THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Speaking Bureaucratically. “One of the aspects of modernity that I have long wanted but found impossible to satirize is the bureaucratic language that seems to come naturally to so many people. The problem with this language is that it is auto-satirizing, as it were. The act of reading or hearing it is almost coterminous with that of deriding it. Indeed, for a short time I used to derive a small income from publishing (in a left-wing journal) the circulars that I received daily from my hospital administration. Very little additional commentary was required. When held up to examination, the absurdity—the nullity—of these circulars spoke for itself.”

Also: “Psychobabble is to self-knowledge as political correctness is to political philosophy.”

Related: “The Worm in the Brain,” the first chapter of Richard Mitchell’s Less Than Words Can Say. “So there you are with your active verbs being gnawed away. Little by little and only occasionally at first, you start saying things like: ‘I am told that . . .’ and ‘This letter is being written because . . .’ This habit has subtle effects. For one thing, since passives always require more words than actives, anything you may happen to write is longer than it would have been before the attack of the worm. You begin to suspect that you have a lot to say after all and that it’s probably rather important. The suspicion is all the stronger because what you write has begun to sound–well, sort of ‘official.’ ‘Hmm,’ you say to yourself, ‘Fate may have cast my lot a bit below my proper station,’ or, more likely, ‘Hmm. My lot may have been cast by Fate a bit below my proper station.'”