Plain Words (6 page)

A correspondent has sent me the following example of the baleful influence of commercialese:

Payment of the above account, which is now overdue at the date hereof, appears to have been overlooked, and I shall be glad to have your remittance by return of post, and oblige.

Yours faithfully,

The superfluous
at the date hereof
must have been prompted by a feeling that
now
by itself was not formal enough and needed dressing up. And the word
oblige
is grammatically mid-air. It has no subject, and is firmly cut off by a full stop from what might have been supposed to be its object, the writer's signature.

The fault of commercialese is that its mechanical use has a bad effect on both writer and reader—the writer's appreciation of the meaning of words is deadened, and the reader feels that the writer's approach lacks sincerity.

(12)
Use words with precise meanings rather than vague ones. As we have seen, you will not be doing your job properly unless you make your meaning readily understood: this is an elementary duty. Yet habitual disregard of it is the commonest cause of the abuse and raillery directed against what is called officialese. All entrants into the Civil Service come equipped with a vocabulary of common words of precise meaning adequate for every ordinary purpose. But when the moment arrives for them to write as officials, most have a queer trick of forgetting these words and relying mainly on a smaller vocabulary of less common words with a less precise meaning. It is a curious fact that in the official's armoury of words the weapons readiest to hand are weapons not of precision but of rough and ready aim. Often, indeed, they are of a sort that were constructed as weapons of precision but have been bored out by the official into blunderbusses.
*
The blunderbusses have been put in the front rack of the armoury. The official reaches out for a word and uses one of these without troubling to search in the racks behind for one that is more likely to hit the target in the middle.

The blunderbuss
integrate
, for instance, is now kept in front of
join
,
combine
,
amalgamate
,
coordinate
and others, and the hand stretching out for one of these gets no further.
Develop
blocks the way to
happen
,
occur
,
take place
and
come
.
Alternative
(a weapon of precision whose bore has been carelessly enlarged) stands before many simple words such as
different
,
other
,
new
,
fresh
,
revised
.
Rehabilitate
and
recondition
are in front of others, such as
heal
,
mend
,
cure
,
repair
,
renovate
and
restore
.
Involve
throws a whole
section of the armoury into disuse, though not so big a one as that threatened by
overall
. And rack upon rack of simple prepositions are left untouched because before them are kept the blunderbusses of vague phrases such as
in relation to
,
in regard to
,
in connection with
and
in the case of
.

It may be said that it is generally easy enough to guess what is meant. But you have no business leaving your reader to guess, even though the guess may be easy. That is not doing your job properly. If you make a habit of not troubling to choose the right weapon of precision you may be sure that sooner or later you will set your reader a problem that is past guessing.

(13) If two words convey your meaning equally well, choose the common one rather than the less common. Here again official tendency is in the opposite direction, and you must be on your guard. Do not say
regarding
,
respecting
or
concerning
when you can say
about
. Do not use
advert
instead of
refer
, or
state
,
inform
or
acquaint
when you might use
say
or
tell
.
Inform
is a useful word, but it seems to attract adverbs as prim as itself, sometimes almost menacing. In
kindly inform me
the politeness rings hollow; all it does is to put a frigid and magisterial tone into your request.
Perhaps you will inform me
means that you have
got
to inform me, and no ‘perhaps' about it, and I suspect the consequences may be serious for you.
Furthermore
is a prosy word used too often. It may be difficult to avoid it in a cumulative argument (
moreover
…
in addition
…
too
…
also
…
again
…
furthermore
) but choose one of the simpler words if they have not all been used up. Do not say
hereto
,
herein
,
hereof
,
herewith
,
hereunder
, or similar compounds with
there
, unless, like
therefore
, they have become part of the everyday language. Most of them put a flavour of legalism into any document in which they are used. Use a pronoun and perhaps a preposition instead. For instance:

With reference to the second paragraph thereof. (With reference to its second paragraph.)

I have received your letter and thank you for the information contained therein. (For the information it contains.)

I am to ask you to explain the circumstances in which the gift was made and to forward any correspondence relative thereto.

(Any correspondence about it.)

