It's How You Say It

Argumentum ad hominem (literally 'argument addressed to [the] man') is a Latin term describing how, if you want to win round a person to your point of view, you 'spin' the argument to match that person's situation and personality and sensitivities. Which is the principle employed by any subtle advertiser.

I like Dorling-Kindersley books - who doesn't ? But the crafty wording of their blurb about a book on home computing irritates me.

"Dorling-Kindersley, renowned for its digital expertise", they proclaim, "shares its know-how in a series of user-friendly visual guides to all the computer skills you'll ever need."

Cleverly put, but not quite accurate. D-K is renowned not for digital expertise, but for producing well-designed and informative books. The subjects are so varied that within the firm as a whole, even if you include everyone from senior management to the editiorial and design departments to office clerks, there cannot possibly be an expert on every subject their books treat, from Music to Wildlife to History to Computing. For expertise they will hire specialists in each field. They won't have it all 'in house'.

The polysyllabic authority of the phrase 'digital expertise' is softened by the deliberate casualness of the phrases 'know-how' (pop-speak) and 'user-friendly' (marketing jargon). "We at D-K", they seem to be telling us, "are academically superb but oh-so-human and not a bit uppity". The term "visual" gives encouragement to customers - uneducated as they must be, or presumably they wouldn't need our books - who may feel a little inhibited at the prospect of coping with technical jargon, while "guide" has friendly and re-assuring overtones. And we at D-K know your ambitions are pretty modest: our publication will help you achieve "all the skills [that a mug like] you'll ever need" - note the informality that the apostrophe in "you'll" implies. We can almost visualise the advertising copywriter's patronising smile (not that he is likely to be a 'digital expert' himself).

Actually, it is the phrase 'digital expertise' that the pedant will most dislike. 'Digital' (from Latin digitus = finger) means (a) 'to do with the fingers'; and (b) (because people used to count on their fingers, of which we conveniently have ten) 'to do with numbers or numerals'.

'Digital expertise' therefore implies (or should imply) either manual or mathematical skill. But because the basis of electronic computing is the translation of data into series of rapid pulses or digits (1 and 0 in the 'binary' system), the word 'digital' has gained an extra significance. But you can't properly speak of 'digital expertise' until the adjective 'digital' has been accepted as a term to describe 'operating a computer', which I hope it hasn't yet*.

* Once 'digital' is given this extra meaning, we shall be able to say that entering your domestic accounts on a computer is a test of 'digital expertise' in three different senses at once.

It's How You Say It