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to an incident in her volunteer work, "I could comprehend their sorrow." I told her to replace "comprehend" with "understand." Coming from Latin, "comprehend" has a more cerebral, intellectual connotation. "Understand," an Anglo-Saxon word, feels more visceral-it pertains more to the kind of emotional knowledge she was writing about.

Generally vague or abstract writing defeats the very purpose of communication: it prevents the audience from knowing just what the heck you're writing about. Professional and especially official writing is highly prone to vagueness and abstraction, and its writers often commit these flaws intentionally. Sentences without subjects constitute perhaps the most common kind of vague writing; Strunk and White note the weakness of phrases like "it is" or "there is" at the beginning of sentences, which render their subjects indefinite. Lunsford and Connors take this criticism further, showing that such phrases can serve a dissembling purpose: "A more subtle problem with these openings . . . is that they may be used to avoid taking responsibility for a statement. Look at the following two sentences:

It is necessary to raise student fees.
The university must raise student fees.

The first sentence avoids responsibility by failing to tell us who says it is necessary." It shields the university from blame by hiding it from view, posing the issue of raising fees as if it were a force of nature.
Euphemisms represent a particular method of intentional vagueness. The New St. Martin's Handbook defines euphemisms as "terms designed to make an unpleasant idea more attractive or acceptable"-such as "lady of the evening" for "prostitute." Lunsford and Connors caution, "Use euphemisms with great care. Although they can appeal to readers by showing that the writer is considering their feelings, they can also sound pompous or suggest a wishy-washy, timid, or evasive attitude." They can also suggest that the writer's consideration of the audience's feelings is superficial: "Your position is being eliminated seeks to soften the blow of being fired or laid off." Lots of luck. Lunsford and Connors add, "Other euphemisms include pass on for die and sanitation engineer for garbage collector." Euphemisms of this last type are a sure sign of a style inspired by an inflated ego. A fellow member of my hometown writers' group constantly called himself a retired "elementary educator"; he even objected when I referred to him as a "teacher," as though that admirable

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