There’s a great discussion underway at CBC Radio, bouncing around from email box to email box, about whether the word “pre-tape” is redundant or not. At the Corp, people use “pre-tape” to mean they’ll record something now for airing later.
Which led a producer from As It Happens to blast an email out saying:
Could we please add “pre-tape” to the list of redundancies! Please! We don’t “pre-tape” or “pre-record” anything. We tape or record.
Host Anna Maria Tremonti weighed in, arguing for the defence:
Given that this is a network that operates in 5 time zones, some interviews are taped, then taped again as the programs roll across the country. Ergo, they are pre-taped before they are taped again.
The discussion continued:
exactly - programs are recorded live, with some elements of them having been pre recorded - or recorded before the recording.
———–
Right. I appreciate that “pre-tape” or “pre-record” is a bit of cherished broadcasting jargon, but it is grammatical nonsense. “Pre-record/tape” is not a verb. Period. It must modify something, i.e. a “pre-tape interview” being a discussion one has with an interviewee prior to hitting the record button. The very act of recording something nullifies the “pre.” So, we record interviews prior to broadcasting them, and then we also record them as they are being broadcast. It may sound clunky or inconvenient, but correct grammar is sometimes like that. At CBC, we love to rail against corporate jargon — but get remarkably sensitive when it comes to our own. “Pre-tape”, or “pre-record” is pure jargon.
———–
I have a sneaking suspicion that the phrase originated as a “pre-show taping”. We just shortened it to “pre-tape”. That may help explain why it doesn’t seem redundant to some folks.
Where do you stand on pre-tape as a word? (Now, if we could only excise “onpassing” from the CBC’s vernacular.)
|
Comments below | See also: Fun Stuff, Programming |
| Email this | Posted at 4:13 am (12 Oct 2007) |
Here’s another redundancy one hears all the time in television promos: “Tune in tonight for an all-new episode of…”
All-new? Would it ever be a three-quarters-new episode? A one-tenth-new episode? Why can’t we just say it’s a new episode?
I think “pre-tape” is a rather good word. It’s a much nicer word than a lot of words I’ve been hearing on the CBC lately, such as that awful word “foodie”, and names of cities being used as adjectives in taglines.
And I swear that there must be some CBC rule that the word “schedule” must always pronounced “shedule” on the radio, even though very few Canadians I know pronounce it that way. That doesn’t really bother me, it just seems weird to me.
I stand with George Carlin, who is one of the more eloquent and thoughtful commentators on language I’ve ever heard:
“That’s another complaint of mine. Too much use of this prefix ‘pre.’ It’s all over the language now, pre-this, pre-that. Place the turkey in a pre-heated oven. It’s ridiculous. There are only two states an oven can possibly exist in: heated or unheated. Pre-heated is a meaningless f***in term. It’s like pre-recorded. This program was pre-recorded. Well of course it was pre-recorded! When else are you going to record it? Afterwards? That’s the whole purpose of recording — to do it beforehand. Otherwise it doesn’t really work, does it?”
(From “Airline Announcement” on “Jammin’ in New York”)
“Pre-tape” is CBC jargon. That doesn’t make it a bad word any more than “backtime” or “double-ender”.
Jargon’s only bad when you’re trying to talk to someone who doesn’t speak the same language. When talking to CBC-ers, it’s perfectly acceptable to call something a pre-tape. When talking to anyone else, it is polite to explain that you are planning to play the interview later.
While you’re at it, please banish “off-of” from the broadcaster’s lexicon; e.g. Sable Island is off the coast of Nova Scotia, not “off-of.” And please, ‘noon’ is pronounced to rhyme with moon, loon, soon, boon etc., not “nyoon” as we now often hear on our public broadcaster. That’s rather like crooking a finger while drinking tea.
you’re all focusing on “pre” when, at least for those of us in radio, the funny word is “tape”. I haven’t seen this stuff for a while now.
It seems to snap into a sensible meaning when pre- is thought to refer to the broadcast. You can broadcast something live, and record or tape it simultaneously, or you can record/tape it prior to broadcast, which pre-recorded seems to mean in my understanding. I think the scope of what pre- can refer to is a bit elastic, as in it can attach to the verb, or it can modify the verb’s placement in time, depending on the use.
Speaking as a professional editor, I’ll say I like the term “pre-tape.” It’s short, meaningful, and clear. There is a difference between taping something and pre-taping it, but trying to excise the “pre” only yields longer and more complicated explanations. I say keep it.
This is not a CBC word, it’s an industry word.
Just another example of “The CBC is Not God”. The folk on-air have the same kinds of annoying habits as those behind the scenes.
The supposed language expert continues to pronounce “junta” with a “j” as in juice in her own newscasts despite the fact that most of us (and the Oxford Canadian) have been saying “hunta” forever.
I’ve not noticed anyone at the CBC who can carry on an unscripted conversation without saying “you know” (and often “I mean”) in every sentence.
Well, OK, maybe Michael Enright doesn’t say “you know” every third word but everyone else does.
But pre-tape? As that old commercial said: “You ever see a pre-formed chicken?”
Yay for pre-tape (for the reasons Megan and Derek give).
Boo for onpassing.
What about “managing expectations”? This is becoming increasingly popular CBC speak.
Not a CBC-only word, we use it at my work as well.
Another fine example of… “things that make you go hmmmmm?”
I must admit that the term is a “bit of cherished broadcasting jargon” as mentioned in the article, however, grammatical nonsense it is not.
The nice thing about the English language is that it’s rich and we look at the value of each word and what it denotes. Is she screaming or talking loudly? Is he right or correct? Do you record or tape? Trivial matters. What does matter is that we enrich our language that much more.
If the Canadian Oxford Dictionary can derive satisfaction in the use of the omnipresent Tim Horton’s term for coffee with two sugars and two creams, then pre-tape is just as acceptable.
You just can’t help but get swept up in this grammatical excitement, eh?