P'unk Avenue Window

Non-fiction writers love to incorporate snippets of French in their prose. These petits fours provide emphasis, adding cachet to otherwise dry sentences. They are often italicized to avoid confusion and help the reader with pronunciation. After all, their purpose is to create an inclusive fraternité between author and audience, not alienate and embarrass.

Editorial writing offers opinion supported by facts. It contains a certain bourgeois entitlement, a privilege not afforded to provençal journalism, technical writing, and other blasé publication. It is that haute entitlement that elevates writing to an international level. The French language accoutrements of which I’m speaking can be employed to conjure lavish images the Belle Époch or tempestuous ones from the subsequent Fin de siécle.

With the newspaper industry’s raison d’etre waning, perhaps editors are taking a more laissez-faire approach to pretension. Widening the aperture of journalistic creativity might be the saving grace of our Quatrième État. We must grant impunity to our newspapermen from stylistic judgement. We only stand to benefit from expanded proverbial exercise in the print oeuvre.

Latin might be the eternal language of scholarship, but French is the language of culture… c’est la vie.

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