Casual
Casual Take A Flying Focus A ndrew Ferguson’s recent evisceration of focus groups, another of the .ne frauds of our day, is but the opening shot in a war I believe we must wage to the...
...W hat is it about the propensity of certain inelegant words to catch on and spread like an upwind California forest .re...
...I looked down at the notes I took during the meeting, which read: focus-off, go focus yourself, and take a .ying focus...
...and U.S...
...Then it appeared as a noun, so that things had “impacts” all over the joint...
...These guys who, unlike me, have met plenty of payrolls and are, in Henry James’s phrase, “seamed all over with the scars of the marketplace” appeared to be certain that what our institution needed was to establish its focus, perhaps narrow its focus, or maybe widen its focus, but, once focused, to keep its focus, yeah brother, amen...
...They catch on because people feel good saying them...
...Searching for relief, I pick up the New Yorker, where I discover even so stalwart a critic as Arlene Croce, apropos of the directors of the Paci.c Northwest Ballet, writing: “One of the ways they did not deviate [from Balanchine] was in their focus on female talent...
...Academics have taken to using the hideous plural, “foci,” as in “The foci of this paper are three...
...Not only in the press is everyone focusing away like mad, but athletes, too, are all asquint, trying to obtain a focus...
...social programs require “focusing...
...J o s e p h E p s t e i n...
...Then the damn word was converted to a participle, and all things began “impacting” upon every other thing...
...People like to say they are “intrigued” all the time because it makes them sound intriguing...
...and “special” itself has become a Hallmark word...
...Thus far focus hasn’t yet been turned into “focusization,” though give it time...
...What, really, could be more intriguing than focusing on the impact of so special a process as watching a language fall apart, at least at this point in time...
...They’re doing it in London, too, for in the current week’s Times Literary Supplement I read that “One of the great merits of Tadi?’s biography [of Proust] is the way he brings into focus an image of the young Proust as a formidably curious and active person...
...Had I a dime for every time the word “focus” came up, I could have paid to .y .rst-class to this meeting instead of the usual steerage...
...Today, of course, one cannot buy a non-satirical greeting card without the word “special” in it...
...Just relax, stop focusing, kick back, and blur out...
...For a time they liked to say “special person,” I suppose because it made them seem rather special themselves in being able to discern specialness in others...
...Such good old words as “in.uence” and “effect” were given early retirement, and suddenly everything had an “impact” upon everything else...
...I think you’ll .nd they work well—swell, even...
...P eople must also like to say “at this point in time”—which was .rst brought to us by John Dean and the Watergate crew—because it so felicitously conveys a false precision...
...The main thing,” says Michael Jordan, more times than I care to recall, “is to stay focused...
...Casual Take A Flying Focus A ndrew Ferguson’s recent evisceration of focus groups, another of the .ne frauds of our day, is but the opening shot in a war I believe we must wage to the bitter end—a war on the word “focus” itself...
...foreign policy, now that the Cold War is long over, must be—ah, but you will have anticipated me—re-focused...
...I would argue, contra Michael, that nowadays the main thing is to say “focused...
...People are very hot for the word “process,” from peace process on down, and my guess is they feel it makes them subtle thinkers, able to capture the .ow and delicate dynamics of political and social change...
...We were there to discuss the future of an institution, of which we are all trustees...
...I see it every morning all over my New York Times, where political candidates inevitably need to “focus” their campaigns...
...The other day I sat in a meeting with a group of successful and intelligent businessmen...
...Certain words don’t just catch on for no reason...
...Foci, for anyone who reads with his ear as well as with his eye, as Robert Frost claimed the best readers do, has all the intrinsic beauty of the word “pinkeye...
...This very morning’s Times carries two .ne focus-.lled headlines: “Stars Focus Their Power, and the Issue Is Abortion” and “Dying Zapatista Leader Is Focus of Only Accord So Far...
...If you are a heavy user of the word yourself and don’t know what you would do without it, may I recommend replacing focus with such solid older words as “concentrate” and “emphasize...
...The word “impact” had a run of this kind ten or so years ago...
...The word has been driving me bonkers and beyond...
...Few freakin’ things...
...So let’s return the word “focus” to ophthalmology and optics, whence it derives...
Vol. 2 • October 1996 • No. 7
