Mind your language

A FRIEND of my husband's, who lives in Norfolk, has all his post franked:

`KFC 2Pcs Chicken, Lg Fries, Rg Drink —BUY 1 — GET 1 FREE! Take to KFC for full details.' He finds this a little

demeaning, especially when he is reply- ing to invitations to Buckingham Palace garden parties. I have told him to write to Mary Killen about his social anxiety, but from a linguistic point of view it is of some interest that the advertisers think it likely that their kind of market can decode this sort of thing.

Pcs is nothing to do with postcards, the police, or political correctness, but is, of course, pieces, just as Lg is large and Rg is regular. The astonishing thing is that people know that KFC (which

sounds like a football team) is Kentucky

Fried Chicken. Naturally, Fries means what we used to call chips, and Drink

means something that my husband cer-

tainly wouldn't regard as a proper drink. People who produce newspapers such as the Sun in theory hold that their

readers cannot cope with complicated

language. In practice the headline writ- ers at the Sun contrive extraordinarily

complicated verbal conceits. `Bot of

trouble', said a headline in last Satur- day's. What is that meant to be about?

Why, only someone who was arrested for exposing his 'bum' while sunbathing. That is simple, but the sports sub-edi- tors delight in contriving metaphysical

contortions. 'Run over by a Gus', said the Sun's cricket pages, across a double spread. A Gus? This supposes the read- ers will first find that Gus reminds them of bus, and secondly that they will know before reading the report beneath that Gus refers to Angus Fraser. Nor when

one gets to it is the introduction to the story very much help: 'Angus Fraser proved his point to the Mighty One yes- terday and answered England's very own Lord's Prayer.' Even my husband stumbled over who or what the Mighty One is.

I suppose the greatest challenge to the assumption that Sun readers have a

low reading-age is the racing card — in small type, full of abbreviations and stuffed with obscure technical informa- tion. But it's a winner.

Dot Wordsworth