Plain Words

by Rebecca Gowers

  Mrs Brandon took the heavy piece of silk from the table, unfolded it and displayed … an altar cloth of her own exquisite embroidery … upon which, everyone began to blow their nose …

  The fact is that this is a common and convenient usage, but one that needs to be handled with discretion to avoid ambiguity or awkwardness.

  Here it is unnecessary:

  The required statement is in course of preparation and will be forwarded as soon as official records are complete, which will be in about a week’s time.

  The sentence can be improved by omitting the words which will be, thereby getting rid of the relative altogether.

  The long delay may make it inevitable for the authorities to consider placing the order elsewhere which can only be in the United States which is a step we should be anxious to avoid.

  Here the writer has used which in this way twice in a single sentence, and shown how awkward its effect can be. It would be better to put a full stop after elsewhere, and then say: ‘That can only be in the United States, and is a step we should be anxious to avoid’.

  (14) Which and that

  On the whole it makes for smoothness of writing not to use the relative which where that would do as well, and not to use either if a sentence makes sense and runs pleasantly without. But that is a very broad general statement, subject to many exceptions.

  Grammarians sometimes speak of a ‘commenting’ which, and a ‘defining’ that:

  The mouse, which was brown, died. (It happened to be brown. It died.)

  The mouse that was brown died. (The brown mouse died, unlike the rest of the mice—not brown, and still alive.)

  That cannot be used with a commenting clause, the relative must be which.* With a defining clause either which or that is permissible, but that is to be preferred. When in a defining clause the relative is in the objective case, it can often be left out altogether. Thus we have three variants:

  This case ought to go to the Home Office, which deals with police establishments. (Commenting relative clause.)

  The Department that deals with police establishments is the Home Office. (Defining relative clause.)

  This is the case you said we ought to send to the Home Office. (Defining relative clause in which the relative pronoun, if it were expressed, would be in the objective case: ‘This is the case that you said …’.)

  That is an awkward word because it may be one of three parts of speech—a conjunction, a relative pronoun and a demonstrative pronoun. The three are illustrated in the order given in the following sentence:

  I think that the paper that he wants is that one.

  It is a sound rule that that should be dispensed with whenever this can be done without loss of clarity or dignity. For instance, the sentence just given might be written with only one that instead of three:

  I think the paper he wants is that one.

  Some verbs seem to need a conjunctive that after them more than others do. Say and think can generally do without. The more formal words like state and assert cannot.

  We have already noted that the conjunctive that can lead a writer into the error of careless duplication.* The following that defies both sense and grammar:

  As stated by the Minister of Fuel and Power on the 8th April, a standard ration will be available for use from 1st June, 1948, in every private car and motor cycle currently licensed and that an amount equivalent to the standard ration will be deducted …

  The writer forgot how the sentence began and concluded as though the opening had been ‘On the 8th April, the Minister of Fuel and Power stated that …’.

  The Ministry of Food allow such demonstrations only if the materials used are provided by the staff and that no food is sold to the public.

  In this sentence the use of that for if is even less excusable because the writer had less time to forget the beginning.

  Their intention was probably to remove from the mind of the man in question that he was in any way bound to work, and that the Government would protect him from bad employers.

  This example shows the need of care in a sentence in which that has to be repeated. If you do not remember what words introduced the first that, you may easily find yourself, as here, saying the opposite of what you mean. What this writer was trying to say was that the intention was to remove the first idea and replace it with the second, not, as accidentally stated, to remove both.

  Note. Gowers remarks above that ‘With a defining clause either which or that is permissible, but that is to be preferred’. He may have used a distancing passive here because he was less than scrupulous about following this advice himself. Quotations throughout the book show other writers ignoring it too: Sir Harold Nicolson, when he comments that neither X nor Y nor Z ‘will suffer permanently or seriously from the spectacle which they have provided’; Logan Pearsall Smith, who says ‘a language which was all idiom and unreason would be impossible as an instrument of thought’; Churchill, who is quoted in Chapter X declaring rousingly: ‘no future generation of English-speaking folks … will doubt that … we were guiltless of the bloodshed, terror and misery which have engulfed so many lands’. It is as well to be aware that in some readers these uses of which will provoke an immediate corrective spasm: ‘from the spectacle that they have provided’; ‘a language that was all idiom and unreason’; ‘the bloodshed, terror and misery that have engulfed so many lands’. ~

  (15) Who and whom

  Who is the subjective case and whom the objective. The proper use of the two words should present no difficulty. But we are so unaccustomed to different case-formations in English that when we are confronted with them we are liable to lose our heads. In the matter of who and whom good writers have over many centuries been perverse in refusing to do what the grammarians tell them. They will insist on writing sentences like ‘Who should I see there …’, as Steele did in the Spectator; ‘Young Ferdinand, (whom they suppose is drowned)’: Shakespeare, in The Tempest; and ‘Whom do men say that I am?’, asked by Christ in the Bible. Now, any schoolchild can see that, by the rules, who in the first quotation, being the object of see, ought to be whom (‘Whom should I see there’), and that whom in the second and third quotations, being in the one the subject of is, and in the other the complement of am, ought to be who (Young Ferdinand, ‘who, they suppose, is drowned’; ‘Who do men say that I am?’). What, then, is the ordinary person to believe?

