theguardian on English Language

In a local charity shop I bought yesterday a slim paperback book published last year by theguardian <sic> titled The Guardian Book of English Language. The text is ‘extracted from Guardian Style’, the paper’s official advice to its own journalists.

The authors cheerfully, and without any sign of regret, refer to the days when that paper’s typestting was so erratic that Private Eye always called it ‘The Grauniad’. But the advice offered in this booklet’s pages is of very variable quality, and not always well expressed: slickness seems to have been the aim rather than clarity. The following extract, for instance, can be interpreted if you work hard at it; but if you are capable of deciphering it, you probably don’t need its advice anyway:

“it’s or its?
it’s shortened form of it is or has: it’s a big dog, it’s been ages since I saw her; its possessive form of it: the dog is eating its bone.”

The next entry, “like or as if?” advises against the usage “it looks like he’s finished”. All right, probably true for academic papers and prim journalism: but this ‘vernacular’ use is so common now in novels, advertisements, popular magazines and newspapers that I would be very surprised if it hasn’t ever appeared in the pages of The Guardian itself. The truth is that a writer needs to be able to sense when it may or may not be appropriate to lapse deliberately into popular idiom.

Following that, comes “may or might” which closes with a short sentence: “May also has the meaning of ‘having permission’, so be careful: does ‘Megawatt Corp may bid for TransElectric Inc’ mean that it is considering a bid, or that the competition authorities have allowed it to bid ?” A fair question: but no answer or advice follows.

Next again comes “metaphor: Traditionally defined as the application to one thing of a name belonging to another, eg bowling blitz, economic meltdown, ‘every language is a temple in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined’ (Oliver Wendell Holmes)”. Not a lot of help to a person seeking advice on correct writing.

The advice offered in the next two entries (“none” and “one in six, one in 10, etc”) seems, if not actually wrong, at least debatable. After all this, there are still about 100 more pages to go. But two things are sure: first, almost all ‘prescriptions’ for good writing require qualification; and secondly, you shouldn't expect total agreement among pedants.

theguardian on English Language