To take a few more examples of unnecessary choice of stilted expressions, do not say
predecease
for
die before
,
ablution facilities
for
wash basins
,
it is apprehended that
for
I suppose
,
capable of locomotion
for
able to walk
,
will you be good enough to advise me
for
please tell me
,
I have endeavoured to obtain the required information
for
I have tried to find out what you wanted to know
,
it will be observed from a perusal of
for
you will see by reading
.

These starchy words may not be bad English in their proper places, but you should avoid them for two reasons. First, some of the more unusual of them may actually be outside your reader's vocabulary, and will convey no meaning at all. Second, their use runs counter to your duty to show that officials are human. These words give the reader the impression that officials are not made of common clay but are, in their own estimation at least, beings superior and aloof. They create the wrong atmosphere. The frost once formed by a phrase or two of this sort is not easily melted. If you turn back to the example given under rule (8) you will see how careful the writer of the revised version has been about this. The word
individual
(a technical term of income tax law to distinguish between a personal taxpayer and a corporate one) was unnecessary and has disappeared.
Deduction of tax
is translated into
allowance
,
incapacitated
into
unable to work
,
is resident with
into
lives with
, and
by reason of old age or infirmity
into
because you are old or infirm
.

Here is an example of words chosen for their simplicity:

If a worker's clothing is destroyed beyond all hope of repair by an accident on his job his employer can apply to us for the coupons needed to replace it. This does not mean of course that anyone can get coupons if his boots fall to pieces through ordinary wear or if he just gets a tear in his trousers.

‘If he just gets a tear in his trousers' not only conveys a clearer meaning than (say) ‘If his garments suffer comparatively minor damage and are capable of effective reconditioning', it also creates a different atmosphere. The reader feels that these words were written by a human being and not a mere cog in the bureaucratic machine—almost that the writer might be rather a decent sort.

I have called this chapter ‘The Elements' because in it I have suggested certain elementary rules—‘be short, be simple, be human'—for officials to follow in the duties that I have described as ‘explaining the law to the millions'. These rules apply no less to official writing of other kinds, and they will be elaborated in
Chapters V
to
VIII
, in which much of what has been said in this chapter will be expanded. I can claim no novelty for my advice. Similar precepts were laid down for the Egyptian Civil Service some thousands of years ago:

Be courteous and tactful as well as honest and diligent.

All your doings are publicly known, and must therefore

Be beyond complaint or criticism. Be absolutely impartial.

Always give a reason for refusing a plea; complainants

Like a kindly hearing even more than a successful plea.

Preserve dignity but avoid inspiring fear.

Be an artist in words, that you may be strong, for

The tongue is a sword …

If we may judge from the following letter, those brought up in this tradition succeeded in avoiding verbiage. It is from a Minister of Finance to a senior civil servant:

Apollonius to Zeno, greeting. You did right to send the chickpeas to Memphis. Farewell.

We will now turn to the implications of a remark I made in
Chapter I
: ‘Lapses from what for the time being is regarded as correct irritate readers educated to notice errors, distract their attention, and so make them less likely to be affected precisely as you wish'. This suggests a fourth rule to add to the three with which we finished the last chapter—‘be correct'. It applies to both vocabulary and grammar. This chapter is concerned with vocabulary only, and grammar will be the subject of
Chapter IX
.

Correctness of vocabulary seems once to have been enforced more sternly on officials than it is now. More than two centuries ago the Secretary to the Commissioners of Excise wrote this letter to the Supervisor of Pontefract:

The Commissioners on their perusal of your 2nd Round Diary observe that you make use of many affected phrases and incongruous words as ‘phantation', ‘preconception', ‘harmony', ‘scotomy', ‘illegal procedure', … all which you use in a sense which the words do not naturally bear. I am ordered to acquaint you that if you hereafter continue that affected and schoolboy way of writing and to murder the language in such a manner you will be discharged for a fool. (Quoted in Edward Hughes,
Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825,
1934)

To us the punishment seems disproportionate to the offence, though the same penalty today might prove gratifying to those who think we have too many officials. That said, we can have nothing but admiration for the sentiment of the letter and for the vigorous directness of its phrasing. It serves moreover to illustrate a difficulty presented by this chapter's precept. What is correctness, and who is to be the judge of it? It cannot be the same now as it was then. A collector of customs and excise today might certainly use the expression
illegal procedure
without being called into question, and might even refer safely to ‘harmony of relations with trade'. On the other hand it would not do now to say, as the Supervisor of Pontefract might have said, that the local bench was ‘an
indifferent
body', meaning that they performed their duties with impartiality, or that a certain businessman
prevented
the arrival of his staff at his office, meaning that he always got there first.

