The lorry driver said he was going towards Finchley when he saw the deceased suddenly walk into the road.
The most frequent symptom of monologophobia in British newspapers is the aversion to the good verb ‘to say’. According to what you read, people don’t say things any more they:
point out that, express the opinion, express the view, indicate, observe, state, explain, report, continue, add, declare, comment …
People don’t tell other people things. They inform, notify and communicate. The worst variation is the casual smear when the text editor or writer substitutes ‘admit’ for ‘say’. To ‘admit’ something in public has different overtones from simply saying it: it implies confession for some wrong. That verb should rarely be used outside court reports. If someone does not deny a point put to him it is better to say ‘he agreed that …’
The verb ‘to claim’ is another bad synonym: it implies that we have our doubts. All such variants should be used only when they express meaning more accurately. Let someone ‘affirm’ a fact only when it has been in doubt. Never let anybody ‘declare’ what is clearly an informal remark. Emphatically it does not mutilate the language to use ‘he said’ twice in a report. What does mutilate the language is to say ‘he explained’ when the man is clearly not explaining anything at all.
Monologophobia is aggravated by the other writing sin of converting a verb into an abstract noun, or transforming a specific noun into an abstract noun. People don’t hope; they ‘express hope’. They don’t believe; they ‘indicate belief’. And here is an example from an evening newspaper monologophobe:
With more staff available for after-care at home, the Swindon Maternity Hospital, dealing with an increasing number of admissions, will be able to send some mothers home earlier.
Are the ‘admissions’ the same people as the ‘mothers’? Why, yes; no fathers have been patients at Swindon Maternity Hospital. So the report should have conceded at once that it is about mothers – a specific and human noun clearly more interesting than the abstract ‘admissions’: ‘Some mothers will go home earlier from busy Swindon Maternity Home’.
That is what the report is about. But such reasoning takes time and patience, and some monologophobes are more readily cunning in creating bewilderment for the reader.
Monologophobia is related also to over-attribution (see p. 48). Even the pronoun cannot redeem this fault. Part of the trouble is often inept handling of reported speech. But where there is only one source it is clear who is speaking and the text editor should strike out from copy those ‘he continued’, ‘he added’, and ‘he explained’ variations.
There is no question of any of GEC’s 2,000 workers being demoted because they fail an aptitude test, said Mr. E.M. Cowley, the firm’s divisional manager, last night.
Aptitude tests, he explained, were part of the firm’s normal routine. They were to see if people were fitted for promotion, not to see if anyone should move down, he continued.
‘If there are openings we believe in considering the available resources first’, said Mr. Cowley.
The words in italics could all be deleted without difficulty here. After ‘move down’ in the second paragraph, there would be a colon followed by the quotation.
Watch the Prepositions
There are three troubles: the circumlocutory preposition; the prepositional verb; and pedantry.
The circumlocutory preposition is a fluffy substitute for the single preposition which gives the meaning as clearly. The worst offenders are in the field of, in connection with, in order to, in respect of, so far as … is concerned. All sorts of things are found flourishing in the field of: in the field of public relations, in the field of breakfast cereals, in the field of book publishing, in the field of nuts and bolts …
‘Field’ has a very proper association with battle, chivalry and war (hence ‘Never in the field of human conflict …’), but the word is usually superfluous when used generally. These are newspaper examples, with my amendments and comments on the right:
This and other developments in medical science are at the base of a dialogue now proceeding in the Roman Catholic Church concerning its attitude to medical aids in the field of birth control.
This and other developments in medicine are at the base of a dialogue in the Roman Catholic Church on its attitude to medical aids in birth control.
More progress has been made in the case of Southern Rhodesia.
More progress has been made with Southern Rhodesia.
Arnold Wesker’s ‘Chips with Everything’ is a bitter attack on the class system that leaves much to be desired as far as satisfactory drama is concerned.
i.e. dramatically.
The rates vary in relation to the value of the building.
The rates vary with the value of the building.
In connection with a recruiting exhibition at Scarborough, the famous team of Royal Corps of Signals motor cyclists gave a display.
As part of a recruiting exhibition at Scarborough …
Prepositional verbs grow like toadstools. Once there was credit in facing a problem. Now problems have to be faced up to. The prepositions add nothing to significance. To say one met somebody is plain enough; to say one met up with them adds nothing and takes two further words. So it is with win (out); consult (with); stop (off); check (up on); divide (up); test (out).
The prepositions are American parasites. Mostly they can be deleted or replaced by a simple alternative verb. Call is better than stop off at; fit, reach or match will serve better than measure up to. There is strength in a few prepositional verbs such as get on with; go back on; take up with. But most of the modern currency is American dumping which weakens English. It is a poor day when it is no longer considered enough to say honesty pays. Inflation requires honesty to pay off; and we are the worse for it.
