Photo of the White House in the US in the background, with a police'do not cross' line in front, sauing 'Ttruth'.

The colour of lies

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Love him or loathe him, there’s no denying that Donald Trump lies—far, far more, in fact, than any other US president before him (1) (one boast which, if he made it, would be true😅). To put it into some sort of context, the Pulitzer Prize-winning news organisation PolitiFact rates nearly nine in every ten of his disputed statements to be untrue to some extent (11% half-false; 19% mostly false; 38% completely false; and a further 19% so false as to be ridiculous). In spite of this, today he becomes president of the United States, and for the second time.

How can this be?

Well, as this interesting article explains, the answer may lie in the type of lies Trump deploys: what psychologists have termed ‘blue’ lies.

Blue lies are falsehoods, told on behalf of a group, that benefit or protect that group’s members and/or undermine its opponents. Trump has bombarded us with so many, but let me remind you of just a few—claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating residents’ pets; accusing the press of being ‘the enemy of the American people’; and perpetuating the lie that the Democrats stole the 2020 election from him.

In cases such as these, whether something is demonstrably true or false becomes secondary to its usefulness as a weapon in the battle of ‘them-against-us’. It has been argued that those in the ‘us’ group may see statements of this kind less as factual lies and more as supporting their own wider, emotional ‘truths’.

How can we stop more air ‘turning blue’?

When it comes to winning partisan audiences over to the facts, who is speaking matters hugely. As the article goes on to say, research shows the most persuasive to be those who look and sound like those audiences and are ‘ideologically sympathetic’ to them. But according to those same researchers, even if we aren’t in the same ideological group there are some things that we as information writers can do. They include:

·   Going beyond simply fact-checking and flagging up lies, to crafting compelling, truthful stories;

·   Not relying solely on text but also using imagery or graphics to illustrate our points; or better still,

·   Doing both of the above at the same time.

These techniques may seem simple but they have been found to be effective. And given the frightening degradation of both political rhetoric the world over (we have our own ‘blue liars’ here, too) and attempts to police it (2), I for one will be doing what I can to heed them. What about you?

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1 George Edwards, former editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly.

2 ‘In January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg announced an end to Meta’s eight-year partnership with PolitiFact, citing a shift in the political and social landscape’ (Wikipedia).

Photo by Jacob Morch on Unsplash with the wording adapted slightly by me.

Is it wrong to love the word ‘enshittification’?

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“The gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking” (Macquarie Dictionary)

I confess: I love the word ‘enshittification’.

I don’t love what it stands for. Nor do I love the fact that these days it so aptly describes so much. But I do find the word immensely satisfying to use.

As an advocate of plain language, however, I probably shouldn’t.

As the dictionary committee that voted it their word of 2024 snappily described it, enshittification is “a very basic Anglo-Saxon term wrapped in affixes which elevate it to being almost formal; almost respectable” (the affixes being the ‘en-’ and the ‘-fication’).

In business writing, the desire to sound respectable is clearly a good thing. Less good is creating pompous-sounding nouns in this way, to give things a formality, gravitas or legitimacy they neither need nor merit. For more obvious examples, think utilisation instead of use or dissemination instead of send out, or feel free to visit another of my social media communications (😉) on the subject, here).

Yet it is precisely because enshittification knowingly exploits this technique that I love it even more.

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With thanks to Andrew Martin (aitoff) on Pixabay for the image.

What kind of ‘tired’ are we? Let me count the ways

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According to Mintel’s latest insights report, 2023 Consumer Trends, if you’re not already suffering from hyper fatigue you soon will be. It’s one of five major global consumer trends predicted to influence our behaviour over the next five years.

That many of us are feeling tired, if not necessarily to a hyper degree, was recently confirmed by a YouGov poll for the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). Based on a sample of 2,086 UK adults, its results suggest that 35% of us – that’s more than 1 in 3 – believe that tiredness is preventing us from making healthy changes to our diet and physical activity levels.

But as Emma Beddington of the Guardian points out (Guardian, 21 May 2023), tiredness and even hyper-tiredness come in many shapes and sizes. As she goes on to say, ‘… surely there must be better ways to describe what we’re experiencing? One word shouldn’t cover everything from a 50-mile bike ride, to five teething night feeds, to soul-crushing world-weariness’.

I agree, and am reminded of a series of LinkedIn posts I created a while back on the habit many public writers have of using one blunt word repeatedly instead of multiple precise ones. Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll share them with you. I wonder how many of them you use? 😁

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Photo by Cris Saur on Unsplash 

The language of love . . .

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Yo! For all you online suitors out there hoping to woo with the written word, here’s a bit of advice from dating website OKCupid:

‘. . . netspeak, bad grammar and bad spelling are huge turn-offs.’

Expressions least likely to win you a reply, let alone a date, include ‘ur’, ‘r’,’u’ and ‘ya’. Similarly, words misspelt simply to shorten them such as ‘realy’, ‘luv’ and ‘wat’ are also to be avoided if you are hoping to impress. Unaccountably though, for me anyway, phrases such as ‘kinda’, ‘what’s up’ and ‘yo’ don’t appear to deter – hence my out-of-character introduction. So no, for those of you beginning to wonder, OKCupid isn’t a service dedicated to middle-aged pedants like me.

For more pointers on what you should be saying to secure that first date, take a look at the original article. Admittedly it was written nearly four years ago now, but I’m guessing that its findings are no less pertinent.

PS: Can anyone talk me through ‘realy’?