English is not static—neither in vocabulary, nor in grammar, nor yet in that elusive quality called style. The fashion in prose alternates between the ornate and the plain, the elevated and the colloquial. Grammar and punctuation have defied all efforts over the years to force them into the mould of a permanent code of rules. Old words drop out or change their meanings; new words are admitted. What was stigmatised by the purists of one generation as a corruption of the language may a few generations later
be accepted as an enrichment, and what was then common currency may have become a pompous archaism or acquired new significance.

Eminent figures with a care for the language, such as Swift, have from time to time proposed that an Authority should be set up to preserve what is good and resist what is bad. ‘They will find', he said, in his
Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue
, ‘many Words that deserve to be utterly thrown out of our language, many more to be corrected; and perhaps not a few, long since antiquated, which ought to be restored, on account of their Energy and Sound.' Swift's plea, made in the form of a letter to the Lord Treasurer, came to nothing, causing Lord Chesterfield, Swift's contemporary, to observe dryly in an essay of 1754 that this was less than surprising, ‘precision and perspicuity not being in general the favourite objects of Ministers'. A year later, in the Preface to his
Dictionary
, Dr Johnson described the task as hopeless:

Academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse invaders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been in vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.

More recently we have seen a Society for Pure English, with eminent leaders, inviting the support of those who ‘would aim at preserving all the richness of differentiation in our vocabulary, its nice grammatical usages, its traditional idioms, and the music of its inherited pronunciation', but would oppose ‘whatever is slipshod and careless, and all blurring of hard-won distinctions', while opposing no less ‘the tyranny of schoolmasters and grammarians, both in their pedantic conservatism, and in their ignorant enforcing of new-fangled rules'. But it is now defunct.

Dr Johnson was right, as usual. One has only to look at the
words proposed by Swift for inclusion in his
Index Expurgatorius
to realise how difficult, delicate and disappointing it is to resist new words and new meanings. He condemns, for instance,
sham
,
banter
,
mob
,
bully
and
bamboozle
. A generation later Dr Johnson called
clever
a ‘low word' and
fun
and
stingy
‘low cant'. Should we not have been poorer if Swift and Johnson had had their way in this? There is no saying how things will go. The fight for admission to the language is quickly won by some assailants, but long resistance is maintained against others. The word that excited Swift to greatest fury was
mob
, a contraction of
mobile vulgus
. Its victory was rapid and complete. So was that of
banter
and
bamboozle
, which he found hardly less offensive. And if
rep
for
reputation
has never quite risen above being slang, and
phiz
for
physiognomy
is now dead, that is not because Swift denounced them, but because public opinion did not fully embrace them.

Some words gatecrash irresistibly because their sound is so appropriate to the meaning they are trying to acquire.
Gatecrash
is itself an example. It comes from America and has only been in the language since the 1930s. We still have defenders of our tongue who scrutinise such words, condemning them as undesirables. But we ought not to forget how greatly our language has been enriched by the ebullient word-making habit of the Americans. Acquisitions of the past few decades include
debunk
,
commuter
,
cold war
,
nifty
,
babysitter
,
stockpile
,
bulldoze
,
teenager
,
traffic jam
,
underdog
and many others. I do not see why people should turn up their noses at words that usefully fill a gap. These things are a matter of taste, but one's own taste is of no importance unless it happens to reflect the general.

Reliable
was long opposed on the curious ground that it was an impossible construction; an adjective formed from
rely
could only be
reli-on-able
. I remember noticing as a junior in the India Office many years ago that the Secretary of State struck it out of a draft despatch and wrote in
trustworthy
, but that must have
been almost the last shot fired at it. The objection to it was a survival of a curious theory, widely held in pre-Fowler days, that no sentence could be ‘good grammar', and no word a respectable word, if its construction violated logic or reason. But it is not the habit of the English to refrain from doing anything merely because it is illogical, and in any case it was less illogical to accept
reliable
than to strain at it after swallowing
available
and
objectionable
. (I shall have more to say about pedantry when we consider grammar in
Chapter IX
.)

