Harry blamires the penguin guide to plain eng

W here a bad practice turns up day after day in the newspaper, on the air and in the m orning mail it ought to get proportionate attention and space in a book w hich specifically concent

THE PENGUIN GUIDE TO PLAIN ENGLISH

Harry Blamires, a graduate of University College, Oxford, was formerly Dean of Arts and Sciences at King Alfred’s College, Winchester He was Visiting Professor of English Literature at Wheaton College, Illinois, in

1987 The University of Southampton has awarded him a D.Litt in recognition of his achievements as a writer His total output of some thirty books includes fiction and theology, but he is widely known for his works of literary history and criticism These include A Short History of English Literature (Routledge) and Twentieth-Century English Literature (Mac­millan) For over three decades students in the USA and the UK have benefitted from his classic guide to Joyce’s Ulysses, The New Bloomsday Book More recently, in The Cassell Guide to Common Errors in English, he has shown how lively and entertaining the exploration of current usage can be

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2000

5

Copyright © Harry Blamires, 2000

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Set in 9.7 5 /1 2 pt Monotype Joanna

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Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Except in the United States o f America, this book is sold subject

to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

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30

45

70 70

P A R T 2 A rranging W o rd s C o rrec tly

USE O F S I NG U L A R A N D PLURAL 1 2 3 USE O F THE INFINITIVE 1 3 0

TH E PRESENT PARTI CI PLE 1 3 4

T H E PAST PARTI CI PLE 139

THE USE OF NE GATI VES 2 1 8

LI STI NG IN S E Q U E N C E 2 6 5

p a r t 3 Changing Fashions in Usage

C O M P O U N D S 2 7 1 VARIETIES O F C O M P O U N D S 2 7 2

TH E USE O F POSSESSI VES 3 0 4

N O U N S USED AS ADJ ECTI VES 3 0 8

TH E P A R E N T H E T I C A L ADVERB 3 1 0

P O L I T I C A L C O R R E C T N E S S 311

B U SI NESS - S PE AK 3 1 9 VERBI AGE IN THE AR TI STI C W O R L D 3 3 1

S P O R T S P E A K 3 3 6

J O U R N A L E S E A N D M A G A Z I N E - S P E A K 3 3 8

I N T R O D U C T I O N

W h at is Plain English?

‘Sir, ’tis m y occupation to be plain’ says Kent to the king in Shakespeare’s King Lear, as he all but despairs o f persuading his master to face facts And Kent is Shakespeare’s chosen vehicle to represent the values o f com m on sense and reason in a w orld toppling into lunacy Kent’s is the voice o f healthy discernment in recognizing the difference between truth and falsehood, genuineness and corruption Plainness is his pride And in Shakespeare’s Richard III this is how the villain Gloucester protests against

m isrepresentation o f his character:

Cannot a plain man live and think no harm,

But that his simple truth must be abused

By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

He postures as the plain m an up against the showy, greasy tricksters

w ho specialize in nods and winks and innuendoes The ‘plain’ is again opposed to the bogus and the deceptive And although we sometimes nowadays use the w ord ‘plain’ as the converse o f ‘beautiful’, it remains

a connotatively rich one ‘Plain living and high thinking are no m o re’

W ordsw orth com plained in criticism o f the w orship o f wealth and show corrupting contem porary life Yet plainness does not generally im ply austerity W hen the w ords ‘plain’ and ‘English’ are taken into the expression ‘plain English cooking’, we are m ore likely to encounter roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, apple pie and cream, than the m enu o f the ascetic

We are looking then for usage w hich is genuine and direct, unspoiled

by any hint o f the bogus or the pretentious, English w hich is clear and open as the day, w hich claims no special attention to itself but rather melts away into w hat it conveys That should be the standard usage o f speakers and writers But we only need to open a newspaper or turn on the radio to realize that the prevailing verbal usage o f our age falls short

in num erous ways That is the reason for the m ethod o f approach adopted

in this book Tidily explaining to readers how the English language should be used by a neat progression through the parts o f speech, and the construction o f clauses and sentences, can be illuminating But it is

n ot quite the same process as checking up at the coalface on the English that is actually used and uncovering w here it goes w rong I have taken heed o f a wise popular saying, ‘If it ain’t broke, d o n ’t m end it.’ That advice has always seemed to m e to be peculiarly applicable to the business

o f w riting books w ith an instructive purpose And that is w hy I have believed that the m ost practically helpful starting-point for giving advice about how to write good English is from the mass o f bad English w ith

w hich we are surrounded

I now have a collection o f some 7,000 bad sentences, accumulated over the years from the press, the radio, com mercial publicity and junk mail Bringing this material to light enables us to discern w here people

go w rong in their use o f English, not just occasionally but time after time W here a bad practice turns up day after day in the newspaper, on the air and in the m orning mail it ought to get proportionate attention and space in a book w hich specifically concentrates on the English we actually read, actually hear, actually use

That is w hy this book abounds in examples It does not take up a dogmatic position in relation to traditional gram m ar or to the revisionist grammars o f the last few decades It does not lay into the latest slang or get over-excited about split infinitives It explores the English n ow in use

w ith determ ined emphasis on the guide-lines we m ust follow if w hat we say and w hat we w rite is to be exactly w hat we mean

For we are about a m uch m ore positive task than that o f m ere detection and correction o f error That in itself is not an inspiring activity N or does it w in friends ‘Filthy famished correctioner’ Shakespeare’s Doll Tearsheet screams at the interfering Beadle But correction can be salutary

‘W hom the Lord loveth He correcteth,’ the Book of Proverbs tells us And the positive aim here is to reveal how gratifying, indeed how stimulating it is to achieve that sustained level o f correctness w hich marks

‘plain English’ There is great satisfaction for all those w ho do not have

to w orry that w hat they write, or w hat they say w hen they speak in public, may not stand up to scrutiny on some point o f style or usage.For m ost people it is not a matter o f mastering a lot o f grammatical rules It is rather a matter o f learning to keep a clear head Having read

‘Glancing to the right, the church spire is visible above the rooftops’, the gram m arian will talk about the ‘hanging participle’, w hile the clear­

headed reader will anyway protest mentally ‘But the church spire is not glancing to the right.’ In the same way, having read ‘As the inheritor o f

an illustrious nam e in hunting, the threat to the sport came as a great shock’, the gramm arian will quite properly talk about ‘m isconnecting an appositional phrase’, but the clear-headed reader can see anyway that it

is nonsense to talk o f a ‘threat’ as having ‘an illustrious nam e in h u n tin g ’, and will not need to refer to the grammatical rule book Correct use o f English depends so m uch on straight thinking and sheer com m on sense that it is possible in discussion o f the subject to be selective and econom ic

in the use o f grammatical term inology That is the policy in this book.Some light can be shed on w hat constitutes ‘plain English’ if we take a prelim inary look at a few o f the obvious qualities it m ust have Utterance that is plain is utterance that cannot be m isunderstood And utterance that cannot possibly be m isunderstood will be precise To be precise is

to get exactly the right w ord Precision ought not to be regarded as the preserve o f pedants Getting nearly the right w ord renders prose uncom fortable for the educated reader Here w e have an advertisement

w here a touch o f cleverness misfires through failure to be precise

Five Alive, one of the most popular fruit drinks on the market, has devel­oped a new tasty recipe that’s an ideal accompaniment for any breakfasttable

Reading w ith proper attention, we sense at once that the w ord ‘accom ­panim ent’ is ill-chosen Tomato sauce m ight be a suitable accom panim ent for fish and chips, and a piano m ight provide a suitable accom panim ent for a singer, but a breakfast table does not need to be accompanied by a recipe The w riter’s desire not to say the simple and direct thing, that

‘the recipe makes a tasty drink for breakfast’, instead o f dragging in the notion o f accompanying a table, merely makes for imprecision

Plain English is never wasteful o f words If a thing can be said briefly, then so it should be Great poets recognize this Few sentences say as

m uch as Shakespeare’s ‘To be or not to be; that is the question.’ Not that com pression so extreme fits all occasions But the pointless piling-up o f

w ords degrades the w ords it wastes Nevertheless, the notion that brief conversational idiom s should be translated in print into long-w inded utterance is widespread Here is a report on the result o f a test taken by nurses

The assessments were all successfully undertaken The anticipated learn­ing outcomes of each group member were substantially exceeded and are currently being expressed as part of the outcome profile for each of them.

