Plain Words (19 page)

Serious harm is also being done to the language by excessive use of nouns as adjectives. In the past, as I have said, the language has been greatly enriched by this free-and-easy habit. We are surrounded by innumerable examples—War Department, Highway Code, Nursery School, Coronation Service, Trades Union
Congress and so on. But something has gone wrong recently with this useful practice, and its abuse is corrupting English prose. It has become natural to say ‘World population is increasing faster than world food production' instead of ‘The population of the world is increasing faster than the food it produces'; ‘The eggs position exceeds all expectation' instead of ‘Eggs are more plentiful than expected'. It is old fashioned to write of the ‘state of the world'; it must be the ‘world situation'. As was observed by Lord Dunsany, writer, marksman and friend of Yeats, in his
Donnellan Lectures
of 1943, the fact is that ‘too many
of
s have dropped out of the language, and the dark of the floor is littered with this useful word'. And so we meet daily with headlines like ‘England side captain selection difficulty rumour'.

This sort of language is no doubt pardonable in a newspaper, where as many stimulating words as possible must be crowded into spaces so small that
treaties
have had to become
pacts
;
ambassadors
,
envoys
;
investigations
,
probes
; and all forms of human enterprise,
bids
. Headlines have become a language of their own, knowing no law and often quite incomprehensible until one has read the article that they profess to summarise. ‘Insanity Rules Critic' and ‘W. H. Smith Offer Success' have quite different meanings from their apparent ones. Who could know what is meant by ‘Hanging Probe Names Soon' without having read on and discovered that ‘The names of the members of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment will shortly be announced'? Who could guess that the headline ‘Unofficial Strikes Claim' introduces a report of a speech by a member of Parliament who said that there was abundant evidence that unofficial strikes were organised and inspired by Communists as part of a general plan originating from abroad? I do not see how those three words by themselves can have any meaning at all. To me they convey a vague suggestion of the discovery of oil or gold by someone who ought not to have been looking for it. And if the announcement ‘Bull Grants
Increase' is construed grammatically, it does not seem to deserve a headline at all: one would say that that was no more than was to be expected from any conscientious bull.

But what may be pardonable in headlines will not do in the text, nor is it suitable in English prose generally. For instance:

Food consumption has been dominated by the world supply situation. (People have had to eat what they could get.)

An extra million tons of steel would buy our whole sugar import requirements. (All the sugar we need to import.)

The only thing that can be said for the following sentence is that it does not end ‘sites preparation':

Everything is being done to expedite plant installation within the limiting factors of steel availability and the preparation of sites.

This should have run: ‘So far as steel is available and sites can be prepared, everything is being done to expedite the installation of plant'.

An exceptionally choice example is:

The programme must be on the basis of the present head of labour ceiling allocation overall.

Here
head of labour
means
number of workers
.
Ceiling
means
maximum
.
Overall
, as usual, means nothing.
*
The whole sentence means ‘The programme must be on the assumption that we get the maximum number of workers at present allotted to us'.

The use of a noun as an adjective should be avoided where the same word is already an adjective with a different meaning. Do
not, for instance, say ‘material allocation' when you mean ‘allocation of material', but reserve that expression against a time when you may want to make clear that the allocation you are considering is not a spiritual one. For the same reason this phrase is not felicitous:

In view of the restrictions recently imposed on our capital economic situation …

By way of emphasising that the official is by no means the only offender, I will add an example from an American sociological book discussed in an article in
The Economist
:

Examination of specific instances indicated that in most cases where retirement dissatisfaction existed advance activity programming by individuals had been insignificant or even lacking.

I translate with diffidence, but the meaning seems to be:

Examination of specific instances indicated that most of those who did not wish to retire had given little or no thought to planning their future.

Note
. The humour of Gowers's example above, ‘our capital economic situation', has dated (few people now use
capital
to mean
splendid
), but the Vatican milks a lasting joke on the same grammatical lines for the title of its weekly radio show, ‘The Latin Lover'. Of course where a double meaning of this sort has been arrived at by mistake, context will usually forestall confusion over what sense was intended. Yet faced solely with the headline, ‘Tussaud Giant Delivery Mixup Nightmare', a reader would have no way of knowing whether a great number of standard waxwork figures had gone astray, or a single seven-footer.

Gowers's capital joke may now be a little dusty, but his warning against the excessive use by officials of nouns as adjectives is
not. The Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England wrote recently that ‘concerns are beginning to be expressed that the level of widening participation activity delivered in future may decline'. What this seems to mean, ‘declines of level-delivery' and all, is: ‘People are starting to worry that in future fewer students from wide-ranging backgrounds will be successfully encouraged to go to university'. (Perhaps, though, ‘activity' refers to the actual effort put into encouraging them.) In the same vein, the Office for Fair Access wishes to know about the ‘access' efforts of ‘School Centred Initial Teacher Training providers'. These appear to be schools that train teachers on the job. The Department for Education has seen fit to sponsor an ‘Emotional abuse recognition training evaluation study'; and so it goes on. ~

By this I mean using a phrase consisting of an adjective and an abstract noun (e.g.
character
,
nature
,
basis
,
description
,
disposition
) where a simple adjective would do as well. This too offends against the rule that you should say what you have to say as simply and directly as possible in order that you may be readily understood:

These claims are of a far-reaching type. (These claims are far reaching.)

