Jean-Luc Picard should beam down here to Juneau to get the best advice on how to fight the Borg.<\/p>\n
After my last column\u2019s diatribe against bureaucratese from some of our local Borg-Wannabes, my friend and fellow scribbler Clint Farr sent me an email with a link to a model of how to wage the good fight against institutionalization, a model that comes from\u2014of all places\u2014the Juneau Police Department.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf all places\u201d: let me confess to a prejudice. In my experience, our uniformed services tend to be among the worst offenders in producing documents puffed up with bureaucratic linguistic bloat. So I have come to expect such slobber from the military and from police departments and other such institutions.<\/p>\n
I am happy to announce here that I am abandoning that prejudice.<\/p>\n
On the CBJ website, the JPD has one page in particular that deserves not just recognition, but admiration. It isn\u2019t just well written; it\u2019s very well written. And it\u2019s enjoyable\u2014when was the last time you could say that about government writing? And unlike most bureaucratic writing, it conducts the business of government by talking to us like \u2014 wait for it \u2014 like neighbors.<\/p>\n
The webpage I\u2019m talking about is the JPD\u2019s advice on when to call them about bears, and I quote its three brief paragraphs in their entirety to show how it\u2019s done:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dear Juneau Resident,<\/em><\/p>\n You do not need to call in a bear sighting unless the bear is a threat to people or property or it can reasonably be anticipated the bear is going to become a threat. Bears just walking around being bears is not something that needs to be reported. If the bear is just walking around being a bear in your living room, that would be an example of a situation where a reasonable person would believe that big problems are about to happen and JPD should be called. A bear did get into a house with two residents in the Lemon Creek area years ago. A very exciting evening for all involved, not the least of which was the bear.<\/em><\/p>\n If a bear is in garbage, then there is enforcement that may need to happen concerning someone attracting bears by not securing garbage.<\/em><\/p>\n Chasing bears out of an area may seem like it solves a short term issue but that practice leads to long term issues as the bears become desensitized. The worst case scenario is the bear then needs to be destroyed. That is why JPD officers want to leave bears alone unless there is a compelling reason to scare the bear.<\/em><\/p>\n That\u2019s it: just three paragraphs, but there are so many things good and right and even lovely about this short passage that I hardly know where to start. It\u2019s got heart and soul. It opens with an epistolary salutation that frames its advice as a letter: \u201cDear Juneau Resident.\u201d The writer is addressing not some abstract and faceless public, but real people, people who live here, presumably like the writer herself (or himself). The JPD\u2019s advice comes across not as some imperative bureaucratic blah-blah-blah, but as a friendly letter.<\/p>\n Moreover, the writer is having so much fun writing this, the reader can\u2019t help but chuckle at the comic understatement about bears being bears in living rooms.<\/p>\n And look at the words the writer uses, the ordinary and casual diction. We aren\u2019t told to \u201cmaximize bear avoidance strategies\u201d or to \u201cutilize approved refuse containers\u201d or to \u201cdemonstrate appropriate reticence in oral communication with JPD in regard to bear activity in proximity to residential sectors.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, we\u2019re reminded that \u201cbears just walking around\u201d can sometimes be \u201cbig problems\u201d and make for \u201ca very exciting evening.\u201d The ordinariness of the writer\u2019s diction helps convey the main point about our bears: they\u2019re an ordinary fact of life here in Juneau and not generally a problem. And this ordinary dictions also helps persuade us, perhaps unconsciously, of the common sense of the JPD\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n We know that, however ordinary, bears can be dangerous, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s important that we heed JPD\u2019s advice about how to respond to bears in our neighborhoods. The job of this prose is not solely to advise us how to act, but also to help us remember that advice. The writer\u2019s style makes that lesson readable and fun, and because it\u2019s fun, it\u2019s memorable. Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n The passage\u2019s only circumlocution \u2014 usually a sign of thoughtless and needless wordiness in bureaucratic writing \u2014 is here put to good use. In that second paragraph, the writer seems intentionally roundabout to avoid sounding unnecessarily accusative when pointing out how our carelessness can be dangerous to bears. When criticizing a neighbor, you should always be diplomatic, especially when you\u2019re the cops.<\/p>\n Confident in its authority, JPD here avoids the pseudo-authoritative, authoritarian trash we hear these days from so many other institutions. The message comes across in simple conversational English \u2014 without the bologna, without the blather, without the bull.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t just good writing. It\u2019s good government. In refusing to be attracted by garbage, the Juneau Police Department shows us some real leadership.<\/p>\n Lead on, JPD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jean-Luc Picard should beam down here to Juneau to get the best advice on how to fight the Borg. After my last column\u2019s diatribe against bureaucratese from some of our local Borg-Wannabes, my friend and fellow scribbler Clint Farr sent me an email with a link to a model of how to wage the good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-27983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27983"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=27983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}