Communication World: Up-skilling meets re-skilling. But can either one do the job?

"What is 'Up-Skilling'?" inquires Kevin Snow, public information specialist in the office of the city council, Mesa, Ariz.

Snow found the compound in the title -- "Up-Skilling America's Workforce Conference" -- of a syllabus mailed by the American Society for Training and Development.

Held last fall in Tempe, the meeting sought to attract "Anyone who is interested in or must address literacy issues within an organization." One goal: "Identify literacy skill deficiencies." I did not attend, but I hope those who did had the curiosity to inquire, as Snow and I do, "Excuse us, but just what is 'up-skilling'?"

I know one thing it is not, and that is a resident of any of my dictionaries. Perhaps striving to impress rather than express, the sponsor apparently decided to verb the noun skill, tack up-in front of it, then trust in the reader to infer some kind of benefit. In my book, this is big-time "literacy skill deficiency."

Colleague Snow observes, "Only recently did I start using 'network' as a verb, and now 'training' is being replaced by 'up-skilling.' Frankly, I was rocked back a bit when I saw the title of (the conference)...."

Coinages like this one proliferate in the sociolects of trainers, educationists, and marketers, to single out three offenders. The Boston Globe (1/26/93) presented an opinion piece written by Lester C. Thurow, dean of the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management at MIT. It centered on the idea that U.S. companies have learned they can find Third World workers with enough education to learn how to produce goods whose quality equals those made in the U.S. Because this means there will be "enormous downward wage pressure on U.S. workers who do not have skills substantially in excess of those found in the Third World," Thurow says, "the only solution is what has to be a crash program for re-skilling the bottom half of the work force." The headline said "Re-skilling to save jobs."

Nonce words like up-skilling and re-skilling are not offensive when they aren't over-used and when the meaning is clear. In the two citations above, neither convey a clear meaning because there's no other point of reference, i.e., no dictionary entries to validate the reader's best guess. It seems to me that simplicity's needed here: upgrade skills ... raise skills ... why not re-train? Plain talk is what does the job.

The temptation to play word-roulette is always with us, of course, witness this quartet of euphemisms noted in the January 5 Wall Street Journal: delayering, creepback, rightsizing and smartsourcing. As the paper observes, jargon continues to flourish. Human-resources types coin some memorable not-quite-ready-for-Webster words: the noun re-career is the new job you take after you retire from running with the big rats; job-lock explains your staying in a lousy job because it offers health insurance; and if you're a domo (from downwardly mobile professional), you're an under-40 who shucks a promising career to concentrate on more meaningful or spiritual activities. (Houghton Mifflin's new "Trash Cash, Fizzbos, and Flatliners," a dictionary of today's words, displays some 1,200 of these neologies.)

* Here is a new slant on whom from page one of a prominent journal of Wall Street: "Now, the nation's big pension and mutual funds -- many of whom traditionally have tended toward larger, less volatile stocks -- have caught the scent of profits in small stocks."

Perhaps the writer elected whom, which is traditionally limited to persons, to personify the funds and further justify their ability to catch "the scent of profits." Fowler notes on p. 433 of his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, "The excuse of the Admiralty, which were responsible for these proceedings, is ... (which was, or who were)." Precedent there is, but among readers who a) noticed, and b) cared, I'll bet the consensus was that Wall Street had laid an egg. Which seems stronger here.

* Bob Hill, staff writer at Easel Corporation, Burlington, Mass., castigates new England ADWEEK for this: "O&P's Ervin said that he read the plan, which he found 'inciteful,' but ultimately, its recommendations were not enacted."

Of course, if ADWEEK is quoting Ervin's spelling, that's one thing; even so, snide sic should identify it. If the spelling is ADWEEK's, as Hill thinks, we are viewing yet another morsel of otoorthography, a.k.a. spelling by ear. One may incite a riot, that is to say "provoke and urge one," but there is no other form except the verb. Homophone insight, a noun, sits in the dictionary beside insightful, the word ADWEEK needed.

That said, do you find this acceptable? -- "Molly Higgins was one of two executives who had served on the powerful oversite committee." Not. It is oversight. And the trouble with it is that definition No. 1 says "an unintentional omission or mistake," whereas def. No. 2 says "watchful care or management; supervision" (American Heritage 3).

Alden Wood, lecturer on editorial procedures at Simmons College, Boston, Mass., writes and lectures on language usage.