In 1966, John O'Hayre, reportedly an employee of the United States Office of Land Management, wrote a short booklet called Gobbledygook Has Gotta Go, which was published by the Government Printing Office, and has been reprinted several times. His desire was to simplify the legalese and mumbo-jumbo of government documents. This confusing language, which is almost undoubtedly meant to confuse, was called "government-speak" by George Orwell in 1984 (a book written in 1948 and published in 1949, a few months before Orwell died).
The English language can be written plain or fancy, and has taken words from all over the world to make it easier for us to write or speak it either way. I was trying to find a "clever" way to name this blog, and remembered the O'Hayre pamphlet (I thought it was Gobbledegook) which I sent away for in 1966. I named my blog GobbledeGoogle because Google gives us access to words, ideas, news, not-news, and people from all over.
If you are interested in the Plain English movement, go to: http://www.english.udel.edu/dandrews/bcq/plainenglish.html
If you want to read a lot about Orwell, go to http://www.orwelltoday.com/
6 years ago
