Comment: Picking nits
- Paul Chartrand | February 27, 2015
This month I finish my (tongue-in-cheek) harangue on proper English usage. I copy the examples that I gave last month and stick in comments within the space available to me. I am not an English language expert but this is the English I learned from French-speaking missionary nuns in school so it has to be correct right?
1. Here is an offending newspaper headline: Dutch dominance in long track speed skating begs the question, where’s Canada?
What the writer meant was ‘raises the question’. The phrase ‘begs the question’ only makes sense if there is a question at issue in the first place. To ‘beg the question’ is a problem of formal logic. A statement is made where the reason for the conclusion is not valid. The statement has a premise that is not supported in the argument being presented.
2. What will be the impact of more skating lessons on Canada’s chances to win a gold medal?
‘Impact’ is for car accidents and wisdom teeth. The term is being used as a general cover-up for people’s inability to distinguish between the words ‘effects’ and ‘affects’. Even the Supreme Court of Canada from which we have a right to expect exemplary language has adopted it willy-nilly.
3. The notorious Bill C 33 or First Nation Education Act 2014.
(4) The director of education, the principal, the council of the First Nation, the First Nation Education Authority, if the school is administered by such an Authority, and their employees must provide all reasonable assistance to enable the school inspector to perform their functions.
This literally means that all these folks will be required to hand over their jobs to the school inspector and then help him do all their work. I speculate the problem is an ‘English-challenged’ draftsman trying to avoid using ‘his or her’. If one is so timorous as to fear the gender of words the obvious grammatical solution is to use the plural form for the noun. Sloppy legal drafting invites chicanery and litigation and sucks up taxpayers’ money.
4. We have to be inclusive eh?
What on earth does ‘inclusive’ mean unless properly explained? The term appears everywhere, like a fill-in when a speaker’s mind goes blank. Few people would wish to be ‘inclusive’ by spreading their winter colds to family or handing out their private fortunes to strangers.
5. For this recipe you may use apples and/or oranges. Or a worse version of the same problem: When using these ingredients you may mix/mash/cut them into little pieces.
The dreaded forward slash, neither word nor phrase, simply will not go away. Its effect is to bring two or more words bumping uneasily against each other, indicating a confusion of the mind. It is so easy to rewrite your sentence to explain if you mean this or that or both.
6. Gender Equity in Indian Registration Act which came into force in January 2011.
Bill C-3 (the McIvor amendment to the Indian Act) had ‘gender equity’ in its title even though there is no such thing as ‘gender’ or ‘equity’ in the Constitution. The Charter contains rights relating to ‘sex equality’. The term ‘sex’ which is for boys and girls, has been abolished in favour of ‘gender’ which refers to words to describe things masculine or feminine. Use Cree if you want to avoid gender!
7. And what do you think we should do about the problem going forward?
Is this phrase about time, as ‘in the future’? Or about geography, as in ‘we will move forward not backward’?
8. Let us grow our business enterprise!
We can grow wheat. We can watch our children grow. But you cannot grow a business. You can make a business grow.
9. It is a Canadian virtue to promote diversity.
What is the argument for the idea that diversity is an absolute and unmitigated good? This is the way it is often used. When asserted this way it applies to everything, measles and moles as well as good things. The term should always be used with an explanation, and not used as a cover for vexed policy issues such as multiculturalism.
Oh, one last thing. In hockey there is a ‘faceoff’: not a ‘puck drop’!!
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