Translated into English, this w ould read: ‘They all did better than expected and their results are being recorded.’

The converse error o f excessive thrift in the num ber o f w ords used is perhaps m uch rarer But it is possible to w rite w ithout being long-w inded and yet to produce w ording that is stilted and strained Here is a com m ent

on the disposal o f a locomotive by a railway preservation society

It is a year since its custodianship transferred to another society

The use o f the w ord ‘custodianship’ here sounds awkwardly affected

W hy not: ‘It is a year since it was handed over into the keeping o f another society’?

There is of course a place for artificial vocabulary w hich confers a degree o f dignity on w hat is said But there are contexts w here the avoidance o f the m ost familiar and natural vocabulary merely seems emptily pretentious Here is a piece from an article about a particular breed o f dogs

It was apparent that with the enormity of their size, their slobbering habits and also their general dislike of the heat it was obvious that their preference would be an outside environment, which was certainly more practical for us

We overlook the elementary error o f repeating ‘it was apparent’ in ‘it was obvious’ W hat concerns us here is the use o f such expressions as

‘the enorm ity o f their size’ (a bad error anyway, since ‘enorm ity’ does not m ean m agnitude but dreadfulness) and ‘their preference w ould be

an outside environm ent’ W hat it all am ounts to is that ‘because they are big and slobber and dislike heat, they w ould be better kept outside’ And that is how it should be put

It should go w ithout saying that plain English will be accurate in its use o f words Ensuring that your sentence makes the point you w ant to make clearly is a m atter o f clarifying your meaning mentally before you pen a w ord Inaccuracy is not found only in long, awkward para­graphs A b rief and at first sight simple sentence, w hich to the superficial glance raises no problem s, may not stand up to careful scrutiny in this

respect Here is a sentence from an article about collecting Old Master drawings.

The history of collecting Old Master drawings in this country is of unrivalled distinction

The reader w onders h o w a ‘history’ can be so distinguished From the sentence that follows this one we learn o f aristocratic collectors w ho indulged in this hobby In short, the w riter did n ot m ean that the ‘history’ had unrivalled distinction, but that from earliest times collectors were distinguished people W hat was really m eant was: ‘Distinguished aristo­crats were early collectors o f Old Master draw ings in our country.’

In this matter o f accuracy, the good w riter will learn to play safe We

m ust fully understand every w ord we use and take no risks Venturing outside the range o f our understanding is dangerous Sometimes avoiding

w hat is simple and straightforward lures us into error A m isjudged attem pt at distinctiveness in vocabulary can fail disgracefully Even hig h ­brow critics are not exem pt from the tem ptation to be just a little too clever Thus we find a literary reviewer writing:

After a while exaggerated comic scenes mount up meaninglessly, and even the funniest feel belaboured

Clearly w hat the w riter w anted to convey was that the comic scenes seemed ‘laboured’, w hich means laboriously put together The som ewhat archaic verb to ‘belabour’ means to thrash, so the critic’s sentence really means that the com ic scenes seemed thrashed, w hich makes no sense at all

There is another way o f avoiding w hat is straightforward, w hen we pick up some ready-m ade but contrived expression w here a simple sequence o f familiar w ords w ould be better

He was awkward, stubborn and lazy to the extent that his parents finally lost patience with him

This is a case in point It is difficult to think o f a sentence using the expression ‘to the extent that’ w hich w ould not be better w ithout it

N othing is gained here from avoiding the straightforward wording: ‘He was so awkward, stubborn and lazy that his parents finally lost patience

w ith h im ’

Plain English will use w ords that are appropriate to the context There will not be w ords w hich seem incongruously out o f place Even a fairly

simple statement o f fact may be m arred in this respect Here is a police officer reporting on the discovery o f a dead body:

At 7.0 p.m last night officers attended some waste ground

The w ord ‘attended’ may be standard in ‘police-speak’, but it is surely out o f place here It has too formal a ring and in any case conveys the

w rong meaning W e m ight speak o f ‘attending* a w edding reception in

a hotel, but not o f ‘attending’ the hotel To speak o f attending ‘waste gro u n d ’ is a clumsy way o f avoiding som ething very simple: ‘Officers

w ent to some waste g round.’ Plain English will not furrow the brow o f the reader by a h int o f inappropriateness in the relation o f w ord to w ord

W e cannot w rite plain English unless w e keep a clear head Here is a sentence from an article in a quality paper on the subject o f body-piercing.With a tongue-stud, there are two main veins underneath the tongue and you have to make sure that you keep away from them

There is a strange illogicality here The tw o m ain veins underneath the tongue are there w hether you are going to fix a stud in the m outh or not

‘W ith ’ is a problem atic w ord in this respect W e shall see many instances

o f its misuse later in the book W hat the w riter means is: ‘If you fit a tongue stud, you have to make sure that you keep away from the two

m ain veins underneath the tongue.’

Plain English is easy on the ear It reads fluently There are occasions

in poetry and in other imaginative literature w hen the w riter may wish

to exploit the unsettling, percussive pow er o f words But generally speaking, prose should flow smoothly It should n ot unsettle the reader’s response by jerkiness or by seemingly cluttered wording

‘School from Hell’ headlines stereotyped children from the Ridings School

in Halifax, young reporters from the Save the Children-backed Newcastle Children’s Express News Agency told journalists at a recent seminar.The thirteen-w ord pile-up as the subject o f the verb ‘told’ unsettles the reader’s attention ‘Young reporters from the Newcastle Children’s Express News Agency’ is surely long enough as the subject o f the verb

To bolt on to that the w ords ‘Save the Children-backed’ is to apply a packed bale o f straw to the camel’s already fully loaded back W here the situation is as desperate as this, use brackets: ‘young reporters from the Newcastle Children’s Express News Agency (backed by Save the Children) told journalists’

If utterance is plain, it w ill not be complex W hatever intricacies there may be in the message conveyed, the w ording will n ot overtax our m inds

to sort it out Here is a piece from a m arketing journal about the European Monetary Union

The respondents, however, in spite of their doubts about the single currency, foresaw many benefits, including the elimination of the risks involved with currency exchange, the equalization of currencies, the reduced adminis­tration costs (e.g in billing) and the psychological benefits attached because

of a strengthening of the bonds between countries and it being evidence of

a united European economic power

The complexity here is n ot gross, but it is enough to make the sequence seem awkward The reader senses a lack o f cohesion Too many bits seem

to have been stuck together Indeed, the passage asks to be broken up into its constituent parts ‘The correspondents had doubts about the single currency, but they foresaw many benefits The risks taken in exchanging currencies w ould be removed, currencies w ould be equalized, administrative costs w ould be reduced, and, psychologically, bonds between countries w ould be strengthened by the existence o f a united European econom ic pow er.’

