Yes, thank you very much. We get along nicely with our stock of three-letter words. Not just the hoary old household terms – bin, mud, eye lid, cat, dog, cow, pig – but also more recent additions, such as ink, oil, tap, cot, cub, egg, job, tea, car, lip, zip, web, jet and – wait for it – jab.
Yes, jab. Big international issues and close-at-hand local ones get pinned down by a three-letter word. We have a sense of control, even if it is illusory, when we can give a simple name to a complicated thing. Consider tax, law and war. Each has its own arcane terminology and procedures. We deceive ourselves if we think that an overall term endows us with understanding of intricate issues.
But we like three-letter words. If they don’t already exist, we make them up. Hence: app, bot, RAM. Computer jargon today is what school-boy patois was when our grandfathers were in short trousers. Jargon has more than one characteristic. One important function is to serve as an exclusive language for an in-group. Thus it was that George Bernard Shaw said that all professions are a conspiracy against the laity.
So, after this dip into a mélange of linguistic preferences, we come to this blog (perhaps you could see this coming) as we approach its first anniversary. More importantly, we think of easy access to it.
I discover – to my surprise, because I am an innocent abroad when it comes to computer jargon – that there is an easy way (though, sadly, not a three-letter way) to reach the blog. This is to put home humpty dumpty dido dum into the search-box. If you have been deterred from enjoying the benefits of this blog (which is now marking its first 3,000 contacts), you can introduce it to your friends and acquaintances with this formula. It would be fanciful to suggest that this could result in an immediate doubling of the readership but it might be a meaningful milestone.
I must remember when I next speak to Humpty that there’s one three-letter word I mustn’t use – egg. He’s a bit sensitive about this.
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