seito wrote:I work for a very large aerospace company. A couple of years ago, the latest bit of corporatese that they introduced us to was "word class proDUCE company" (not "world class PROduce company"). But given that they were written the same way, even the managers couldn't resist mocking the discussions about how to turn us into a world class produce company.
Ask your company's world class publicize department where they learned their world class write skills. Then refer them to a learn module on the form English verbs usually take when repurposed as prenominal adjectives. It might be an enlighten experience for them.
[Before someone chimes in with examples like dive school instead of diving school, or punch card instead of punched card or punchable card...those are cherry-picked exceptions to the predominant pattern. Produce company (with the stress in produce on the second syllable) sounds like a desperate attempt to avoid producing company, which means something entirely unconnected to aerospace. A more diligent copywriter would have continued hunting for a more appropriate verb, particularly one that can’t be easily mistaken for a noun with identical spelling but different internal stress and meaning.]
I think the managers' instinct to mock corporatese that violates a commonly-observed morphological expectation was spot-on. It worries me when slogans like "proDUCE company" get a stamp of approval from who knows how many layers of supervisors and CEOs and boards of directors. It makes me want to shake them and cry, in the words of a certain first lady, Be best!
[Edit: Revised first sentence of last paragraph to make it sound less prescriptive.]