Val Dumond

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Articles on Writing, Grammar, and Publishing
by Val Dumond

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Val writes articles on grammar, the art and science of writing, and publishing, for budding writers and seasoned authors alike. These articles are not only informative and educational, they're entertaining - written as only Val can. Enjoy this latest of her articles:

I Wish I'd Been Mrs. Webster
by Val Dumond
©2008

When old Noah Webster woke up one morning in 1828 and realized the potential in writing a dictionary, I wish I had been around. Maybe if I'd been his wife, I could have shown him a thing or two.

I can picture it now. Noah gets out of bed, scratches himself, yawns and stretches, then stops in mid-stretch as the thought hits him. "Hey, folks are already talking. Someday it's going to catch on and people all over will be doing it regularly. Maybe... yes, maybe... someday... we might come across an idea to make visual symbols of it all. What could we call it? Writing. Yes, it could be called writing."

"Well," says Noah, "if this writing thing catches on, folks will need a book to learn from. I'll bet there's some money to be made on a project like that. Yeah! I'll collect all the words so's folks will be ready when the time comes."

And so the dictionary was born.

I wasn't there, so I'm not sure if that's actually the way it happened. But, I'd wager that it's close. I just wish I had been there.

As Mrs. Webster, I would have encouraged him to take a wider view of some words and a narrower view of others. I'd have asked him to make sure certain words maintained their original meaning.

For instance, mankind. I'd have urged him to leave it out or confine it to men alone. Also man. Narrow that one down to mean a male person only. I have to give him credit, though. Old Noah gave us a word for a female person, even if it is a longer word than man. Wouldn't you think he'd have realized that woman includes man, but man does not include woman?

I'd have commended Noah for giving us perfectly good pronouns to use when referring to a man, a woman and a thing - he, she, it - and I'd have encouraged him to keep it that way. But somehow he saw fit to extend the he to include she (an unfortunate extension). Again, you can see that she includes he, but he does not include she!

If I had been Mrs. Webster, sitting alongside Noah during his creative days, I'd have begged him to leave out a whole bunch of words, with the hope they would die natural deaths and not clutter up our language - words such as bastard, nigger, kike, sissy, tomboy, slut, maid, spinster, hussy.

You see, words like these are denigrating words, meant to label, to hurt, to judge. Wouldn't we be better off without them?

When searching for denigrating words, I realized how most hurtful and judgmental words have other, usually much nicer, meanings. It seems that over time we have taken Noah's perfectly good words and given them disreputable connotations. Take, for example, words such as: queer, gay, bitch, baby, shrew, doll, broad, chippy, cow, buck, hunk, hen, dog …. Look how many of those fine words refer to animals. Contemplate how we have corrupted them.

I'd also have asked Noah to skip the words that ended in ess and ette, those words that make special feminine words out of perfectly good nouns - waitress, actress, bachelorette, usherette. (You see, I know that ess and ette mean little. After all, isn't a cigarette and little cigar? Which would mean that an usherette is a little usher.)

Now I realize that some women - well, okay, many women - are physically smaller than men. But why blanket all women with a demeaning word that shouts they are worth less than men. Worthless? Perhaps Noah felt that way. Most men did in those early times. But thank god, we're smarter now.

Let's get down to serious talk. Even Mrs. Webster couldn't have foreseen all the damage one little four-letter word has come to wreak on women. One little word that has kept women in their place for the 165 years since Noah Webster first published his dictionary. Oh, I don't fault Noah for the oversight. Men, and women too, seem to have twisted the word and used it in ways he couldn't have guessed. Men, and women too, have used the word to sustain the notion of the superiority of men.

The word is girl.

When men continually refer to women (over 14) as girls, they are reinforcing the image of women as childlike, incompetent, irresponsible, weak and helpless. What man in his right mind would expect a girl to know anything or be able to do anything?

What makes the matter worse is that women go along with it. How often we hear a grown woman giggle and smile demurely when she is called a girl. Some women perpetuate the image to avoid growing up and becoming responsible, competent adults.

As writers, we must watch our language, closer than anyone else. For as writers, we are shaping the usage of words, perpetuating meanings, guiding readers.

Choose words carefully. Remember that Noah, with or without Mrs. Webster, simply wrote down the words that already were in use. He wrote them as he knew them. Poor man, he didn't recognize the sexism that was already in our language. He only wrote what he heard.

We know better now. It's taken us all this time to figure out that women and men can share a language, that it doesn't have to be lopsided toward male preference, that we don't have to differentiate so often between women and men. An author is an author whether male or female; we don't need authoress. At the same time we don't have to lump women together with men in words such as man, mankind, businessman, man on the street.

We don't have to pretend to use beautiful words in order to put down women (baby, mother, sister) or anybody else.

If only I had been Mrs. Webster ... Would anyone have listened?

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