Nice
in the sense in which it is ordinarily used in conversation today has still not yet fully established itself in literary English, though we know from the rather priggish lecture that Henry Tilney gives about it to Catherine Morland in
Northanger Abbey
that it was trying to get over the barrier as far back as the start of the nineteenth century:

‘Oh! it is a very nice word indeed! it does for every thing. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement;—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.'

‘While, in fact,' cried his sister, ‘it ought only to be applied to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise.'

Equally,
haver
does not mean ‘vacillate' (it means ‘blather'), but almost everyone south of the Border thinks it does: there is no withstanding its suggestion of simultaneous hovering and wavering. The dictionaries do not yet recognise this, but doubtless they will soon bow to the inevitable.
*

There has been further stout resistance to certain words that attacked the barrier in the nineteenth century with powerful encouragement from Dickens—
mutual
,
individual
and
aggravate
.
Mutual
, not in the sense of ‘reciprocated' but of ‘common' or ‘pertaining to both parties', as in
Our Mutual Friend
, goes back to the sixteenth century, according to the
OED
, yet some people still regard this as incorrect. Perhaps the reason it is so difficult to restrain the word to its ‘correct' meaning is the ambiguity of
common
. (‘Our common friend' might be taken as a reflection on the friend's manners or birth.)
*
The use of
individual
that is unquestionably correct is to distinguish a single person from a collective body, as it is used in the Income Tax Acts to distinguish between a personal taxpayer and a corporate one. But its use as a facetious term of disparagement was once common and still lingers. That was how Mr Jorrocks, Surtees's hero, understood it when Mr Martin Moonface described him as an ‘unfortunate individual', provoking the retort ‘You are another indiwidual'. Over
aggravate
the long-drawn-out struggle still continues between those who, like Dickens, use it in the sense of ‘annoy' and those who would confine it to its original sense of ‘make worse'.
†
About all these words, in the minds of purists, the issue is still in the balance. About all these words, in the minds of purists, the issue is still in the balance.

It is around new verbs that battles rage most hotly. New verbs are ordinarily formed in one of three ways, all of which have been
employed in the past to create useful additions to our vocabulary. The first is the simple method of treating a noun as a verb. It is one of the beauties of our language that nouns can be converted so readily into verbs and adjectives.
Elbow
, for instance, was a 600-year-old noun when Shakespeare made it into a verb in
King Lear
. The second is what is called ‘back-formation', that is to say, forming from a noun the sort of verb from which the noun might have been formed had the verb come first. In this way the verb
diagnose
was formed from
diagnosis
. The third is to add
ise
*
to an adjective, as
sterilise
has been formed from
sterile
. All these methods are being used today with no little zest. New verbs for something that is itself new (like
pressurise
) cannot be gainsaid.
Service
is a natural and useful newcomer in an age when almost everyone keeps a machine of some sort that needs periodical attention. But it provides an interesting example of the way in which new verbs, once you give them an inch, may take a yard.
Service
is already ousting
serve
, as in

A large number of depots of one sort or another will be required to service the town.

To enable the Local Authority to take advantage of this provision it is essential that sites should be available, ready serviced with roads and sewers.

As I write, the credentials of to
contact
are still in dispute between those like Sir Alan Herbert, who in his book of 1935,
What a Word!
, calls it ‘loathsome', and those like Ivor Brown, who, in
A Word in your Ear
of 1942, holds that it can claim indulgence on the ground that besides this ‘there is no word which covers approach by telephone, letter and speech', and
contact
is
‘self-explanatory and concise'. If I were to hazard a prophecy, it would be that
contact
will win, but for the present it still excites in some people feelings akin to those aroused by split infinitives and
those kind of things
. So do
feature
,
glimpse
,
position
,
sense
and
signature
when used as verbs, though all have long since found their way into dictionaries. So do the verbs
loan
,
gift
and
author
, though these were verbs centuries ago, and are only trying to come back again after a long holiday, spent by
loan
in America, by
gift
in Scotland and by
author
in oblivion. Whatever their fate may prove to be, we shall not be disposed to welcome such a word as
reaccessioned
, used by a librarian of a book once more available to subscribers. To
underground
(of electric cables) seems at first sight an unnecessary addition to our vocabulary of verbs when
bury
is available, but an editor to whom protest was made retorted that
bury
would not have done because the cables were ‘live'.