The English Infiltration: "Sharing Out"
In my inbox, a search of my email for "sharing out" returns six results from one PR fellow, one result for a coworker of his and one result from Dennis Kucinich. These first seven results usually go something like, "On behalf of the [name of publication], sharing out this item by [author name] "[title of piece]." OR! In a weirder one: "I'm sharing out [name's] byline she wrote for the March issue of [client] [the "client" was in their own brackets!] [name of client magazine] (on sale is Feb 20) about how [summary of topic]." This seems sort of new in American English!
The phrase sounds like some new take on "widecasting" or something like that. And when one Googles, there's obviously quite a bit of stuff on "sharing out" an external hard drive, or a wifi connection, or other technical what-nots.
But the majority of other usage seems to be British English? It is even in Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition, under "Main Entry: dole out."
There is a reference to The Sharing-Out of Nuclear Attraction: or "I Can't Think about Physics in Chemistry," a 1998 paper on how chemistry and physics folks don't work together (also from the UK).
Oh and: the Kucinich result, you ask? It was a recollection of Elizabeth Kucinich's grandmother, sent to the Kucinich email list, upon which I was nonconsensually but pleasurably place. It goes: "In the evenings, my sister, Verity and I would gorge ourselves as Nan sat in her chair by the fire peeling and sharing out pears from the garden which had been wrapped in newspaper and stored in a cardboard box until their flavour and ripeness had reached a heavenly perfection." AND GUESS WHO IS ENGLISH? That's right. Elizabeth Kucinich, born in North Ockendon, England.
This is how things start: foreigners doing funny things with our language and then next thing we know, we talk like them.
The appropriation of language is not nearly as concerning as opening your mailbox and being repeatedly asked to click links for strangers. (Though you don't have to actually read the web pages behind the links… all they really want is a click. There won't be a quiz later!)
Gorblimey!
The usage by Nan Kucinich strikes me as much easier to parse, as it involves a limited number of items that you're distributing among people. It's not a familiar usage to me, but it also seems less grating than the idea of just sending out gazillions of links begging people to click on them.
It needs some irregular capitalization. Sorry, capitalisation.
May I say? I would like you to start an internet talk show with Elizabeth Kucinich on the subject of pears and other food-related reminiscences. MONETIZE THAT.
The thing I've always wondered is should it be "please find attached" or "attached please find" ?
"Attached please find…"
I prefer "attached please find" as well, because of the invisible comma.
Neither. It should be "attached is…" or "attached are…" or, even better, "I have attached…"
Well, the thing is I take great pride in making sure that all my business correspondence is as obfuscative as possible. Is obfuscative even a word? If not, I ought to add it to my .sig file.
I like how "please do the needful" is making a comeback via outsourced industries in certain former British colonies.
ugh that phrase is British? I thought it was some awkward translation.
I hate the phrase but I find it interesting since it's apparently an archaic form of English making its way back.
It'd be like if some unknown British island colony from the 1500s suddenly got popular after being out of contact for hundreds of years. And then all of a sudden we start seeing Shakespearean phrases in emails as a matter of course.
Yeah I'm a nerd.
"Revert back" is almost as strange. The button says "reply"!