Two general lessons could be learned from this little exercise W here argum ent or reasoning is involved, a watch should be kept on para­graphing, to ensure that the force o f individual points is not lost in the process o f heaping them together The second point is that replacing nouns by verbs often simplifies and clarifies m eaning ( ‘elim ination’

is replaced by ‘could be rem oved’, ‘equalization’ by ‘equalized’ and

‘strengthening’ by ‘strengthened’) That kind o f shift in usage will be thoroughly explored later in the book

Plain English will never be muddled Here is a travel article tem pting

us to visit the island o f Corfu

From Odysseus through to the English poet and novelist Lawrence Durrell, the island has long been lauded for its glorious beaches, great rock forma­tions along the west coast, picturesque villages and spectacular birdlife Add

to that the acres of silvery, ancient olive groves, and it is hard to believe that you are nearly at the end of the twentieth century

W e do not have doubts about w hat the w riter is w anting to tell us here But we w ish she had actually said it, instead o f leaving us to keep up a running process o f m ental correction as w e read ‘From Odysseus to

Durrell, people have lauded Corfu’ w ould make sense ‘From Odysseus

to Durrell, the island has been lauded’ does not The w ord ‘that’ in ‘Add

to that’, placed w here it is, ought to refer to the long lauding of the island But it doesn’t The w riter has changed tack Moreover, she immediately changes tack again Adding olive groves to villages and birdlife does not make it difficult to believe that w e are w here w e are in history W hat the w riter means is that the (unm entioned) tranquillity and remoteness o f the scenery seem to belong to a past century Clear articulation o f a train o f thought will leave no gaps in logic w hich the reader’s m ind has to jum p over The connecting expressions ‘Add to that’, ‘and it is hard to believe’ and ‘O therw ise’ all need to be replaced:

‘From Odysseus through to the English poet Lawrence Durrell, people have long lauded the island for its glorious beaches, great rock form ations along the west coast, picturesque villages and spectacular birdlife M ore­over, there are acres o f silvery, ancient olive groves, and the peaceful atmosphere makes it hard for the visitor to rem em ber that w e are nearly

at the end o f the tw entieth century.’

Finally, plain English has a directness w hich ensures that its m eaning will never seem m ore com plex than it is It will never becom e convoluted

by tangled syntax Here w e have an observation about the introduction

o f a new High Intensity Cruising Licence for vessels w hich have no perm anent m ooring, on our inland waterways

In an about-face British Waterways changed from claiming the new licence was due to the majority of continuous cruisers flouting the rules, causing mooring congestion at popular visitor moorings, and cost enforcement issues, to saying that this was part of the process to resolve the funding and arrears of maintenance problems

To begin with, by ‘the new licence was due to ’ the w riter really means

‘the introduction o f the new licence was due to ’ Too big a pile-up o f participles and gerunds (ending in ‘-in g ’) is almost always clumsy The basic construction chosen ( ‘changed from claiming to saying’), w hen complicated by ‘due to flouting’ and ‘causing congestion’ sinks under its

ow n weight The direct presentation o f the items awkwardly joined

w ould make reading far easier ‘BW has done a U-turn They said the new licence was introduced because continuous cruisers flouted the rules, caused congestion at popular m ooring sites and m ade enforcem ent

o f the regulations expensive They no w say that the new scheme helps towards the general costs o f m aintenance.’ In the original there are three

finite verbs only ( ‘changed’, ‘w as’ and ‘this w as’) surrounded by an entanglem ent o f non-finite forms ( ‘claim ing’, ‘flouting’, ‘causing’, ‘say­

in g ’, ‘to resolve’, ‘funding’) In our corrected version there are eight finite verbs ( ‘has d o n e ’, ‘said’, ‘was introduced’, ‘flouted’, ‘caused’,

‘m ade’, ‘say’ and ‘helps’) The change not only makes the passage m ore straightforward and easier to follow It also makes the prose tauter and

m ore vigorous

T H E P L A N O F T H I S B O O K

W e have dipped our toes into the sea o f carelessness that contem porary usage exemplifies W e have noticed dom inant tendencies - tendencies to inflation, to inexactitude, to m uddle and to illogicality In all these directions, and in m any others, variable degrees o f erroneousness will

be fully explored in the following chapters, as w e systematically take stock o f current usage

Part 1 The W o rd s at O u r Disposal

The focus o f the earlier chapters o f the book is up o n our vocabulary The English vocabulary is vast and varied W e m ust learn to be confident about w hich is the right w ord and w hich is the w rong w ord in any context To that end the chapters in Part i are devoted to thorough exploration o f w ords no w com m only m isused or over-used and to problem s that can arise in m aintaining accuracy in meaning w hen jux­taposing w ord w ith w ord W e then take a look at the peculiar character

o f the English language, exam ining the developm ent o f its extraordinarily rich vocabulary and considering some o f the problem s as well as the advantages that its resources present

Part 2 Arranging W o rd s C orrectly

Part 2 has a series o f chapters m ore concerned w ith the build-up o f sentences, the proper arrangem ent o f w ords in rational utterance and the need for congruity and coherence in this respect It is in this section that attention is given to the constructions that tend to trip us up, to the

proper techniques for arguing a case, to the dem ands o f sound logic, and

to w hat it is that distinguishes good style from bad The aim throughout this section is to ensure clear understanding o f the various pitfalls beset­ting the w ould-be w riter o f good English today, and to show ho w they may be avoided

Part 3 Changing Fashions in Usage

Finally, in Part 3 the emphasis is u pon verbal fashions and trends affecting current usage Here the book explores the innovations o f recent decades, samples trendy verbal practices, and looks into some o f the liberties taken

in current usage There is emphasis throughout upon the evident need for new discipline to restore vitality to our utterance The last chapter, in particular, focuses on contem porary usage in various spheres o f business and public life

PART 1

The W ords at Our Disposal

d o n ’t quite find it? W hen are we m ost likely to say ‘You know w hat I

m ean?’ One such occasion may arise w hen w e are trying to explain a situation to som eone else, or trying to argue a point The process o f explaining or arguing is one o f the contexts in w hich the use o f w ords is likely to present problems By ‘explaining or arguing’ I do not have in

m ind any very abstruse reasoning processes After all, w e are involved in modest reasoning processes w hen we say ‘That sunset seems to prom ise

a fine day to m o rro w ’ And we may get involved in a fairly awkward search for the right w ords in the right order w hen a passing m otorist asks us the way to a given street in a tow n riddled w ith one-way signs

We have seen that to choose the right w ord is to choose the precise

w ord, the appropriate and straightforward w ord That ought to m ean choosing the obvious w ord, the w ord that comes first to m ind But unfortunately that is not the case W hat comes first to m ind is often the currently m ost frequently used w ord Now o f course there is no point in trying to avoid use o f the m ost frequently used w ord simply in order to

be different But fashionable habits establish some words widely and firmly in current usage to the neglect o f others And that has unfortunate consequences In the first place, a given w ord is over-used while other

w ords are too little used In the second place, differences in connotation, sometimes slight, sometim es subtle, are thus lost And thirdly, current speech is riddled w ith usages w hich excessive exploitation has rendered inaccurate W e shall consider various spheres o f discourse in w hich the damage done to the connotation o f crucial w ords makes difficulties for us

O f course, things can go w rong in a m ore complex way than in the

m ere choice o f words Later on in the book we shall have to return to consider the contexts in w hich errors abound, w ith an eye on m ore complex problem s o f sentence structure and syntax.