The weather will be of a showery character. (It will be showery.)

The wages will be low owing to the unremunerative nature of the work.

The translation of the last example will present no difficulty to a student of Mr Micawber, who once said of the occupation of selling corn on commission: ‘It is not an avocation of a remunerative description—in other words, it does
not
pay'.

Proposition
is another abstract word used in the same way:

Decentralisation on a regional basis is now a generally practical proposition. (Is now generally feasible.)

Accommodation in a separate building is not usually a viable proposition. (Is not usually feasible.)

The high cost of land in clearance areas makes it a completely uneconomic proposition to build cottages in those areas. (Makes it completely uneconomic to build cottages there.)

Basis
is especially likely to lead writers to express themselves in roundabout ways. When you find you have written ‘on a … basis' always examine it critically before letting it stand:

Such officer shall remain on his existing salary on a mark-time basis. (Shall mark time on his existing salary.)

The organisation of such services might be warranted in particular localities and on a strictly limited basis. (Scale.)

The machines would need to be available both day and night on a 24-hour basis. (At any time of day or night.)

Please state whether this is to be a permanent installation or on a temporary line basis. (Or a temporary line.)

A legitimate use of
basis
is:

The manufacturers are distributing their products as fairly as possible on the basis of past trading.

Note
. The formula ‘on an X basis' has not gone away. Thus
permanently
becomes ‘on a permanent basis';
individually
, ‘on a case-by-case basis';
as we go along
, ‘on a rolling basis';
all the time
, ‘on a 24/7 basis'. In a recent internal review by the Ministry of Defence (of a ‘control framework' that failed to prevent the waste
of hundreds of millions of pounds) the authors declare, ‘we report on an exception basis only', apparently meaning ‘we report only on what has gone wrong' (which probably did take up a lot of space). The Department for Transport has revealed that a new Order will ‘enable local authorities and the Secretary of State to operate the statutory highway functions listed in the Order on a contracted out basis'. The ending here presumably means ‘using private contractors', though whether
functions
can be
operated
is another matter. The document carries on, unhelpfully, ‘These functions include … street works functions'. But at last comes the explanation: ‘Street works are works carried out by, or on behalf of, undertakers operating under a statutory right …', which brings to mind the unwelcome image of gravediggers plugging large potholes with unclaimed corpses. ~

In the course of this book I have called numerous expressions clichés. A cliché may be defined as a phrase whose aptness in a particular context when it was first invented has won it such popularity that it has become hackneyed, and is now used without thought in contexts where it is no longer apt. Clichés are notorious enemies of the precise word. To quote from Eric Partridge:

Clichés range from fly-blown phrases (‘much of a muchness'; ‘to all intents and purposes'), metaphors that are now pointless (‘lock, stock and barrel'), formulas that have become mere counters (‘far be it from me to …')—through sobriquets that have lost all of their freshness and most of their significance (‘the Iron Duke')—to quotations that are nauseating (‘cups that cheer but not inebriate') and foreign phrases that are tags (‘longo intervallo'; ‘bête noire'). (
A Dictionary of Clichés
, 1947)

A cliché, then, is by definition a bad thing, not to be employed by self-respecting writers. Judged by this test, some expressions are unquestionably and in all circumstances clichés. This is true in particular of verbose and facetious ways of saying simple things (
conspicuous by its absence
,
tender mercies
) and of phrases so threadbare that they cannot escape the suspicion of being used automatically (
leave no stone unturned
,
acid test
). But a vast number of other expressions may or may not be clichés. It depends on whether they are used unthinkingly as reach-me-downs, or have been deliberately chosen as the best means of saying what a writer wants to say. Eric Partridge's
Dictionary
contains some thousands of entries. But, as he says in his preface, what is a cliché is partly a matter of opinion. It is also a matter of occasion. Many of those in his dictionary may cease to be clichés if used carefully. Writers would be needlessly handicapped if they were never permitted such phrases as
cross the Rubicon
,
sui generis
,
swing of the pendulum
,
thin end of the wedge
and
white elephant
. These may be the fittest way of expressing what is meant. If you choose one of them for that reason you need not be afraid of being called a cliché-monger.

The trouble is that writers often use a cliché because they think it fine, or because it is the first thing that comes into their heads. It is always a danger signal when one word suggests another and Siamese twins are born—
part and parcel
,
intents and purposes
*
and the like. There is no good reason why
inconvenience
should always be said to be
experienced
by a person who suffers it and
occasioned
by the person who causes it. Single words too may become clichés, used so often that their edges become blunt while
more exact words are neglected. Some indeed seem to attract by their very drabness.

Those who resort carelessly to cliché are also given to overworking metaphors. I have already said that newly discovered metaphors shine like jewels. They enable a writer to convey briefly and vividly ideas that might otherwise need tedious exposition. What should we have done, in our present economic difficulties, without our
targets
,
ceilings
and
bottlenecks
? But the very seductiveness of metaphors makes them dangerous. New ones, in particular, tend to be used indiscriminately and soon get stale, but not before they have elbowed out words perhaps more commonplace but with meanings more precise. Sometimes metaphors are so absurdly overtaxed that they become a laughing stock and die of ridicule.
*