Potential of Misunderstanding and a Personal Peeve

One of the first things you learn as an advertising copywriter is to be aware of words that can be either misunderstood or can have negative connotations. As one of my college writing professors said, “Never underestimate the potential of readers to read what they want to read rather than what you wrote or thought you wrote.”

The potential of misunderstanding arises from two sources. The first is the richness and breadth of the English language itself. The mammoth vocabulary is further complicated by the multiplicity of meanings individual words can have as well as the manner in which a word’s meaning can change when surrounded by other words. Writers attempt to deal with this problem by careful word choice and phrasing.

The second potential for misunderstanding stems from the intimacy of the dialogue between the writer and the reader: if the writer has done his job correctly the reader should feel that the writer is speaking directly to them. The difficulty is that this dialogue is occurring within the reader’s mind, without the benefit of the intonation and inflection that occurs in a spoken dialogue. Writers attempt to address this difficulty through careful and thoughtful punctuation and through developing an appropriate tone in their prose.

Still, no matter how careful a piece is written, the potential for the reader to misunderstand its meaning is limitless.

In the world of copywriting these difficulties are considerably amplified. More often than not, copywriters must convey a great deal of meaning in the fewest words possible. And when the copywriter is asked to come up with a slogan or a sales mark (the “sm” symbol you often see after a phrase in an advertisement) the brevity inherent in slogans or sales marks makes the task all the more difficult.

So this brings me to what I am willing to acknowledge is a personal peeve: the all too frequent use of the phrase “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

The origin of this phrase is obscure. When I conducted a very unscientific and limited survey most people believed that the phrase originated in the Bible, and when I pointed out that this was not the case, they were at a loss to offer an alternative.

The phrase is most commonly attributed to John Bradford (1510 – 1555 A.D., though his birthdate is an approximation), an English evangelical preacher and martyr, who – upon witnessing the hanging of several criminals – reportedly said “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.” The problem is that the phrase, or a variant of the phrase, does not appear anywhere in his writings. Indeed, the Parker Society published the collected writings (totaling over 1,000 pages) in 1848 and though the editors relate the story of Bradford uttering the variant mentioned above, nothing even remotely similar appears in his writings.

(As an aside, if Bradford did utter “There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford,” Bradford’s grace ran out in 1555 when he was burned at the stake, hence his martyrdom.)

Regardless of the phrase’s origins the fact is that it is continually misused in our current society. All too often, news coverage of natural disasters or other calamities features an official or member of the public saying, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” President Obama, whose rhetorical and oratory skills have been justly lauded, has frequently used this phrase when speaking to the American public about calamities. In these instances the speaker is intending to be inclusive – they want to say something like, “This could just as easily have happened to me,” but by using the God’s grace phrase they are saying the exact opposite.

When you dissect the meaning of “There, but for the Grace of God, go I” you see that what it is actually saying is that God’s grace has protected me from suffering a similar misfortune. And when you understand what the phrase is actually saying you also understand that the underlying implication of the phrase is that the people who have and/or are suffering are doing so because they lack God’s grace.

Thus, far from being an inclusive expression of empathy for victims of disasters or other calamities, the phrase is actually divisive and even elevates the speaker above those sufferers he/she is trying to console. In effect, the speaker is saying, “I have not suffered because I am in God’s grace. You have suffered because you do not have God’s grace. Therefore your punishment is deserved.”

I am probably belaboring my point, but casual and callous use of this phrase is (as you probably can tell) an abiding personal annoyance. Speakers and speechwriters can do better – and should do better – than this lazy approach to writing.

So, while I may not be able to eradicate this phrase completely from our vernacular, I hope that you, my dear readers, will at least pause before you are tempted to utter this phrase and will arrive at a far better choice of words.