  There are some who would have us do away with whom altogether, as nothing but a mischief-maker. That might be a useful way out. But then, as was asked in the correspondence columns of the Spectator by someone under the name ‘A. Wood-Owl’:

  Regarding the suggested disuse of ‘whom’, may I ask by who a lead can be given? To who, to wit to who of the ‘cultured’ authorities, can we appeal to boo whom, and to boom who? (December, 1948)

  Whom will take some killing. Shakespeare has his distinguished followers, such as Sir Winston Churchill (‘The slaves of the Lamp … render faithful and obedient service to whomsoever holds the talisman’), Mr E. M. Forster (‘a creature whom we pretend is here already …’),* Lord David Cecil in Two Quiet Lives (‘and whom, he knew, would never be seduced away from him by the tawdry glitter of the world’), The Times (‘He was not the man whom the police think may be able to help them’), and even Mr Somerset Maugham, in a story from The Trembling of a Leaf (‘Bateman could not imagine whom it was that he passed off as his nephew’). This usage is, moreover, defended by Jespersen.

  Of course the opposite mistake is also made:

  He was a chancellor who, grudging as was the acknowledgement he received for it, everyone knew to have saved his party.

  Note. Gowers concluded by saying that ‘it has not yet become pedantic—at any rate in writing—to use who and whom in what grammarians would call the right way’, and he therefore advised ordinary writers to ignore the ‘vagaries of the great’.

  Using whom for who is still a mistake, whether Shakespeare once did it or not, and those who notice this
error in contemporary writing are likely to interpret it as that dreaded thing, a ‘genteelism’. But it is no longer so necessary to worry about what Gowers called the opposite mistake. He found using who for whom to be rarer than whom for who, but now it is in many circumstances entirely normal to do this. Indeed, the question ‘Whom should I see there …’ (Steele corrected) would these days strike most people as absurdly stiff. It is not yet idiomatic to put who for whom immediately after a preposition, as a Guardian writer does here: ‘my ex with who I was still in love’; but ordinary British English accepts and even expects, ‘my ex, who I was still in love with’. The slow decline of whom does leave room for confusion. Nowadays ‘Who am I to love?’ could be taken to mean either ‘What person should be the object of my affections?’ or ‘Worm that I am, how dare I love at all?’ But it has to be admitted that outside the confines of formal prose, the worm’s perspective on this question is dying away. ~

  (16) Whose

  There lingers an old-fashioned rule that whose must not be used of inanimate objects: we may say ‘authors whose books are famous’ but we must not say ‘books whose authors are famous’. For the second, we must fall back on an ugly roundabout way of putting it, and say ‘books the authors of which are famous’. This rule is a cramping one, and produces not only ugly sentences but a temptation to misplace commas:

  There are now a large number of direct controls, the purpose of which is to allocate scarce resources of all kinds between the various applicants for their use.

  Here the writer, having duly respected the prejudice against the inanimate whose, finds that controls the purpose is an awkward juxtaposition, and so opts to put a comma after controls. But the relative clause is a defining one (these are ‘controls that have the purpose of allocating scarce resources …’), not a commenting one (‘these controls, the purpose of which is X, are numerous’). The comma is therefore misleading.

  Sir Alexander Cadogan added that legislatures were not unaccustomed to ratifying decisions the entry into force of which was contingent on circumstances beyond their control.

  In this instance the writer has properly resisted the temptation to lessen the inevitable ugliness of the construction by putting a comma after decisions. But how much more smoothly each sentence would run if the writer had felt at liberty to say controls whose purpose and decisions whose entry.

  The rule is so hampering and pointless that even the grammarians are in revolt against it. Fowler said:

  Let us in the name of common sense prohibit the prohibition of whose inanimate; good writing is surely difficult enough without the forbidding of things that have historical grammar and present intelligibility and obvious convenience on their side, and lack only—starch.

  There are welcome signs that Fowler’s advice is now being followed in official publications:

  The hospital whose characteristics and associations link it with a particular religious denomination …

  That revolution the full force of whose effects we are beginning to feel …

  There has been built up a single centrally organised blood transfusion service whose object is …

  TROUBLES WITH VERBS

  (1) ing endings

  Words ending with ing are mostly verbal participles or gerunds, and, as we shall see, it is not always easy to say which is which. By way of introduction it will be enough to observe that when they are of the nature of participles they may be true verbs (‘I was working’), or adjectives (‘a working agreement’), or in rare cases prepositions (‘concerning this question’) or conjunctions (‘supposing this happened’). But if they are of the nature of gerunds they are always nouns (‘I am pleased at his coming’)—or rather a hybrid between a noun and a verb, for you may use the gerund with the construction either of a noun (‘after the careful reading of these papers’) or of a mixture between a verb and a noun (‘after carefully reading these papers’). It is most confusing, but fortunately we are seldom called on to put a label on these words, and so I have preferred to give this section an indeterminate title.

