Plain Words (23 page)

When
but
is used as a conjunction, it is an easy slip to put it where there should be an
and
, forgetting that the conjunction you want is one that does not go contrary to the clause immediately preceding, but continues in the same sense. Consider the following:

It is agreed that the primary condition of the scheme is satisfied, but it is also necessary to establish that your war service interrupted an organised course of study for a professional qualification comparable to that for which application is made,
but
as explained in previous letters, you are unable to fulfil this qualification.

The italicised
but
should be
and
. The line of thought has already been turned by the first
but
; it is now going straight on.

A similar slip is made here:

The Forestry Commission will probably only be able to offer you a post as a forest labourer, or possibly leading a gang of forest workers, but there are at the moment no vacancies for Forest Officers.

Either
only
must be omitted, or the
but
must be changed to
as
.

(6)
If
. The use of
if
for
though
or
but
may give rise to ambiguity or absurdity. It is ambiguous in a sentence such as,

There is evidence, if not proof, that he was responsible.

Its absurdity is demonstrated by Sir Alan Herbert's imaginary example from
What a Word!
: ‘Milk is nourishing, if tuberculous'.

Care is also needed in the use of
if
in the sense of
whether
, for this too may cause ambiguity:

Please inform me if there is any change in your circumstances.

Does this mean ‘Please inform me now whether there is any change', or ‘If any change should occur please inform me then'? The reader cannot tell. If
whether
and
if
become interchangeable, unintentional offence may be given by the lover who sings:

What do I care

If you are there?

Note
. Since Gowers wrote this,
if
has encroached yet further on the territory of
whether
, so that an academic publisher is prepared to allow this comment: ‘there is no saying if or not other similar troves exist'. (Those who consider this extraordinary might find themselves less worried by ‘there is no saying if other similar troves exist or not'.) Nevertheless, because muddling
if
and
whether
blunts the language, it remains good practice to use
if
in a conditional sense: ‘Please let me know if you marry him' (but if you remain unmarried, I do not need to hear), and
whether
for
possibilities and alternatives: ‘Please let me know whether you marry him' (please let me know, some time hence, whether or not you did marry him). ~

(7)
Inasmuch as
. This is sometimes used in the sense of
so far as
and sometimes as a clumsy way of saying
because
or
since
. It is therefore ambiguous, and might well be dispensed with altogether.

(8)
Like
. Colloquial English admits
like
as a conjunction, and would not be shocked by the sentence ‘Nothing succeeds like success does', or by ‘It looked like he was going to succeed'. But in formal English prose neither of these will do:
like
must not be treated as a conjunction. So we may say ‘nothing succeeds like success'; but it must be ‘nothing succeeds
as
success does' and ‘it looked
as if
he were going to succeed'.

(9)
Provided that
. It is better to use this form to introduce a stipulation than
provided
without the
that
, and much better to use it than a bald
providing
. The phrase itself should be reserved for a true stipulation, as in:

He said he would go to the meeting provided that I went with him.

It should not be used loosely for
if
, as in:

I expect he will come tomorrow, provided that he comes at all.

Sometimes the misuse of
provided that
for
if
will obscure the meaning of a sentence and create difficulties for a reader:

Such emoluments can only count as qualifying for pension provided that they cannot be converted into cash.

This would have been clear with
if
.

(10)
Than
. Writers can find themselves tempted to use
than
as a preposition, like
but
(see above), in a sentence such as ‘he is older than me'. Examples of this can be found in good writers, including a craftsman as scrupulous as Mr Somerset Maugham.
Yet the
OED
observes that this is ‘considered incorrect': it should be ‘he is older than I' (i.e. ‘than I am'). We may say ‘I know more about her than him' if what we mean is that my knowledge of her is greater than my knowledge of him. But if we mean that my knowledge of her is greater than his knowledge of her, we must say ‘I know more about her than he (does)'.

Note
. The
OED
's warning stands to this day. But ‘he is older than I am' (with the verb added at the end) now sounds a lot less starchy than ‘he is older than I'. ~

A sole exception is recognised—
whom
. We must say
than whom
, and not ‘than who', even though the only way of making grammatical sense of it is to regard
than
as a preposition. But that is rather a stilted way of writing, and can best be left to poetry, as when Milton remarks parenthetically of Beelzebub:

than whom, Satan except, none higher sat …

Be careful not to slip into using
than
with words that take a different construction.
Other
and
else
(and
otherwise
and
elsewhere
) are the only words besides comparatives that take
than
.
Than
is sometimes mistakenly used with such words as
preferable
and
different
, and is also sometimes used where a purist would prefer
as
:

Nearly twice as many people die under 20 in France than in Great Britain, chiefly of tuberculosis.

(11)
That
. The conjunctive
that
often leads the writer into error, especially in long sentences. This is not so much a matter of rule as of being careful:

It was agreed that, since suitable accommodation was now available in a convenient position, and that a move to larger offices was therefore feasible, Treasury sanction should be sought for acquiring them.

Here a superfluous
that
has slipped into the sentence. The first
that
was capable of doing all the work.
*

(12)
When
. It is sometimes confusing to use
when
as the equivalent of
and then
.

Let me have full particulars when I will be able to advise you. (Please let me have full particulars. I shall then be able to advise you.)

