July 2008 Archives

Today, the team editor requested I remove the phrase "Future Growth" from a report title, shortening it to be, simply, "Growth," as he found the full phrase redundant. I could sense he took great pleasure in this, though I suppose it's his job to point out other's grammatical errors and either he take great pleasure in it or he dread coming to work each morning. Though what kind of man takes great pleasure in pointing out other's grammatical errors? Oh, right: me.

So, today's question: Is the phrase "Future Growth" redundant?

I argued to my editor that, in the context of the business world, it is not. A Google search (as of 7/15/08) for the quoted term returns "about 4,470,000" results, implying to me that a reasonable number of people have chosen to emply this redundancy. And, unlike a search for my favorite grammatical pet-peeve, "begs the question," none of the early results (nor any results I can find) are actually links to pages commenting on how everyone else is misusing the phrase. In fact, not even

Now, as we know, use by the masses doesn't make it correct, even if the sub-masses aren't complaining about the super-masses. But in this case, even a search for "future growth" and "redundant" turns up only results about actual future growth being redundant and not the phrase itself being grammatically redundant. Is my editor (and, by extension, me) the only one who thinks to post about this important topic?

So first, let's argue the redundant side:

FUTURE GROWTH -- REDUNDANT

Assuming we're not talking about a tumor, growth is a gradual process that occurs over time. Therefore, if you plan for your company's growth, you are of course planning for the future. Hence: redundant.

But, as I said before, I left it in the report title. Why?

FUTURE GROWTH -- NOT REDUNDANT

1) It's really just become an accepted business metaphor for communicating the more complex concept "the size which a company will be in the future after some period of growth." This I think is really what's going on. The term "future size" doesn't have the same ring to it, nor does it communicate the fact that the future size is both bigger and resulting from growth over time.

2) Future growth implies that the growth might not be consistent. A company that is growing slowly now might be growing quickly later. The future growth is variable! To put this into SAT analogy form...

Growth : Velocity :: Future Growth :: Acceleration

3) It's really just become an accepted business metaphor for communicating the less complex concept "growth." In this case, it IS redundant, but for the sake of sounding buzzwordy and compelling to the business world, we all have to deal with it.

4) According to dictionary.com, the second definition for "growth" is: "size or stage of development: It hasn't yet reached its full growth." So the word "growth" is not just a process, but also a stage or size. Hence "future growth" is nearly synonymous with "future size" except that it implies a bigger size. Actually, this is identical to explanation 1, except that in explanation 4 we are arguing that this meaning is not the result of an accepted business metaphor, but rather actual dictionary definition.

Is that valid? Can the "growth" in "future growth" be said to mean a stage or size rather than the process of growing?

This topic has begun to bore even me.

CHECK OUT MY SHORT STORY IN TORPEDO MAGAZINE VOLUME II!!!!

This clever novella poses as the deconstructed memoir of a literary theorist. The protagonist (the author of the title) is clearly based on Paul de Mann: he's created a theory of literary deconstruction that has an almost cult following, he teaches at a very Yale-like school, he is French, and he harbors the secret of having written hundreds of articles (some anti-Semetic) for collaborationist journals during WWII.

A Handful of Dust is funny, dark, horrendously cyncical, and has the most terrifying ending I could possibly imagine. I really loved it, but I had nightmares for days after reading it.

It's the story of a good, moral man whose wife cheats on him and he has to deal with the gossip and the fall out in proper British society. Then the novel moves to the African jungle where he goes to explore in an attempt to get away from his life for a while. In both places he is forced to deal with the irrationality of others.

As some may know, my greatest fear is being unable to rationally explain myself, either because (a) something prevents me from being able to speak clearly and plainly, or (b) even when I do speak plainly and clearly no one else believes or responds rationally to me. This was the problem with Kafka's The Trial, and it's also what makes the ending of A Handful of Dust so awful for me. I don't want to give away the ending, but let's just say that the irrational response from others means that he will be essentially tortured for the rest of his life. Of course, I think that's Waugh's point. Had he remained in England, he would have also been tortured for the rest of his life by the irrational society that decided to make him the villian for not more kindly accepting his wife's infidelity. Note that he accepted it rather kindly, just not kindly enough.

I'd been waiting The Brief History of the Dead to read this book for quite a while after a positive review in Slate. However, every time I went to the book store I could not remember the title or the author. Once I explained to the person at the information desk that the cover had a picture of a person wearing a trench coat, but that the trench coat was empty. She actually knew what I was talking about, looked up the book, and discovered they did not have a copy. Anyway, a few weeks ago I found it in the discount section of a Barnes & Nobles for seven dollars.

I enjoyed the first 75% of this book. It's essentially swapping back and forth between a strange, never-fully-explained afterlife and the Antarctic adventures of the solitary survivor of a Coca-Cola funded exploration/research group. It quickly becomes apparent what's going on in this world, as hints of a virus and rapid changes to the population of the afterlife give everything away rather quickly. Even after you understand this, the book is still very engaging. But towards the end everything starts to move with a little too much fated finality, and it went on a few chapters too long. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it and would be interested in reading more by Brockmeier.