  Numerous pitfalls beset the use of ing-words. Here are some of them.

  (a) Absolute construction. This is, in itself, straightforward enough. The absolute construction, in the words of the OED, is a name given to a clause ‘not syntactically dependent on another part of the sentence’. In the sentence ‘The teacher having restored order, the class resumed’, the phrase ‘the teacher having restored order’ forms an absolute construction. But there is no absolute construction in the sentence ‘The teacher, having restored order, called on her cowed pupils to continue’. Here the teacher is the subject of the sentence. Because of a confusion with that type of sentence, it is a curiously common error to put a comma in the absolute construction (‘the teacher, having restored order, the class resumed’).*

  (b) Unattached or dangling participle. This blunder is rather like the last. A writer begins a sentence with a participle (which, since it is a sort of adjective, must be given a noun to support it) and then forgets to give it its noun, thus leaving it ‘dangling’:

  Arising out of a collision between a removal van and a fully loaded bus in a fog, Mr X, removal van driver, appeared on a charge of manslaughter.

  Grammatically in this sentence it was the van driver who arose out of this collision, not the charge against him. He probably did, but that was not what the writer meant.

  Whilst requesting you to furnish the return now outstanding you are advised that in future it would greatly facilitate X … if you were to Y.

  Here requesting is unattached. If the structure of this rather clumsy sentence is to be retained it must run ‘Whilst requesting you … I advise you that …’.

  As I have said, some ing-words have won the right to be treated as prepositions. Among them are regarding, considering, owing to, concerning and failing. When any of these is used as a preposition, there can be no question of its being misused as an unattached participle:

  Considering the attack that had been made on him, his speech was moderate in tone.

  If, however, considering were used not as a preposition-participle but as an adjective-participle, it could be unattached. It is so in:

  Considering the attack on him beneath his notice, his speech was moderate in tone.

  Here, if the first part of the sentence must stand, the second needs to be amended: ‘Considering the attack on him beneath his notice, the man gave a speech that was moderate in tone’.

  Past participles, as well as present, may become unattached:

  Administered at first by the National Gallery, it was not until 1917 that the appointment of a separate board and director enabled a fully independent policy to be pursued.

  The writer must have started with the intention of making the Tate Gallery (the true topic here) the subject of the sentence, but by the end, administered has been left unattached.

  Formal application is now being made for the necessary wayleave consent, and as soon as received the work will proceed.

  Grammatically received can only be attached to work, and that is nonsense. The writer should have said, ‘as soon as this is received’.

  (c) Unattached gerund. A gerund can become unattached in much the same way as a participle:

  Indeed we know little of Stalin’s personality at all: a few works of Bolshevik theory, arid and heavy, and speeches still more impersonal, without literary grace, repeating a few simple formulas with crushing weight—after reading these Stalin appears more a myth than a man.

  Grammatically, ‘after reading these’ means after Stalin has read them, not after we have.

  The use of unattached participles and gerunds is becoming so common that critics may soon have to throw in their hand and recognise it as idiomatic. But as they have not done so yet, it should be avoided.

  Note. Not all critics are prepared to throw in their hand on this one even now. After all, if the reader is left free to decide on the intent behind such constructions, the danger arises of an ambi
guity that cannot be unscrambled. Take the sentence ‘Having been brought up with lax morals, I did not fully blame the bag-snatcher’: in a grammatical free-for-all, how is one to know whether this implies two people with lax morals, or one with lax morals, and another with a soft, forgiving heart? ~

  (d) Gerund versus infinitive. In what seems to be a completely arbitrary way, some nouns, adjectives and verbs like to take an infinitive, and some a gerund with a preposition. For instance:

  Capable of doing Able to do

  Ban from doing Forbid to do

  Shrink from doing Scruple to do

  Instances could be multiplied. There is no rule. It can only be a matter of observation and consulting a dictionary when in doubt.

  (e) The ‘fused participle’. All authorities agree that it is idiomatic English to write ‘the Bill’s getting a second reading surprised everyone’—that is to say, it is correct to treat getting as a gerund requiring Bill’s to be in the possessive. What they are not agreed about is whether it is also correct to treat getting as a participle, and write ‘the Bill getting a second reading surprised everyone’. If that is a legitimate grammatical construction, the subject of the sentence, which cannot be Bill by itself, or getting by itself, must be a fusion of the two. Hence the name ‘fused participle’.

  This is not in itself a matter of any great interest or importance. But it is notable as having been the occasion of a battle of the giants, Fowler and Jespersen. Fowler condemned the ‘fused participle’ as a construction ‘grammatically indefensible’ that he said was ‘rapidly corrupting modern English style’. Jespersen defended it against both these charges. Those best competent to judge seem to have awarded Jespersen a win on points.