Word Rage

I try not to be a word Nazi. I realize language evolves; usage of existing words changes, new words come into common use, others fall out of favor. I know that happens. Most of the time, I think it's interesting. It's just, occasionally, I run across something that sends me over the top.

I can't seem to help it. I scratched out a living as a writer for 20-some years. Admittedly, it wasn't art. I have no literary pretensions. Most of the time I was writing software documentation; user manuals and online help. In the unlikely event that anybody ever reads a System Administrator Guide, they aren't left thinking, "Wow, that's really a good manual." That's not the point. Tech writing may not require an extensive vocabulary, but the words you do use matter.

Like every other writer I know, I have my own personal list of word or grammar things that set my teeth on edge. "Access", for example, is not a verb. Neither is "Author." I know both have become common usage. They still offend me. "Data" is plural. "Utilize" is not the same as "use." Jargon makes me itch.

Every place I ever worked, the marketing department eventually stopped sending me copy to review. I guess they got tired of having me ask why you'd want to say software is "seamless" when software never has seams, or pointing out that "mission-critical", in the military sense, means if this doesn't work somebody dies. Don't you think it's a tad overblown when you're talking about software? Or editing a product overview because the super-condensed summary of what the product does is not exactly true. Marketing jargon makes me crazy.

The other day I started thinking about a word I've seen a lot lately:

Monetizable

Seems like it's everywhere, usually in the context of making money from a web page. It has such a marketing-y, jargon-y sound that I figured some marketing writer must've invented it because they thought it sounded cool even though you could use regular words to say the same thing. As I was working myself up to a truly tumultuous (if totally pointless) uproar, I tried to confirm that reputable dictionaries contained no such word. Imagine my surprise and annoyance when I found the following:

n Entry: mon·e·tize
Pronunciation: \ˈmä-nə-ˌtīz also ˈmə-\
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): mon·e·tized; mon·e·tiz·ing
Etymology: Latin moneta
Date: circa 1879

1 : to coin into money; also : to establish as legal tender

2 : to purchase (public or private debt) and thereby free for other uses moneys that would have been devoted to debt service

3 : to utilize (something of value) as a source of profit

— mon·e·tiz·able\-ˌtī-zə-bəl\ adjective
— mon·e·ti·za·tion \ˌmä-nə-tə-ˈzā-shən also ˌmə-\ noun

Merriam-Webster seems to think it's a real word. False alarm, I guess.

Well, shoot.

I still don't like it.

-- Mme. Crabbypants