Alternatively the Minister may make the order himself when it has the same effect as if it has been made by the Local Authority. (Alternatively the Minister may make the order himself, and it then has the same effect …)

(13)
While
. It is safest to use this conjunction only in its temporal sense (‘your letter came while I was away on leave'). That does not mean that it is wrong to use it also as a conjunction without any temporal sense, equivalent to
although
(‘while I do not agree with you, I accept your ruling'), but this can lead to ambiguities:

While he is feeling unwell, he should impress the Panel with his charm.

It should certainly not be used in these two different senses in the same sentence, as in:

While appreciating your difficulties while your mother is ill …

Moreover, once we leave the shelter of the temporal sense, we are on the road to treating
while
as a synonym for
and
:

Nothing will be available for some time for the desired improvement, while the general supply of linoleum to new offices may have to cease when existing stocks run out.

There is no point in saying
while
when you mean
and
. If you are too free with
while
you are sure sooner or later to land yourself in the absurdity of seeming to say that two events have occurred simultaneously that could not possibly have done so:

The first part of the concert was conducted by Sir August Manns … while Sir Arthur Sullivan conducted his then recently composed
Absent Minded Beggar
.

(1) Double negatives. It has long been settled doctrine among certain English grammarians that two negatives cancel each other and produce an affirmative. As in mathematics – (–
x
) equals +
x
, so in speech ‘he didn't say nothing' must be regarded as equivalent to
he said something
.

It is going too far to say, as is sometimes said, that this proposition is self-evident. The ancient Greeks did not think that two negatives made an affirmative. On the contrary, the more negatives they put into a sentence, the more emphatically negative the sentence became. Nor did Chaucer think so. In a much-quoted passage, he wrote:

He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde

In al his lyf unto no maner wight.

He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght.

Nor did Shakespeare, who made King Claudius say of Hamlet:

Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little,

Was not like madness …

Nor do the many thousands of people who find it natural today to deny knowledge by saying ‘I don't know nothing'. And the comedian who sings ‘I ain't going to give nobody none of mine' is
not misunderstood.
*
Jespersen, in his
Essentials of English Grammar
of 1933, notes that a speaker of this kind, ‘who wants the negative sense to be fully apprehended', will attach it

not only to the verb, but also to other parts of the sentence: he spreads, as it were, a thin layer of negative colouring over the whole of the sentence instead of confining it to one single place. This may be called pleonastic, but is certainly not really illogical.

Still, the orthodox view continues to stand in formal English. Breaches of it are commonest with verbs of surprise or speculation (‘I shouldn't wonder if there wasn't a storm'; ‘I shouldn't be surprised if he didn't come today'). Indeed, this is so common that it is classed by Fowler as one of his ‘sturdy indefensibles'. A recent speech in the House of Lords affords a typical instance of the confusion of thought bred by double negatives:

Let it not be supposed because we are building for the future rather than the present that the Bill's proposals are not devoid of significance.

What the speaker meant, of course, was ‘Let it not be supposed that the Bill's proposals
are
devoid of significance'. Another example is:

There is no reason to doubt that what he says in his statement … is not true.

Here the speaker meant, ‘There is no reason to doubt that his statement
is
true'. And another:

It must not be assumed that there are no circumstances in which a profit might not be made.

Avoid multiple negatives when you can. Even if you dodge the traps they set and succeed in saying what you mean, you give your reader a puzzle to solve in sorting the negatives out. Indeed it is wise never to make a statement negatively if it could just as well be made positively. A correspondent sends me this:

The elementary ideas of the calculus are not beyond the capacity of more than 40 per cent of our certificate students.

He comments, ‘I am quite unable to say whether this assertion is that two-fifths or three-fifths of the class could make something of the ideas'. If the writer had said that the ideas were within the capacity of at least 60 per cent, all would have been clear. Here are two more examples of sentences that have to be unravelled before they yield any meaning:

Few would now contend that too many checks cannot be at least as harmful to democracy as too few.

The Opposition refused leave for the withdrawal of a motion to annul an Order revoking the embargo on the importation of cut glass.

(2)
Neither … nor
. Some books tell you that
neither … nor
should not be used where there are more than two alternatives. But if you decide to ignore this advice as pedantry you will find on your side not only the translators of the Bible:

neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God … (Romans 8:38–9)

but also, though not quite so profusely, Sir Harold Nicolson:

Neither Lord Davidson nor Sir Bernard Paget nor Mr Arthur Bryant will suffer permanently or seriously from the spectacle which they have provided. (
Spectator
, 1949)

(3)
Nor
and
or
. When should
nor
be used and when
or
? If a
neither
or an
either
comes first there is no difficulty;
neither
is always followed by
nor
and
either
by
or
. There can be no doubt that it is wrong to write: ‘The existing position satisfies neither the psychologist, the judge, or the public'. It should have been ‘neither the psychologist, nor the judge, nor the public'. But when the initial negative is a simple
not
or
no
, it is often a puzzling question whether
nor
or
or
should follow. Logically it depends on whether the sentence is so framed that the initial negative runs on into the second part of it or is exhausted in the first. Practically, it may be of little importance which answer you give, for the meaning will be clear.