Zoe Williams, "With the NHS, reality has finally caught up with Theresa May", The Guardian 1/8/2018 [emphasis added]: “If you look across the NHS, experience is different,” the prime minister flailed, as if the fact there wasn’t a stroke victim waiting for four hours in an ambulance outside every hospital was proof of her competence. […]
I've long since accepted that most people use "passive voice" to mean "vague about agency": see "Passive Voice" — 1397-2009 — R.I.P.", 3/12/2009. And I've made my peace with an extra-extended use of the term passive to convey only a vague sense of disapprobation: "'Passive construction' means… nothing at all?", 7/25/2009. But in David Brooks' […]
While we at Language Log bemoan how often the passive voice is misidentified, and how often passive constructions are wrongly scapegoated, last night's Oscars debacle has provided us with a clearcut case of how agentless passives can serve to obfuscate. The official apology from PricewaterhouseCoopers for the envelope mixup, which led Warren Beatty and Faye […]
I recently saw a list of revisions suggested by the editor of a scientific journal, which combined technical issues with a number of points of English usage, including these two: Please try to avoid the word ‘impact,’ unless it is part of a proper name. It is now over-used (its ‘impact’ is diminished), and doesn’t communicate […]
In the Wall Street Journal article "Supreme Court Nominee Takes Legal Writing to Next Level," Joe Palazzolo writes that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court, has elevated legal opinions to "a form of wry nonfiction." Not only that, "his affinity for language reveals itself in other ways. Poorly drafted laws tend […]
Dan Barry's recent article in The New York Times is headed: "In a Swirl of ‘Untruths’ and ‘Falsehoods,’ Calling a Lie a Lie." And pretty soon, he is of course reaching for the dread allegation of writing in the "passive". Does he know what that charge means? No. Like almost everybody who has been to […]
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Today's SMBC: Mouseover title: "Life rule: Never do anything you've done more than 3 times already."
On a recent episode of Bravo's competitive cooking show "Top Chef" ("Spines and Vines," 12/10/15), the contestants had to make a dish with uni (sea urchin) and pair it with a wine. One contestant, Angelina Bastidas, received the following less-than-glowing appraisal of her dish from the show's host, Padma Lakshmi, and guest judge Dana Cowin, […]
My usual blogging hour has been overwhelmed recently by a minor operation, course prep, research obligations, Ware College House events, and even a little sleep from time to time. So here are a few items from my to-blog list that I don't have time today to do justice to.
I'm grateful to Peter Howard and S. P. O'Grady, who within an hour or so both mailed me a link to this extraordinarily dumb article by James Gingell in The Guardian. As Howard and O'Grady pointed out, Gingell's wildly overstated rant illustrates a point I have made on Language Log many times before: that when language […]
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We've been highly skeptical, in general, of usage mavens' often-mistaken disdain for what they call "passive voice". The objects of their animus are often not grammatically passive at all, but merely vague about agency — or sometimes just weakly phrased in some not-very-clear way. But Jerry Friedman points out a case where vagueness about agency […]
"The true story of Stronzo Bestiale", Parolacce 10/5/2014: Would you read a paper written by Stronzo Bestiale (Total Asshole)? A dose of mistrust would be justified: the name says it all. Yet, in 1987, professor Bestiale, supposedly a physicist in Palermo, Sicily, authored major papers in prestigious scientific peer reviewed journals such as the Journal […]
The following photograph appears in this BBC article: "Why is Sanskrit so controversial?" It is accompanied by this caption: "Muslims in India choose to learn Arabic".