One classic award by the Plain English people went to a snack company for a letter to a customer who complained that her potato chips were purple. When it comes to co-mangled prose, America need not take a back seat to Britain. Bill Lann Lee, rejected by the Senate but still the acting civil rights chief at the Justice Department, used similar gobbledy-gook in referring to forced busing. Forced busing is a misnomer, he wrote. School districts do not force children to ride a bus but only to arrive on time at their assigned schools.
Political correctness plays a role, too.
Professor William Lutz of Rutgers University, author of The New Doublespeak, says that schools are a rich source of verbal nonsense. The president of Cornell had the wit to put the original wording back. For the U.S. government, political killings conducted by governments we detest are still known as political killings. Business is pumping a lot of gas into the language, too. Better yet, let's make that commingled post-consumer processed units.