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Back to the future
BILL KIRKMAN
PREDICTIONS are notoriously unreliable. Notwithstanding that, each new year brings predictions in plenty. It puzzles me, because the inaccuracy of the predictions is often quickly apparent, and certainly within the memory of those who heard, and made, them. Consider, for example, the prophets of doom at the beginning of 2000, warning of the millennium bug. Computer systems would fail and it would be impossible to carry on normal business; you should avoid flying, special arrangements must be made, and so on. In the event, nothing happened.
Some predictions, of course, can be made in the certainty that any errors contained in them will not be noticed in time to blame the predictor. Recently I gave a talk entitled "The University of Cambridge prepares for the next 800 years" (it was founded in 1209), and I was able to raise a smile with my audience by commenting that most of us would not be around in 800 years' time to prove me wrong.
In Britain, we all hope that Tony Blair's gloomy new year predictions will be proved wrong. He foresaw an array of dangers and difficulties, including terrorist threats and serious economic problems. Amid all the prophecies in the newspapers (which turn at this time of year from being recorders of facts to seasonal soothsayers), the best was in the Financial Times, which noted wryly that "in 2003 the FT can say, with some confidence, there will be many surprising and unforeseen events".
Just so, and I shall therefore turn from predictions to new year resolutions. I do not make them for myself, since I have no illusions; making the resolutions is easy, but finding the will to carry them out — I can safely predict — will escape me.
My resolutions, therefore, are for others, and in particular for some of the many manglers of the English language.
My current favourite bete noire is "in terms of". The phrase trips easily off the tongues of many being interviewed about their organisations. "Yes", they declare, "we have a problem in terms of bookings", or "it's been a big feature of the year in terms of crime". What they mean is: "We have had too few bookings" or "there has been much more crime".
Another regular usage is "at the end of the day" which gives a spurious chronological flavour to what is in reality a comment on completeness. At one time — in what I see in my pedantic fashion as the good old days — the words would have been "when all is said and done". Business commentators are particularly prone to "the end of the day", often combined with "a level playing field". In practice, I find myself muttering under my breath, few sports (except, perhaps, cross-country skiing) have anything other than a level playing field. In my more sardonic moments I add that the problem with England cricket is not the absence of a level playing field but the lack of good players.
Tautology is habit-forming. How many people begin a report on a current situation with the words "at this moment in time", setting it in context by adding at some point "in this day and age"? It is difficult to see how any of this adds much to the one word "now". Another common addiction is to replace "at all" by the verbosity of "in any way, shape or form". A minor form of the tautology disease, much favoured in management speak, is the addition of the unnecessary "up" when describing someone who heads an organisation.
There are cases, it has to be admitted, where the logically dubious has become generally accepted. My favourite example is "a fine toothcomb". A fine-toothed comb, clearly, is an instrument which graphically suggests great thoroughness. But what is a toothcomb?
Do many people comb their teeth? And of what use would a comb without teeth be, except to people without hair?
I am, I realise, fighting a losing battle, but I can take wry pleasure in what has become a fairly common use of the opposite of what is intended: "You cannot underestimate so and so's contribution". It may well be true, but it is rarely what the writer wished to suggest.
At the end of the day, having gone through everything with a fine toothcomb, I believe that I am not in any way, shape or form on a level playing field in terms of misuse of the English language, and I suggest that the stylistic skill of the misusers cannot be underestimated. Happy new year.
The writer is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, U.K.. E-mail him at wpk1000@cam.ac.uk
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