Clearer Communication

Celia Alario with her dog.

Look around for Celia Alario and you'll find her at the DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She's a communications facilitator and media coach, faculty member and trainer of the University's Communications Director. She has blogs on several different media websites and believes that words matter (See her facebook page, BECAUSE WORDS MATTER). Oh, and she's a journalist and has also worked on some political campaigns.



Within the area of the environment and sustainability, Celia found that there was nothing available in the AP Stylebook. Words are mentioned within the field without a general understanding of exact meaning? Where and how do you use terms such as global warming, climate change, and greenhouse effect? When you speak about the Earth is that with a small letter or a capital letter? How do you get those who write about these issues to agree on the correct words to use and what they mean?

After all, it isn't necessarily true that politics isn't involved in this area and meanings are never deliberately skewed. Media entities with particular political agendas do, indeed, ridicule the terminology and the science of environmental study. You hear some people question "global warming" because there were polar vortexes that led to record low temperatures in some areas last year, in the mistaken idea that local weather changes are equivalent to global warming - or probably not.

Pastoral scene.

In order to develop clarity and uniform meaning Celia Alaria has embarked on a mission to gather a team of experts in various aspects of environmentalism to hash out entries to be submitted to the AP and NY Times Stylebooks. The idea is to be able to increase journalistic accuracy and integrity in reporting the issues involved with the environment and sustainability. That would only help average readers understand how we are all affected. As I noticed in one meme posted on facebook, there is no emergency backup Earth; we only have this one planet and we've got to get this right.

Thanks to this bio on WIMN: http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?author=5&profile, and this article on the Pollination Project: http://thepollinationproject.org/grants-awarded/celia-alario-because-words-matter-eco-ap-stylebook/.

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