seek to use the word "interface" as a verb -- have brought us this abomination.

In an effort to appear forward thinking, to be anything but reactive (a perfectly valid and useful word) they have created an execrable invention.

There are already several serviceable words to express the idea and sadly, the obvious choice -- active -- has been overlooked.

We ask those of you in the Fifth Estate, the beleaguered gatekeepers of our proud English language, to replace "proactive" with "active" whenever you are confronted with it (even if it appears in your own worthy prose).

Yours sincerely,

 

Mark Rayner, Esq.,
For the Emily Chesley Reading Circle