Reasoning

cause, reason, reasonably

N owhere is it m ore necessary to select w ords carefully than in dealing

w ith matters o f cause and effect In this respect a current bad habit is the careless use o f the w ord ‘reason’ In the contexts w ith w hich w e are concerned ‘reason’ is best used o f hum an motivation If a m an is hurrying

to catch a train, the ‘reason’ for his haste may be that he wants to be hom e in time for dinner If he meets an old friend w ho detains him , that

is not the ‘reason’ w hy he misses the train, it is the ‘cause’ o f his missing

it Thus w hen w e read: ‘Acne is on the increase am ong w om en The reason is thought to be stress’, we recognize that this should be: ‘the cause is thought to be stress’ The error is a com m on one

The common reason for money to go unclaimed is shareholders failing to inform registrars of change of address Another reason is cheques, delivered to the wrong address, lapsing because they are not cashed within six months

This gives us two ‘causes’, not reasons In correcting the passage it w ould

be far better, as so often is the case, to base the w ording neither on the noun ‘reason’ no r on the n oun ‘cause’ but on use o f the w ord ‘because’:

‘Money often goes unclaim ed because shareholders fail to inform regis­trars o f change o f address It also may go unclaim ed because cheques are delivered to the w rong address, are not cashed w ithin six m onths and

so lapse.’

The company’s difficulties were due to no other reason than inefficiency.Similarly this w ould better be: ‘Inefficiency was the sole cause o f the com pany’s difficulties.’

If ‘reason’ is a w ord that over-use has weakened, even m ore so is the

w ord ‘reasonably’ It is one o f those adverbs w hich we throw about in conversation w ith little sense o f precision If we were m ore disciplined

in our choice o f w ords we should recall that the distinction between

w hat is ‘reasonable’ and w hat is ‘unreasonable’ is a crucial one But

conversational freedom allows the w ord ‘reasonably’ to m ean som ething like ‘m oderately’ ( ‘I’m reasonably certain about it’) until its connotation deteriorates finally into som ething like ‘rather’ and we find in print: ‘The details are reasonably sketchy at the m o m en t.’

mean

In dealing w ith matters o f cause, result and effect, there is now a tendency

to fall back too often on the w ord ‘m ean’ Throughout this book usage

o f the w ord in its strictest connotation is bound to be frequent W e m ust repeatedly observe that a given w ord ‘m eans’ this and does not ‘m ean’ that It is by a natural and logical developm ent that we arrive at such conversational usages as ‘That sky means there’s rain ahead’ or even the

m ore idiomatic ‘That fellow means business.’ However, popular usage

no w drags the verb into contexts w here it merely draws attention to the paucity o f vocabulary in the w riter’s grasp

The hillside location of this hotel means there are wonderful views of the town and harbour

The w riter is here concerned, not w ith a'm atter o f m eaning, but w ith a matter o f cause and effect It w ould be m uch better to say: ‘Because o f its hillside location, this hotel has w onderful views o f the tow n and

h arbour.’ There is a similar causal function in the w ord ‘m ean’ in:Recent developments in surgical practice mean that patients are not required

to stay in hospital overnight

Clearly it w ould be m ore precise to say: ‘As a result o f recent developments

in surgical practice patients are not required to stay in hospital overnight.’ And the following advice, given to young w om en about their appearance

w hen they are going to be interviewed, stretches the idiomatic usage further

If in doubt, dress ‘up’ rather than ‘down’ - even if the job you’re going for doesn’t mean looking smart

Our objection to the usage is that it over-uses a m uch over-used verb, and also that it is imprecise, w hen w hat is really m eant is: ‘even if the job yo u ’re going for doesn’t require you to look particularly sm art’ It is after all the possible ‘requirem ent’ presented by the em ployer or the post that is at issue

involve I involvement

The verb to ‘involve’ is also being used to cover a variety o f rational connections, causal and otherwise Its connotation has developed interestingly The Latii^ root ( ‘volvere’) m eant to roll som ething about and is behind both our w ords ‘revolve’ and ‘involve’ ‘Involvere’ came to m ean to overwhelm or cover, used o f clouds sweeping over the sky So in English usage in the eighteenth century the poet William Cowper began his pow erful poem about a castaway at sea w ith the lines:

Obscurest night involved the sky,The Atlantic billows roared From m eaning to roll things up, to enwrap, to envelop or entangle we can see how it has become the useful w ord w e now know too well.The retirement package involved continued rent-free residence

Here the w ord ‘involve’ is used to m ean ‘include’

The expedition would involve spending three weeks in an exposed position

on the mountain

Here the w ord ‘involve’ is used to m ean ‘necessitate’

Accepting the new post would have involved my whole family

Here the w ord ‘involve’ is used to m ean ‘affect’

We could not consider the board’s proposal without involving the whole work force

Here the w ord ‘involve’ means ‘consult’ This is a far cry from the notion

o f rolling up clouds in a stormy sky It is a pity to weaken an already weakened w ord further That is w hat w e should say to ourselves before lightly using the w ord

The popularity o f the verb to ‘involve’ has now been matched by the popularity o f the noun ‘involvement* If a project ‘involves’ collecting inform ation, then collecting inform ation is a necessary part o f the project People ‘involved’ in a project are significantly concerned and associated

w ith it W hen w e read o f the hope that a pretty but neglected w aterway

‘will see an increased local involvem ent’ we recognize the same usage, but w hat can we make o f the following?

The case for one member, one vote involvement in future leadership elections is not just to provide democratic legitimacy but also as an incentive

to join

The w riter here errs in trying to balance ‘is not just to ’ w ith ‘but also as’ instead o f w ith ‘but also to ’ But that grammatical lapse is not w hat we happen to be interested in just now W hat is ‘one m em ber, one vote involvem ent’? The w riter is trying to say: ‘The case for using the one-

m em ber, one-vote system in future leadership elections is not only that

it will be m ore democratically legitimate but also that it will encourage people to join the party.’

problem, solution, different

The w ord ‘problem ’ too readily springs to our lips these days The cur­rent drift is towards increasingly indiscrim inate use o f it W e need not be over-fussy about this in conversation W e know no w that

w hen the waiter says ‘No problem ’, he means that the cook will be only too happy to do the steak exactly as requested, and w hen the garage forem an says it, he means that he will deal im mediately w ith the punctured tyre or the broken exhaust pipe Sometimes the w ord seems

The problem that faced the police was the remote site

At first sight, that is probably not a sentence that worries us Even the sentence ‘The rem ote site made access difficult’ may seem acceptable Yet, strictly speaking, it is not the rem ote site but the ‘remoteness o f the site’ that makes access difficult W e see im mediately that it w ould n ot be right to say ‘The extremely aged man made questioning difficult’ w hen

w hat w e m ean is ‘The extrem e age o f the m an m ade questioning difficult ’ The tw o sentences differ sharply in meaning Precision in that kind o f statement is the sign o f a logical mind

