#writing **_Engfish_** is a term from [[Ken Macrorie]] for "the phony, pretentious language of the schools" ("[[Macrorie 2009 - The Poison Fish|The Poison Fish]]" 297). It comes about because students try to write the kind of academic jargon they _think_ they're supposed to write. What students end up producing, however, is often drivel. They say nothing. They use generalities or [[cliché|clichés]]. They use nominalizations instead of simple, punchy sentences with strong verbs. This is, unfortunately, because they've been taught to write this way. Aside from "practice" and techniques like free-writing, ==the best way I know to "un-teach" Engfish is to talk about it and point out examples==, so that students can see what it is. The examples Macrorie provides are especially useful for this, because students can see, "oh yeah, that _is_ nonsense" (and anyone who thinks about it for a second can see that, too). If you ever want to point it out in a student's writing, it's essential to have (1) already built up a lot of trust with students more broadly, and (2) to have framed Engfish as something that _everyone_ struggles with, including professional writers. It's much easier to point out, "Hey, you're doing an Engfish," if you've already established everybody falls into that trap from time to time. So... like... It's fine. It's just a matter of getting better at catching it and fixing. ## Engfish Examples <br> > "The co-captains of the respective teams are going out to the middle of the field for the toss of the coin" (298) **Why this is bad:** There's no actual reason to say "respective." It just sounds fancy. (Heck, in most situations I can imagine, once you talk about "co-captains" who are "going out to the middle of the field" you wouldn't even need to specify that they're the co-captains "of the _teams_," either—you can assume or infer that from the context.) > "The automobile is a mechanism fascinating to everyone in all its diverse manifestations and in every conceivable kind of situation or circumstance" (300) **Why this is bad:** This is patently untrue to the point of absurdity. Some people hate cars. Even people who actually _do_ love cars wouldn't think _every_ possible manifestation of it, in _every_ conceivable kind of situation, is always going to be fascinating. > "Did you ever think what might have happened to South Africa if the Boer War had not been fought?" (300) **Why this is bad:** Nobody has ever asked themselves this, and the writer knows it. They're writing without thinking, "Is this true? ## Implications One of the implications of thinking about Engfish in this way is that it tells you how to identify _all_ bad writing. Macrorie alludes to this when he quotes [[Eudora Welty]]: > The trouble with bad student writing is the trouble with all bad writing. It is not serious, and it does not tell the truth. (qtd. in Macrorie p. 299) That is, the trouble with bad writing is that it relies on unthinking [[cliché|clichés]] and stock phrases: > “It occurs to you that _Ulysses_ is about cliché. It is about inherited, ready-made formulations, fossilized metaphors – most notably those of Irish Catholicism and anti-Semitism. After all, prejudices are clichés: they are secondhand hatreds.” ("War" 444) Instead of simply saying what is true, bad writing turns to "inherited, ready-made formulations, fossilized metaphors." In doing so, it fails to tell the truth. It repeats the ready-made formulations — opening with a rhetorical question, using overly fancy words — without really thinking about them. ## Origin of the term: The term itself comes from a sort of Joycean satire a college student showed their professor: > . . . the stridents in his glass lisdyke him immersely. Day each that we must tumble into the glass he sez to mee, 'Eets too badly that you someday fright preach Engfish.' (p. 297)