Something that's always interested me

[conuly]

is when an organization feels the urgent need to say something both in officialese and also everyday talk. I can think of three very relevant examples in NYC:

1. Every time you do your taxes or do almost anything that involves interacting with the state government, you'll have to pick your county, and if you live in Brooklyn or Staten Island that means they list the county with the coterminous borough in parentheses.

2. If you have a kid in school, every year they send you a form reminding you to fill out your Emergency Contact Card, and every year they include the phrase "Blue Card" right afterwards. Because that's what we all call it. Because they're blue.

3. And here's one I haven't thought about much since adolescence, but if a job is apt to hire teens then they will ask for their Employment Certification and then, inevitably, add "Working Papers" right afterwards, again, because that's what everybody calls them.

There must be other examples I'm missing, as well as non-NY examples. I sometimes wonder if it'd be easier for them to just cave to the inevitable and start listing the everyday term first and then list the "real" term afterwards.

Comments

[silveradept]

Are all of these instances things where there's nothing that could be confused for it (some other Blue Card, for example) such that it would be still immediately recognizable? I can see that causing some confusion (but even then, the Permanent Resident Identification is called a "green card.")

I suspect they don't use the common terms for them because the government finds them vulgar (as I'm sure some nicknames are for various government forms and items) or because they worry abbot possible confusion with other forms.

[fox]

In my work I often have to do it with two sets of parens, one to expand the initialism and one to give the common name: OC spray (oleoresin capsicum spray) (pepper spray)

[hudebnik]

One is reminded of all the terms in legal English that combine a French-origin word with an Anglo-Saxon-origin word ("aid and abet", "let or hindrance", "assault and battery", etc.). I've always been told that this terminology was adopted after the Norman Conquest to make sure the law was comprehensible both to English-speaking peasants and to French-speaking nobles.

In this case it suggests that (a) the document has an official, perhaps even legally-mandated, name, and it's too much bureaucratic hassle to change it, and (b) the bureaucracy actually wants the public to fill out the right document so they don't have to keep answering the same questions and correcting the same mistakes over and over. Both of which are understandable.

[conuly]

I don't think there's any other blue anything that the DOE hands out, probably to minimize confusion here.

[conuly]

Oooh, double parens!

[conuly]

Oh, it's very understandable, I just think it's interesting.

[calimac]

But assault and battery are two different things. If you make a threatening move to hit someone, that's assault. Battery is when you actually hit them.

[hudebnik]

Yes, that’s the way I understand it too. But that distinction may post-date the term “assault and battery”.

[bibliofile]

SNAP vs. food stamps

Though food stamps went away years ago, people still call them that.