W e also need to watch the tendency to use the w ord ‘problem ’ as an adjective:

Apparently beauty salons have been using this method for years to control problem skin

W e have heard o f the problem o f controlling problem children in schools Presumably that usage ( ‘problem children’) stem m ed from a psychologically convenient and politically correct desire n ot to define the children’s idiosyncrasies too blatantly It w ould appear that a similar tenderness has to be em ployed in defining defects in personal appearance The young w om an does not w ant to think o f her skin as in any way imperfect, but she will gladly regard it as a ‘problem ’

There is no doubt o f our fondness nowadays for talking, wherever possible, in terms o f ‘problem s’ and ‘solutions’ The latter w ord is even m ore m isused than the former Sometimes a ‘solution’ is posited seemingly w ithout reference to a problem

We took the scooter to Spain last winter and found it a good solution to taking a large motorcaravan off site and parking in spots where a large vehicle could be an embarrassment

This is a striking example o f allowing the pen to m ove faster than the brain W hat the w riter means is: ‘We found it a good alternative to taking the large m otorcaravan off site.’ Such misuse is not rare Consider this notice about an art course

The course questions the notion of the book, and most students have different solutions

Here the use o f ‘m ost’ and ‘different’ is illogical The question arises,

‘different’ from what? And w hat about the m inority o f students not represented by the w ord ‘m ost’? Do they share a ‘non-different’, that is

an identical view? Better start afresh: ‘The course examines w hat a book should be, and the students air various views.’ Unfortunately this misuse

o f ‘different’ is not rare either

I’m a part-time nurse in Saudi Arabia where architecture and furnishings are very different

Different from what? The im plication ( ‘different from our o w n ’) m ust

be spelt out W hen w e say ‘Men and w om en are different’ and then ‘Men

and w om en are different from dum b anim als’ w e use the w ord ‘different’

in two recognized, but ‘different’ ways

convince, persuade, induce

These w ords should be carefully differentiated Historically ‘convince’ is

a pow erful word Deriving from the notion o f vanquishing, it is used to convey the idea o f overcom ing som eone so completely in argum ent that acknowledgement o f the truth in question is made The emphasis therefore should be on acknowledgem ent o f some fact or theory.When American expatriates Sara and Gerald Murphy discovered Antibes’ sleepy seaside Hotel du Cap in 1923, they convinced the owner to keep it open for them out of season with a minimal staff

‘Convinced’ here should be ‘persuaded’ To ‘convince’ som eone o f some truth should be carefully distinguished from ‘persuading’ them to act in

a certain way O f course there is an overlap o f m eaning But it is the once pow erful verb ‘convince’ that suffers deterioration o f m eaning w hen it

is misused

Cadbury Garden Centre, near Bristol, aimed to convince gardeners to use more exotic plants

This should be: ‘aimed to persuade’ or ‘aim ed to induce’

Evading and Preventing

avert, avoid, forestall, obviate, preempt, prevent

Closely related to the business o f arguing in term s o f cause and effect is the business o f explaining how some consequence m ight be evaded or prevented It will be m ade evident at many points in this book that bad usage often arises from failure to discriminate precisely between w ords

w hich may have a slight overlap o f meaning, but w hich nevertheless cannot be regarded as interchangeable In discourse concerning evasion and prevention the danger is notable Current practice seems to be to over-use the w ord ‘avoid’ It is gradually taking over in the press and on the radio w here there are other and better w ords to hand W hen we consider the num ber and variety o f these words, as illustrated above, we are bound to regret the excessive use o f one o f them

The driver’s quick thinking avoided a major railway disaster.

This should read: ‘averted a major railway disaster’ To ‘avoid’ som ething

is to render it void, or o f no effect It can also m ean to escape som ething

or to have nothing to do w ith it To ‘avert’ is to turn away ‘She averted her eyes in em barrassm ent’, we say Thus it means to deflect som ething from the course it is taking and therefore to w ard off a possible devel­opm ent

In the basic m eaning o f the verb ‘avoid’ the overlap w ith notions o f preventing or averting is not sufficient to justify turning it into a verb virtually synonym ous w ith either ‘prevent’ or ‘avert’ Yet that is w hat has happened This is not so m uch a question o f correctness or incorrect­ness as o f discrim ination in the use o f words People w ho care for language will naturally not like to see subtle distinctions lost W e may

‘avoid’ a puddle in the road by stepping round it W e may ‘avoid’ paying incom e tax by various questionable means But w here evasion is less an issue than prevention, the w ord can be used very unhappily, as in the following

We had no criticism of the cab seats, which gave enough support to avoid fatigue

As I read that, I get the image o f cab seats narrowly escaping exhaustion Surely ‘to prevent fatigue’ w ould be better

Remove each piece from the table one at a time This avoids having to reconstruct the entire pattern

Here, in instructions for practising decorative decoupage, there is an excellent chance to use a now neglected w ord especially appropriate

w here som ething is prevented by anticipatory action: ‘This obviates having to reconstruct the entire pattern.’

A bad habit has lately developed o f m isusing the w ord ‘preem pt’ Although it has a special intransitive use in the game o f Bridge, it properly means to acquire or appropriate beforehand Someone m ight ‘preem pt’

a deal at an auction by putting in a high offer in advance But one does not ‘preem pt’ som eone else’s announcem ent by getting in first w ith it That is to ‘anticipate’ it Nor can anyone ‘preem pt’ the building o f a

m otorw ay by organizing objections to it That is to ‘forestall’ it And again no one can ‘preem pt’ some parallel claim ant’s case by accepting a low offer before that claim ant’s case comes up That is to ‘prejudice’ it

Exchanging and Replacing

substitute, exchange, usurp

In w ords for exchanging and replacing we find a carelessness that causes not just a deterioration in m eaning but sometim es an almost total reversal

in meaning That happens w ith the w ords ‘substitute’ and ‘substitution’

To ‘substitute’ a player for an injured player is to replace the injured one

by the ‘substitute’ It is incorrect to speak o f an injured player being

‘substituted’ by a reserve Yet we often read or hear the blunder made

At the moment Katie tends to have a savoury dish followed by, say, a jam tart This could be substituted for fresh fruit, yogurt or fromage fresh This nutritionist’s advice is seemingly topsy-turvy She says she wants to replace the child’s fresh fruit and yogurt diet by a savoury dish and a jam tart W hat she means is: ‘This could be replaced by fresh fruit, yoghurt

or fromage fresh.’

More than 20 passengers rode the service on July 1 1, with NWT having been advised to avoid the train being substituted by a taxi, which has occurred on several occasions this year

The w riter in the Railway Magazine has provided us w ith a similar topsy-turvy misuse of the verb ‘substitute’ along w ith another unfortunate use o f

‘avoid’ Get rid o f the redundant ‘w ith ’, om it the unnecessary ‘avoid’ and switch the w ording round: ‘More than 20 passengers rode the service on July 1 1, N W T having been advised not to substitute a taxi for the train.’

