Excess verbiage befogs language

You say you just don't understand government? You're not alone. Technical jargon and confusing diction stand in the way.

By LISA GREENE

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 15, 2001

Some might describe a ka-boom as the sound a big, strong crane makes when it drops a big, heavy weight near a Pinellas Park neighborhood.

But in the hallowed halls of government, a ka-boom is not always a ka-boom.

Helpful consultants describe a ka-boom as "deep dynamic compaction." They want to follow it up with a good dose of "geotextile reinforcement." And it costs less than "vibroflotation."

Those words were used last month as Pinellas County commissioners decided to use a 20-ton weight to smush buried trash found in the path of a new road.

But a trail of technical jargon and confusing diction winds from local zoning boards to county courtrooms, through state legislatures and on to the White House, where even the most basic of questions depend on what your definition of "is" is.

And today is the day to celebrate such language.

It's Easter, but it's also when millions of Americans race the clock to finish their tax returns, besieged at every turn by withholding allowance certificates, advance earned income credit payments and a temptation to suggest that maybe the IRS should just stick its adjusted gross income in its ordinary dividend.

Is the tax code too complicated?

"That's why a lot of accountants have other accountants do their taxes," said Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch.

Welch should know. He's an accountant. He still does his own taxes, but he has an excuse not to. As a new commissioner, he's busy learning a slew of new acronyms -- MGDs, FYs, LANs and WANs. (In English, that's million gallons per day, fiscal year, local area network and wide area network.)

So do ordinary citizens get all this stuff? "Those who are passionate about a special subject" do, Welch said. He admits that's not good enough.

"We need to explain in ways that a layman can understand," he said.

But even advocates find governmental language tiresome. New Clearwater City Commissioner Bill Jonson has worked for years to limit billboards. He promptly produced a page from a state billboard proposal that discussed how "to effectuate a consensual agreement" and weigh "rights, interests, obligations and reasonable expectations."

"You get involved in some of the legal issues, it's darn hard for even someone involved to understand," Jonson said.

There are exceptions. When County Commissioner John Morroni got the news that Pinellas had overspent its penny sales tax revenues, he called it "a shockeroo." Across the bay, when Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms was asked for her feelings about raising taxes, she asked whether a reporter had seen "a cat choke on a hairball."

Yet such pithy phrases are few. And Judith Becker Bryant, a USF psychology professor who studies language, said there are reasons why.

"There's a belief that the more obfuscated and obscure the language, the more intelligent the author or speaker of those words will appear to be," she said.

Obfuscated?

"Yes, don't I sound intelligent?" Bryant said, laughing.

Bryant has other theories as well: Disguising old ideas with new words makes them sound "bold and exciting." People believe more complex words are more litigation-proof in a lawsuit-happy society. Using jargon and code words is a way of showing you belong to a group.

Clearwater accountant Rex Harper, founding partner of Harper Van Skoik & Co., has another explanation.

"The laws in Congress in many instances simply defy common sense," he said.

Tax laws have so many exceptions and special rules that they're hard to state clearly, he said. What irks him most? It's hard to choose. There's the alternative minimum tax, "one of the most idiotic sections of law ever written." Clauses on retirement planning and paying for education. Health insurance deductions.

"That offends me because many people lose their deduction because of the way it's worded," he said.

Efforts to improve our wordy ways date back at least 24 years. President Carter signed an executive order in 1977 mandating that federal workers write regulations simply and clearly. President Clinton issued another call for simple writing in 1998. The effort even has a Web site, www.plainlanguage.gov.

But such phrases as "uncollectible receivables" still show up on Pinellas County meeting agendas. Maybe there's hope, though. In parentheses was an explanation: "returned checks."

Harper suggested a way to cut the verbiage from at least one government agency: "Maybe we should require every congressional member involved in tax legislation to do his own tax return and then be audited."

- Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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