"After the tone, please enter your numeric message, followed by the pound key," the electronically-accented voice on the other end of the phone said when I was trying to contact my best friend through her pager.

46 Numeric message?" I thought. "What's this numeric message nonsense - aren't I supposed to punch in my phone number? If they mean phone number, then for heaven's sake, why don't they ask for the phone number!"

It seems that people just don't talk plain anymore; they don't spit it out and get to the point anymore. What we have instead is a whole lot of tap dancin' and messin' around with the English language!

Not that the language can't take a lot of abuse or hasn't undergone many changes since the first Angle and Jute began exchanging words. In fact one of our native tongue's best points, and one that has been mainly responsible for it being the language of diplomacy and commerce around the world, is its versatility.

The English language has mushroomed over the centuries as it has adopted and blended words from each culture it encountered. We have such a wealth of words from which to choose; words that exactly depict the many nuances of expression needed to describe feelings or events.

But in the past few years there has also been an explosion of words added to the English language which I'm not sure enhances it the way new words have in the past. Such catch phrases and buzz words as "politically correct...... numeric message" and "veggies," are becoming part of the daily conversation and I'm not sure if this is for the better.

All right, "veggies "might not be considered a new word but it is one of the more aggravating buzz words. Why do people think it's so cute to use the baby talk version of grown-up adult words? Do they think such usage will automatically make them cute, too? Well I hope they don't really believe that - I think it just makes them sound asinine.

And as for the gurus of Madison Avenue thinking they have to use this particular expression in almost any advertisement for the food industry - do you really think adults need to be cajoled into eating a balanced meal?

Geez, you think these mavens of the slick sell would have heard how popular the health and fitness industry has become. Get a clue, ad guys, most people are eating healthier because they want to live longer and better, and that includes eating their vegetables.

Carrots, peas, corn, green beans and such produce are called vegetables folks, not veggies! Got it? Good! So stop treating adults as if they have to be talked into eating properly with this baby talk nonsense!

As for the term politically correct, just what in the world does that mean and from whose political perspective? Yours? Mine? That person standing over in the comer? Exactly whose point of view is to be deemed the politically correct one?

Society changes its mores and trends so often that what may be politically correct one year can often be deemed the exact opposite the next.

Oh sure, some issues are timeless, but they are more sociological in nature than political. Actually the only rule of thumb one needs in determining whether an issue is politically correct or not is the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

In other words, do no harm. Stick to that philosophy and you won't find yourself standing in the middle of a group someday with verbal egg on your face or struggling to remove your foot from your mouth! Just put yourself in the other person's place before you speak.

That is and can be the only politically correct attitude one should adopt.

Many of the words coined recently fall into a category called "techno-speak." And the substitution of the phrase "numeric message" for the more explicit wording of "telephone number" seems to be a page straight from that particular book.

I'm not sure if these aren't necessary additions to our language. With the growing popularity of the Internet and as more American homes go "on-line," I think we'll find ourselves peppering daily language with terms and words coined directly on the Net. Once, "telephone" was such an innovative technological term instead of the household word it is today.

Already in daily usage are such phrases as "on-line," "search engines" and "down-load," and I think that as more Americans wander in and out of the "chat channels" slang used there will start popping up in everyday conversation.

Soon you'll hear people saying such things as "LOL" (laughing out loud), to indicate amusement or hearing, "Boy, I roffled when that woman said what she did!" (translation: Rolled On The Floor Laughing, commonly written as ROFL).

But I do think we might have gone a step too far with when we started referring to phone numbers as numeric messages.

There is a value in plain speaking, in spitting it out, that's not found in more flowery terms. It's the value of getting to the heart of a matter using clear, concise words to communicate exactly what is meant from one person to another.

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If you would like to drop the author a note about the article please email to deborah@ipa.net

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