W here ‘for’ is used along w ith a verb in such constructions as ‘I exchanged my old bike for a new o n e’ it is im portant to rem em ber that

w hat you exchange is w hat you part w ith and the thing ‘for’ w hich you exchange it is w hat you take possession of If readers think this an utterly unnecessary w arning, let them carefully read the following It comes from a review o f a book on Mary Robinson, the form er President o f the Irish Republic The review makes the point that w here the Irish were once know n for their devotion to religious figures, they now appear to give that devotion to secular figures The review concludes:

But it is not clear that the Irish have done well in exchanging secular for religious sanctity

This error, in a quality weekly, raises o n e’s eyebrows The w riter has got

it the w rong way round W hat he means is: ‘But it is not clear that the Irish have done well in exchanging religious for secular sanctity.’ As so often, the w ord ‘replace’ could have been used: ‘in replacing religious

by secular sanctity’

Before taking leave o f the w ord, however, w e should take note o f an unfortunate new development It is a construction that works like this:The committee have decided to exchange a new and revised brochure with their rather old-fashioned one

In this sentence the clear mistake was to use ‘w ith ’ at all W e do not exchange a new car ‘w ith ’ our old one W e may exchange the old car

‘fo r’ a new one In any case ‘exchange’ is surely not the best verb to use

w here the issue is a m atter o f replacement: ‘The com m ittee have decided

to replace their rather old-fashioned brochure w ith a new and revised

o ne.’ Oddly enough, an alternative correction w ould be to use the so often

m isused verb ‘substitute’: ‘The com m ittee have decided to substitute a new and revised brochure for their rather old-fashioned o ne.’

Another verb o f replacem ent now misused is the verb to ‘u surp’.The friendship ended irrevocably in 1987, when Mr Milosevic championed the cause of the Kosovo Serbs and usurped his mentor

To ‘usurp’ is to seize w ithout proper authority some position to w hich one is not entitled Thus a rebel may ‘usu rp ’ a throne, but he could not

‘usu rp ’ the king The above should read: ‘cham pioned the cause o f the Kosovo Serbs and usurped his m en to r’s position’

Repaying and Forbearing

reimburse, compensate, condone

A category o f verbs w hich can easily lure to error is the kind w hich affects two objects in different ways The verb w orks directly on the object in such sentences as ‘He stole a car.’ The m eaning there is complete But there are verbs w hich affect two objects In ‘He gave his sister a b ook’, the verb has both a direct object ( ‘the book’) and an indirect object ( ‘his sister’) Though ‘h e ’ truly gave the book, it cannot be said that ‘he gave his sister’ But there are verbs w here this double effect is m ore complicated From the sentence ‘He paid the retailer five pou n d s’ it

w ould be correct to derive both the sentence ‘He paid the retailer’ and the sentence ‘He paid five pounds.’ Because the verb ‘pay’ and the verb

‘repay’ w ork thus, there is a tem ptation to try to make other verbs o f paying w ork similarly Thus a m inister in the House o f Com m ons spoke

o f ‘reim bursing the cost’ o f an enterprise One hears this error repeated

on the radio The announcer tells us that the National Health Service is

to recoup the cost o f treating road accident victims from insurance companies There is determ ination to ‘track dow n the m oney and reim ­burse it to the Health Service’ But m oney cannot be ‘reim bursed’ To

‘reim burse’ is to repay som eone, not to repay a sum Thus the w ords ‘it

to ’ should be om itted in the above: ‘track dow n the money and reim burse the Health Service’

A comparably faulty use o f the verb to ‘com pensate’ occurs w hen it is treated as though it w orked like the verb to ‘pay’ W e may ‘pay someone five pounds’ because w e can either ‘pay som eone’ or ‘pay five pou n d s’, but we cannot ‘com pensate som eone five p o u n d s’ because, though we can ‘compensate som eone’ we cannot ‘com pensate five p o unds’.They are now working out how much he should be compensated

Thus that statement on Radio 4 will not serve Add the w ord ‘by’: ‘They are now w orking out by how m uch he should be com pensated.’

W e can ‘com pensate’ a person but not a sum o f money Conversely, however, w e can ‘condone’ an offence but not the person w ho com m itted

it W e hear on the radio:

A lot of parents condone their truant children

To condone is to forgive or overlook an offence, n ot a person Thus this should be: ‘A lot o f parents condone their children’s truancy.’

Approving and Disapproving

creative, dogmatic, pathetic

W ords o f strong approval or strong disapproval acquire emotive force

w hich sometimes gets out o f hand That is to say, speakers or writers latch on to them for giving vent to likes or dislikes w ith a rather loose awareness o f their exact m eaning An instance is provided by the w ords

‘creative’ and ‘creativity’ The precise connotation o f such w ords requires

us to use them o f acts w hich produce som ething w here nothing o f the

kind existed before One thinks o f the acts o f creation recorded in the Book o f Genesis And so one feels a certain verbal discomfiture w hen one reads in a travel article o f a Spanish township, ‘It was here that the study

o f medicine and surgery was created.’ W hy n ot just ‘began’? W hen one thinks o f the kind o f context in w hich the w o rd ‘creative’ is properly at hom e, w hat comes m ost readily to m ind is perhaps the tow ering genius

o f a Shakespeare or a Beethoven But the w o rd so conveniently arouses feelings o f w onder that it gets bandied about in relation to all kinds o f activities calling for our approval where, strictly speaking, true creation

is not at issue There are courses in ‘Creative Cookery’ and ‘Creative Advertising’, not to m ention less publicized activities in ‘Creative Accountancy’ W e perhaps ought not to be too solemn about such usage

W e naturally smile w hen w e read ‘Owing to the creativity o f the w eather this year, her garden has been subject to some confusion.’ But there are plenty o f misuses Advertisements o f vacant posts in various spheres, business or professional, w ould seem, by the w ording o f their dem ands for ‘creativity’ in their applicants, to be expecting some as yet unrecog­nized Botticelli or some m ute inglorious M ilton to em erge from suburbia and take the bait

We have looked at the decay o f a w ord through its positive connotation; let us look at the decay o f a w ord through its negative connotation The adjective ‘dogm atic’ takes its meaning from the n oun ‘dogm a’ used o f a system o f authoritative doctrines, especially religious doctrines To assert such doctrines w ith due authority is to be ‘dogm atic’ N ow such assert­iveness, especially in a liberal age, will be described as ‘bigotry’ by those w ho reject the doctrines Gradually the w ord ‘dogm atic’ acquires overtones m ore and m ore pejorative Thus, although even a recent dictionary defines the w ord ‘dogm atic’ objectively as ‘forcibly asserted’

or (of a person) ‘prone to forcible assertion’, it is scarcely possible now

to use the w ord w ithout a condem natory implication

Today many teachers realize that there is little point in imposing dogmaticdress or disciplinary codes

Here is a case in point A ‘code’ is a conventionalized set o f rules The adjective ‘dogm atic’ therefore adds nothing to the strict connotation o f the w ord, but the pejorative emotive resonance conveys that such codes are to be disliked

A m ore remarkable degeneration o f m eaning has occurred in our use

o f the w ord ‘pathetic’, the adjective deriving from the noun ‘pathos’

