A few years ago, Labour’s Peter Kyle made a stand against the abuse he’d been getting for his spelling errors on Twitter, which he described as ‘an unforgiving place for people with unseen challenges’. He’s dyslexic. He’d previously come to wider public attention during the long period of Commons constipation under Theresa May, when they just couldn’t pass their motions, or at least, agree on a form of Brexit with majority support. Kyle’s idea was one of several to suggest a way through the impasse, along with the celebrated ‘Malthouse Compromise’, that little known Len Deighton novel.
The weekend after the story broke, I ran headlong into the controversy myself when I attended the selection meeting for my party’s Parliamentary candidate. It must be admitted that this was a more or less futile exercise in a constituency where no self-respecting bookie would have given you odds on unseating Sir Twistleton Barchester-Towers, the sitting member of many years. Anyway, about a week before, we the members had been emailed the candidates’ application statements. They were I suppose the equivalent of a page of A4, that is, about 3-400 words, and each had to condense history, philosophy, experience and ideas in an attempt to persuade us that their author was the one best able to survive a couple of minutes under the Andrew Neil hairdryer. No, that was Alex Ferguson, but you know what I mean.
Now, as 100% Proof is nominally a blog about the English language, you might guess where this is going. All three statements were peppered with errors of spelling, grammar, sentence structure and general readability. Now call me old fashioned, pernickety, pedantic and an all-round old fart, and you’ll not be the first, but I think these things matter. We’ll now have a short Tristram Shandy-like space to represent your combined groans, and the custard pies and general opprobrium heading in my direction:
By the way, I might be featuring Lawrence Sterne and Tristram Shandy as future Language Heroes, so watch this space. Anyway, to return to the selection meeting; in none of the statements did the errors prevent the reader from understanding the writer’s meaning, but for those of us still able to notice such things, it just didn’t look good. You’re putting yourself forward before the public, albeit a small segment of it, for an important public role. Not then to make the effort to present yourself in the best possible light could be viewed as very bad form. If I were being interviewed for a job, I would make sure my suit was pressed, my shirt ironed, my nails trimmed, what’s left of my hair brushed and my shoes polished. Wouldn’t you? And if after all this they still didn’t want me as a dustman, at least I wouldn’t have let myself down (I was, incidentally, once rejected by the London Borough of Barnet, who evidently didn’t want dustmen with A levels).
Anyway, I wanted to make my point before I put my question to the candidates, but had hardly begun before I was ruled out of order by the Chair. Policy questions only please. But the successful candidate, if chosen and then if elected, would be scrutinising legislation and dealing with constituency correspondence. How does a carelessly presented application statement suggest they’d be up to this? One pleaded in their defence that they’d only had about two hours to write their submissions. This to me is not credible; if you think you’re going to put yourself forward for this position, you’d surely have been preparing long in advance, and have a cv and statement on the slipway, to be updated as required when the moment of launch arrived. And even if you didn’t think you had a problem, surely you’d get someone else to double check on such an important occasion?
Commercial break: this is one of the many services that King’s English offers. Contact me now for a no-obligations consultation. King’s English – too good not to use!
Anyway, back to Mr Kyle; following his Twitter complaint, there was a lot of discussion about whether or not it is important to write well in the public sphere or indeed anywhere. And here’s the kernel in the nut: there’s a chance that this could open a new front in the ‘identity politics’ war; “I can’t write, but that’s who I am, and I deserve respect” etc. etc. And if you point this out and even so much as gently suggest that I’m somehow wrong, you’re a “grammarist” (or some other formulaic denunciation). More relativism, and another battle to fight in the post-truth world.
The whole business set me thinking. When I was a college lecturer I had many dyslexic students, and of course dyslexia should be no barrier to public service, nor to any kind of fulfilled and successful life. And most dyslexics, including Kyle, develop coping strategies, enabling them to do their jobs perfectly well. But I’m talking about something other than dyslexia, which is a recognised condition for which all appropriate allowances are made, or at least ought to be. My argument is simply that standards matter, and should wherever possible to be defended and upheld.
As ever, it’s all about context. I’m the kinda guy who puts semi-colons in text messages, and not to indicate a knowing wink, but then I think you’ve guessed by now that I’d a bit odd like that. ‘Text speak’ and abbreviation are fine in the right place (oh goodness, another hornets’ nest – what, pray, is the right place?), but they won’t get you very far in any world of work which requires even modestly competent communication skills, if that’s all you can manage. Or at least, they shouldn’t, but here we’re on the verge of a bigger discussion, namely whether we’ve reached such a point of critical mass that it ceases to matter, because too few among us can spot it, or even care any more.
Be that as it may, when in a parallel life I am reunited with the alto sax I foolishly sold many years ago to pay an electricity bill, and at last form my super-cool free jazz combo, I’m going to call it ‘The Peter Kyle Amendment’. It has a pleasingly elusive and abstract air. Although I could instead pick my 1990s preference, ‘Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve’. I wonder which one would satisfy the selection committee?