The third trouble with the preposition is the influence of the pedants. They insist that prepositions must never end a sentence. The preposition, it is said, should always be placed before the word it governs. This is an attempt to impose on English some of the rigour of Latin and it will not do. Shakespeare wrote of the ‘heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to’. That is good English. Fowler dealt trenchantly with the pedantry of the preposition but it flourishes in official, legal and police court language. Policemen are apt to say ‘the water into which he dived’, and lawyers ‘The contract into which he entered’.
Pedants would frown on ‘The pilot said it depended on what they were guided by’. Trying to tuck that preposition ‘by’ back where it is supposed to belong produces a sentence everyone ought to frown on: ‘The pilot said it depended on by what they were guided’. As Fowler observed, ‘too often the lust of sophistication, once blooded, becomes uncontrollable’, and you end up with ‘The pilot said that depended on the answer to the question as to by what they were guided’.
The best advice is to forget Latin and accept what sounds most comfortable to the educated ear. It sounds better to say the prepositional pedants are people not worth listening to; better than to say these pedants are people to whom it is not worth listening.
Care for Meanings
‘When I use a word’, Humpty-Dumpty told Alice, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less’. The Humpties of the written word present two problems to text editors. Writers give new meanings to old words; and new expressions are being created all the time.
Disinterested is often used in an ambiguous way. Its correct meaning is not bored or uninterested, but impartial or unselfish. But when we read ‘The President said he would be disinterested in the conflict’, what are we to understand? It should mean the President will stay interested but neutral. To most of us it will. But to some – and perhaps to the writer – it means the President is bored with the conflict and will take no further interest. Here text editors should be sticklers for accuracy. They should not let a good word down. But what shall be their attitude to blurb, kickback, crack down
, beat it, to bus, killjoy, cheapskate, gatecrash? It would be a mistake to maintain the pedantry required to protect the old words. The English language has a genius for such vivid new idiom, particularly in American hands. This is an act of creation, the combination of familiar verbs, prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions into rich new images.
It is very different from the act of distortion which destroys disinterested, alibi, immigrant, enervated, chronic and so on. The essential difference is that there is often universal understanding of new idiom and the best of it fills a real need. It comes into being precisely to describe an idea more economically and vividly than the existing vocabulary allows: ‘He put it across’; ‘He is a killjoy’; ‘They do it for kicks’.
It is easy enough for text editors to admit old words on condition that they are travelling in their own name: there are dictionaries to detect impostors. It is harder to verify the passports of new expressions. Webster’s dictionary in its 1961 third edition argued that almost anything goes if somebody uses it. But that is too loose. ‘Simple illiteracy’, as Dwight Macdonald said, ‘is no basis for linguistic evolution’.
There are two tests: Does the expression represent a new idea? Does it do it more briefly or precisely than the old expressions? Much new idiom will for these reasons vanish after a temporary popularity; and text editors should help it on its way. Not all contemporary catchwords are clear signals: some modern ones seem, indeed, only to add to the confusion. Does ‘uptight’ convey proximity or a state of mind? Does ‘cool’ refer to the temperature or mean simply ‘I like it’? ‘A depressed socioeconomic area’ says no more than what ‘slum’ said more briefly; transportation is longer than transport; so is for free instead of free; to author is not better than to write; senior citizen is longer and more pretentious than old man or pensioner; finalisation is a rough usurper for finish or completion; telly is longer than TV. The suffix ‘wise’ as in bookwise and verbwise should also, wisdomwise, have a short life; but in all these judgments humility is in order. Our language is not the language of Chaucer, and the good words mob, bamboozle, sham, bully, banter and uppish were all originally denounced as vulgar slang by the great Jonathan Swift.
Here are some of the words commonly misused in newspapers. This is a taste of the range of abuse. There are other sources,13 and the slightest whiff of doubt should send text editors to the dictionary.
Affect: Confused, as verb, with effect. To effect is to bring about, to affect is to change. To say ‘it effected a change in his attitude’ is correct; so is ‘it affected his attitude’. To combine the two – ‘It affected a change in his attitude’ – is wrong.
Alibi: Means ‘otherwise’ or elsewhere, but is confused with excuse, which is a wider term. Alibi means being somewhere else when the deed was done.
Alternatives: wrongly used for choices. If there are two choices, they are properly called alternatives. If there are more than two they are choices.
Anticipate: Confused with expect. To expect something is to think it may happen; to anticipate is to prepare for it, to act in advance. To say a fiancée expects marriage is correct; to say she is anticipating it is defamatory.
Anxious: Best preserved as meaning troubled, uneasy. It is a corruption to use it as a synonym for eager or desirous.
Breach: To break through or break a promise or rule. But to breech, with an e, means to put a boy into trousers.
Causal: Perhaps the hardest word to get into a newspaper – everybody thinks it ought to be ‘casual’: it means relating to a cause, and is often used in philosophical or medical contexts.
Celebrant: Confused with celebrator. A celebrant presides over a religious rite.