Like the w ord ‘pathetical’ in Shakespeare, it was applied to persons or things w hich evoked or expressed genuine sympathy In his Life of Samuel Johnson Boswell quotes a poetic tribute paid by Johnson on the death o f his old friend, Robert Levett Boswell declares that Johnson had such an affectionate regard for Levett ‘that he honoured his m em ory w ith the following pathetic verses’ Thus at that tim e one m ight have praised an actress’s sympathetic and m oving perform ance in a tragedy by declaring

it ‘pathetic’ If that w ere said today, it w ould be m ore likely to m ean that the acting was ‘pitiably’ bad

derisory, derisive, abusive, nauseous

Sad to say, there are cases o f misuse o f w ords w hich w e find sanctioned

by new dictionaries W here there are adjectives w hich define hum an attitudes we generally distinguish betw een the attitude and the object at

w hich it is directed That is to say, a m an may be described as being

‘desirous’ o f som ething and the object o f his desire as ‘desirable’ Similarly

a person may be described as ‘contem ptuous’ and, if the object o f the contem pt merits the attitude, we say it is ‘contem ptible’ If I developed

a bad habit o f mixing up these two w ords and describing a thing as

‘contem ptuous’ w hen I m eant that it was ‘contem ptible’, the pedants

w ould rightly be unw illing to give m e their support But in fact that is exactly w hat has happened in connection w ith the verb to ‘deride’ By all reasonable linguistic tradition, a person w ho derides is being ‘derisory’

or ‘derisive’ and the object o f the derision is ‘derisible’ My Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1933 edition, reprinted w ith corrections 1947) presents all this clearly Yet I find a new dictionary accepting the assumption that

w hat is to be derided is ‘derisory’

Adjectives such as ‘derisive’ and ‘decisive’ are descriptive in the first place o f hum an attitudes So is the adjective ‘abusive’ An ‘abusive speech’

is a speech full o f abuse Yet a speaker on BBC Radio 4, reporting on child-abuse, declared that ‘people have been making their abusive claims for years’ Clearly a claim that there has been abuse cannot be called an

‘abusive claim ’, any m ore than a protest against indecency could be called

an ‘indecent protest’

A w ord m isused in the same way as ‘derisory’ is the w ord ‘nauseous’

W hat is ‘nauseous’ is nauseating It causes nausea; it is repulsive and distasteful Indeed the w o rd has the connotative strength o f ‘loathsom e’ Yet journalists regularly misuse the word

The first signs that Cardinal Hume was ill appeared when he began feeling nauseous at mealtimes a few weeks ago.

Thus The Times tells us that the Cardinal felt loathsome He did not He felt ‘nauseated’ He was affected by nausea

Use of Fashionable Abstractions

concept, value

There are some abstract nouns found once in rigorous philosophical usage that are now so inappropriately exploited that they have becom e almost unusable The w ord ‘concept’ has the same root as ‘conceit’ and means an idea or notion, som ething that the m ind has ‘conceived’ Yet just as the w ord ‘idea’ has been weakened in conversational usage ( ‘the very idea!’), so now the w ord ‘concept’ has lost its anchorage in the realm o f thought Here is a statement about a new block o f open-plan offices w ith cafe and shops:

This concept of management on the move has been made possible by the design of Waterside

N ow the ‘concept’ o f the change, that is the idea for the change, existed before anything was done about it The ‘concept’ w ould have been exactly

w hat it was, had nothing been done about it It was the ‘realization’ o f the concept that was m ade possible by the design o f the building: ‘The concept

o f m anagem ent on the move has been realized in the design o f Waterside ’ The w ord having been thus weakened, it becomes a way o f muffling exact thought Thus we get someone explaining the pains o f having to sack employees

To tell them they’re now on the scrap heap - 1 found that as a concept very difficult

Again w hat the speaker m eant was surely that the realization o f the concept w ould be difficult Merely to think about sacking people hurts

no one To correct the sentence, simply om it ‘as a concept’

W hat has happened to the w ord now is that it has achieved a life o f its

ow n as a kind o f adjective The A A tells us that ‘special concept cars o f the 2 1 st century’ will be an attraction at a show And The Times captions

an illustration ‘Concept cars on show at the NEC, B irm ingham ’ So

‘concept’ now carries associations o f the latest thing in design Indeed

we are rem inded o f w hat happened to the w o rd ‘designer’ a few decades ago Taken over as an adjective to describe an item o f clothing, flaunting the designer’s label, it came to m ean ‘trendy’ in a desirable sense.The w ord ‘value’ is a w ord w ith deep resonances for those w ho w orry about moral or metaphysical issues Consider ho w it is now abused.Modern, in that it uses environmentally friendly materials, the Monaco [kitchen] still had traditional construction values

The kitchen ‘still had traditional construction values’ Does that m ean anything other than that it was ‘well m ade’? The truth is that the w ord

‘value’ is often used, especially by advertisers, so as to be conveniently evasive o f w hat particular benefits are supposed to accrue to the responsive readers The w ord ‘value’ becomes an all-purpose way o f praising w ithout having to specify too clearly w hat you are praising

Epitomizing the Volkswagen approach to motorhome base vehicles, the

L T shares the values Volkswagen have been building into leisure vehicles for decades

S O M E V E R B A L D I S T O R T I O N S

Reversals of Meaning

There is an odd, and fortunately rare, kind o f misuse w hich causes not

so m uch a deterioration in m eaning as an almost total reversal in meaning

As we have seen, w ords for substituting and exchanging provide no to ri­ous examples o f this

deceptively, availability

Another glaring example is provided by the w ord ‘deceptively’ as used by estate agents They will advertise a house as being ‘deceptively spacious’, intending to m ean that it is really m uch m ore spacious than it appears to be

at first sight If a m an is described as ‘deceptively considerate’, it is im plied that though he appears to be considerate, that appearance is deceptive On this reading a ‘deceptively spacious’ house w ould be one w hich appeared

to be spacious, but in fact was not so One w onders w hether the w ord

‘deceptively’ can be rescued in contexts like these For instance we read:

Giles Turner held the lead on Mavis Davis, before Geoff Glazzard dislodged him with a deceptively fast round on his first ride, Hello Oscar.

Are we really to believe that Hello Oscar appeared to be running fast but that this was a trompe l’oeil and he was really taking his time? Clearly the construction m ust be changed One can hardly substitute ‘dislodged him

w ith a deceptively leisurely ro u n d ’ It w ould not be very neat to substitute

‘dislodged him w ith a round m uch faster than it seem ed’, but that is probably the best we can do

A comparable kind o f misuse threatens the w ord ‘availability’ It too

is in danger o f suffering reversal o f meaning

A real concern of A A members is the high cost of petrol, and its availability

as rural petrol stations struggle to stay open

Clearly the availability o f petrol can never be a concern It is the lack o f petrol or the possible unavailability o f petrol that is or m ight be a matter

o f concern ‘A real concern o f AA m em bers is the high cost o f petrol, and the doubt w hether it will continue to be available as rural petrol stations struggle to stay open.’

help, improve

There is sometimes near-reversal o f m eaning in the use o f w ords for

im proving, curing or helping Here are two instances from magazines

on the subject o f restoring hair The first is a caption:

Hair-raising electrichogenesis, a process to help baldness, being launched

at Manor House Hospital in North London

The question arises w hether helping baldness is the same thing as helping the m an w ho is bald Clearly the need is to get rid o f baldness, w hich sounds as though it ought to be the opposite o f ‘helping’ it The passage should read: ‘a process to help to cure baldness’ The second example seems to represent the same error:

However, increasing intake of iron itself and vitamin C to aid iron absorption often fails to improve hair loss

Again the question is w hether to im prove hair loss is the same thing as

to im prove the hair A ‘loss’ is not som ething that needs to be ‘im proved’, but to be repaired So the sentence should end: ‘often fails to repair the loss o f hair’

