Bob Ellis is a wordsmith whose persuasive skills cover a diverse array of genres. He is a well-known broadcaster and screenwriter (credits include Newsfront and the Paul Cox collaborations Man of Flowers and My First Wife), feature film director (Unfinished Business and the autobiographical The Nostradamus Kid). He is occasional speech writer for NSW Premier Bob Carr, and a potent and often comic political writer, with titles including The Things We Did Last Summer, Two Weeks in Another Country, Letters to the Future and Goodbye Jerusalem. Recent books include And So it Goes, and First Abolish the Customer.

ABSTRACT

The world within the word

'The first big task of the ruler, Confucius said, is the rectification of the language. Words are what, among the Great Apes, make us the smartest. Words are either our friends or our destroyers; they cannot be fairweather friends, they are one or the other. It would be nice to get words back where they should be, in bed, as it were, with their meanings, and I'm sure we'll get them there someday.' (Bob Ellis, 2002)

When words are skilfully put together they generate all kind of potentials, exactly as, when you touch electric terminals together, you get a spark. Journalists or politicians or art educators who don't try very hard tend to make the mind of the reader slip. Nothing whatever compensates for the fatigue of shuttling across the page, or the didactic label.