Chronic: Confused with acute or severe, medically the opposite. It means long-lasting (from the Greek chronos – time). An acute illness comes to a crisis, a chronic one lingers.
Cohort: Confused with henchman. A cohort is a company of warriors, or people banded together. You cannot sensibly say ‘Smith came with his cohort Brown’.
Comprise: Confused with composes. Comprise means to contain or include. The whole comprises the parts. The United States comprises 50 states; 50 states do not comprise the United States. Contains, includes or consists of are preferable.
Cozening: Confused with cosseting. To be cosseted is to be petted or pampered. To be cozened, on the other hand, is to be cheated or defrauded.
Credible: Confused with credulous. A credible man is one you can believe; a credulous man, however, is too ready to believe others.
Crescendo: Confused with climax. It indicates a passage of music to be played with increasing volume. Figuratively, it means to rise to a climax. Thus the cliché ‘rise to a crescendo’ is nonsense.
Decimate: Confused with destroy. By derivation decimation means killing one in ten. Today it is often used figuratively to mean very heavy casualties, but to say ‘completely decimated’ or ‘decimated as much as half the town’ simply will not do.
Dependent/dependant: A dependant is a person who is dependent on another for support.
Deprecate: Confused with depreciate. An MP was reported as depreciating sterling as a world currency. That means he had it devalued, which is the job of the Governor of the Bank of England. What the MP did was deprecate sterling as a world currency, i.e. plead against the policy.
Dilemma: Confused with problem. If you have a problem you do not know what to do. There may be many solutions. If you have a dilemma you have a choice of two courses of action, both unfavourable.
Discomfit: Confused with discomfort. To discomfort is to make uneasy; to discomfit is to defeat or rout. Discomfort is either verb or noun; the noun of discomfit is discomfiture.
Disinterested: Confused with uninterested, but instead means impartial, i.e. not having a sectional or vested interest.
Enervate: Confused with energise. It means the opposite. To enervate is to weaken, to energise is to invigorate. The New York Times did Mr Arnold Weinstock an injustice: ‘Two years later after a power struggle at the top, Mr Weinstock emerged as managing director at the age of 38. He then enervated his company with his now-familiar technique.’
Entomb: Confused with entrap. The entrapped miners may be alive; entombed miners are dead, i.e. in a tomb.
Exotic: Means ‘of foreign origin’ and only by weak analogy ‘glamorous’ or ‘colourful’.
Explicit: Confused with implicit. It means the opposite. An explicit understanding has been expressed. An implicit understanding has been left implied, not expressly stated.
Flaunt: Confused with flout. ‘We must not allow the American constitution to be flaunted in this way …’ means we must not allow it to be paraded, displayed or shown off. That is the meaning of to flaunt. What the speaker intended to say was that the constitution should not be flouted, i.e. mocked or insulted.
Forego: Confused with forgo. Forego means to go before in time or place – think of the final e in before. To forgo is to give up, or relinquish.
Fulsome: Confused with full. Fulsome means overfull, extravagant, to the point of insincerity. To say ‘He gave her fulsome praise’ is to make a comment on its merits.
Further: Confused with farther. Keep farther for distances – thus far and no farther – and further for additions (furthermore).
Immigrant: In Britain it has become a euphemism for a coloured person. It should be rescued for what it is – anyone from abroad who has come to settle. It is not the same, either, as alien. An immigrant is a settler, an alien may be a visitor.
Inflammable: Confused with inflammatory. Words may be inflammatory – they may cause metaphorical fire – but they are not inflammable. The paper on which they are written, however, may be combustible, or liable to burn, and therefore inflammable (flammable would be better, but does not have wide currency).
Invaluable: Confused with valueless, which is the opposite. The invaluable stone cannot be priced because it has so much value it is priceless.
Involved: Overworked and misused. Involv
ed is best preserved to mean tangled, complicated. It should not replace verbs like include, entail, implicate, affect, imply, engage. We should say ‘the scheme entails knocking down ten houses’; ‘four hundred workers are engaged in the strike’ – or ‘four hundred are on strike or affected’; and so-and-so is implicated in the crime’, and so on.
Judicious: Confused with judicial. Judicial means connected with a court of law, judicious means wise. Not all judicial decisions are judicious.
Lay: Confused with lie. Hens lay eggs, people lay traps and lay down burdens. The dog lies down on the ground; let sleeping dogs lie. People lie down themselves, lie in prison for years and lie in state. Much of the confusion is because the past tense of lie is lay. The correct forms are lie-lay-lain; lay-laid-laid.
Less: Confused with fewer. Less is right for quantities – less coffee, less sugar. It means a less amount of. Fewer is right for comparing numbers – fewer people, fewer houses, less dough means fewer loaves. Nobody would think of saying fewer coffee, fewer sugar, but every day somebody writes less houses.
Essential English Page 7