Adjectives That Cannot be Qualified

Dissipation o f m eaning has its w orst effects w hen the connotation o f a once pow erful w ord is virtually forgotten There are adjectives w hich cannot be qualified That is another way o f saying that, if som ething is the very ‘best’, there cannot be anything ‘m ore best’ The same is true o f the w ord ‘equal’ In Animal Farm George Orwell m ocked totalitarian com m unist propaganda w hen the pigs am ended the slogan ‘All animals are equal’ by adding the illogical form, ‘but some are m ore equal than others.’

minimal

They feel there is everything to gain from keeping a start-up service on the

go, however minimal

Just as the ‘m in im u m ’ is the least possible am ount, so the w ord ‘m inim al’ describes the smallest possible quantity Thus there can be no degrees o f minimality, and the w ords ‘however m inim al’ do not make sense If

‘m inim al’ is kept, ‘how ever’ m ust go, and vice versa: ‘They feel there is everything to gain from keeping a start-up service on the go, however small.’

normal

A ‘n o rm ’ is an average level qualitatively or quantitatively Just as a certain level o f achievement or behaviour cannot be described as ‘m ore average’ than another, so it cannot be described as ‘m ore norm al’ than another

W hat the w eather forecasters m ean w hen they mistakenly prom ise us

‘m ore norm al’ tem peratures tom orrow is that the tem peratures tom orrow will be ‘nearer to the average’ (or the ‘n o rm ’) for the time o f year

I find it hard to imagine a more perfect view

If the speaker could im agine a ‘m ore perfect’ view, then the view in question w ould not be ‘perfect’ W hat is ‘perfect’ cannot be im proved upon

true

A statement is either true or false If John is six feet tall, the statement

‘John is five feet eleven’ is not ‘tru er’ than the statement ‘John is five feet six.’ Both statements are false

Would it not be truer to admit that we can never guess at the workings of the divine mind?

This kind o f rhetorical flourish, whatever it follows, is totally illogical

‘Truer’ could be replaced by ‘tru e’, but the introduction o f the w ord is unnecessary: ‘Must w e n ot adm it that we can never guess at the w orkings

o f the divine m ind?’

W O R D S D A M A G E D B Y

M I S U S E A N D O V E R - U S E

As in so many departm ents o f life, fashion in language has a deleterious effect on usage, cheapening terms by misuse and then by over-use in too many different contexts The m ost obvious kind o f misuse is that w hich results from sheer error in understanding One or two people make mistakes and others follow suit W e have show n how the w ords ‘substi­

tu te’ and ‘substitution’ have been confused w ith the w ords ‘replace’ and

‘replacem ent’, and n o w they are so widely m isused that one is likely to

be accused o f pedantry if one draws attention to the error

In many cases over-use cheapens w ords w ithout dam aging them to

that extent There is a gradual process o f change in w hich can be traced the drift from the orthodox connotation This chapter is m uch concerned

w ith w ords w hich manifest that drift W e are considering the questions:

W hat are the spoilt w ords o f today, the w ords dam aged by being misunderstood, and the w ords w hose m eaning is dissipated in lax over­use? It w ould take a very long list to contain them all But we have already considered several in this chapter and w e can pick out a few m ore o f the

m ost glaring examples Over-use is not, o f course, an arithmetically calculable matter If you w ork in a restaurant, you and your colleagues may use the w ord ‘table’ thousands o f times a year w ithout affecting the meaning o f the w ord in the slightest Here we are concerned w ith the kind o f over-use w hich weakens and distorts m eaning

is the people w ho are being helped w ho will be able to ‘access’ som ething unspecified

address

There are contexts w here this is the exact w ord needed Used o f putting the appropriate directions on an envelope or o f speaking formally to an audience, it is not replaceable But the w ord is now being used w here better w ords are available

At last the editor has addressed an issue which is of vital importance to all

Health Service The report found that the wealthy do better in this respect than the poor The announcer spoke o f the report as ‘a catalogue o f injustices that will have to be addressed’ The w ord ‘addressed’ is not happily used here o f dealing w ith a ‘catalogue’ There are m ail-order firms that regularly address catalogues to potential customers The usage has to be handled w ith care because there are contexts w here it m ight easily lead to am biguity.

While the voluntary code of practice has been welcomed by park officials and rangers, Maryl Carr feels that it does not adequately address the increasing number of participants or their impact on other mountain users

To speak o f not adequately ‘addressing’ participants inevitably suggests a public ‘address’ from a platform The mistake here needs to be analysed

To address a problem is one thing, and to address a crow d o f participants is another thing W hat the w riter means is that the ‘problem ’ o f the increasing num ber o f participants has to be ‘addressed’ If the verb to ‘address’ is used, there can be no way o f avoiding some such w o rd as ‘problem ’

alternate / alternative

Basically the verb ‘alternate’ defines m ovem ent this way and that way, as

o f a pendulum Thus day ‘alternates’ w ith night The w ord can be used only o f such balanced couples

This may be more so now that the Game Fair alternates between only four central sites

If there are m ore than two variants, as here, then the w ord ‘alternate’ will not do One m ust write: ‘now that the location o f the Game Fair varies between only four central sites’

The w ord ‘alternative’ is even m ore frequently abused ‘Alternatives’ are two mutually exclusive possibilities W hen we choose betw een tw o possibilities, say going to the theatre or staying at hom e, w e choose between two ‘alternatives’ There can never be m ore than two alternatives

If a third possibility is presented to us, then the three possibilities becom e

‘options’ More often than not the w ord ‘alternative’ is now being used

as though it m eant ‘o p tio n ’ This developm ent has led to usages such as the following:

ContiFlug is a relatively small airline It offers a highly cost-effective alterna­tive for commuter travel to Berlin

The question arises: alternative to what? If there w ere only one other means o f com m uter travel to Berlin, the w o rd m ight be appropriate But often now , especially in advertising, the w ord is used too vaguely o f a possibility w hich the advertiser wishes to recom m end.

The purpose of the advertising campaign is to present self-catering holidays

as an attractive and economic alternative

Clearly w hat w e are really being offered here is again an ‘option’ But the

m ost satisfactory correction w ould be to use neither ‘alternative’ nor

‘o p tio n ’: ‘The purpose o f the advertising cam paign is to present self- catering holidays as attractive and econom ic.’ After all, a self-catering holiday m ight be an attractive alternative to staying at hom e, but it w ould not be an econom ic alternative to staying at hom e

There are usages w hich seem to remove from the w ord even the notion

o f an option

I wanted to create an alternative trading model

There the w ord simply means ‘fresh’ or ‘n e w ’ And now we have to allow too for the fact that, in recent decades, novel m ovem ents w hich questioned the status quo and prevailing climates o f opinion began

to define their innovative life-styles as ‘alternative’, and the w ord has stuck

answer

Shortly before she died Gertrude Stein is said to have m uttered ‘W hat’s the answer?’ and shortly afterwards to have added ‘W hat’s the question?’ The partnership o f the tw o nouns is such that to use the w ord ‘answ er’

w hen there is no notion o f a question, or even a problem in the background, is lax Yet that is w hat happens

The real answer is periodically to have a thorough clean

The recom m endation that it may be a good idea to clean vehicles ought

to be able to be m ade w ithout turning it into an ‘answ er’

approach

W e know well enough w h en this w ord is exactly the right one, w hether used o f com ing nearer to a physical position or making advances towards influencing someone Too often neither notion is involved