The Shadow
The FAA published Order 7930.2S, Change 2, “Notices to Air Missions (NOTAM)” which gave a new meaning to the same acronym effective on Dec. 2, 2021.
Previously, (NOTAM) meant “Notice To Airmen,” and the change was made to comply with the Federal Women’s Program in an attempt to be inclusive of all aviators and missions.
However, (NOTAM) which meant “Notice To Airmen” for decades indicated that communication was intended for pilots, but the change in meaning now directs the communication to the missions rather than the pilots who perform the missions.
Google has gone woke by launching “prompts” that present writers with politically correct words.
For example, according to Google, the word “chairman” should be rendered as “chairperson,” and “landlord” should be written as “proprietor” or “property owner.”
Google’s attempt to move away from gender-specific terms includes substituting “stay-at-home spouse” for “housewife.”
The effort to make writing more inclusive and appropriate raises a question for Google’s programmers who apparently believe that using four words to express what one word expresses is an improvement. Does wordiness improve syntax?
Since woke movement began in 2014, the attack on pronoun gender has increased. Masculine gender pronouns and feminine gender pronouns are becoming the casualties in a push to change the English language.
LGBTQ plus communities, transgender and non-binary people have led the charge to reexamine society’s views on gender and gender stereotypes.
The plural pronoun, “they,” has morphed from a plural pronoun to an accepted singular pronoun according to the Associated Press, making the current usage acceptable as either a singular pronoun or plural pronoun depending upon context.
The English language has been undergoing changes for centuries. For example, during Shakespeare’s time, the word, “ocean,” was pronounced with three syllables rather than two.
The incorrect split infinitive used in “Star Trek,” “To boldly go,” became an acceptable part of grammar during the mid-1990s. No longer do English teachers penalize students for writing split infinitives in their compositions.
Changes in the English language that bring about clarity without wordiness obviously improve communications, and creating new words like “selfie” and “Ms.” add to a writer’s ability to communicate more effectively.
Before “Ms.” there were “Miss” and “Mrs.” to use for the salutation in a business letter, but if the writer did not know whether the person he was writing to was a married woman or a single woman, then he was only able to guess at which word was appropriate.
“Ms.” solved the language problem, unlike many changes being made today that only “muddy the waters.”
