The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style_4

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140 fortunate that state that, if we provide treat- steps and doffed his hat just as the boy ment for infants and children, we on the bicycle returned holding up a must provide for their education if tube triumphantly. Never had so they are hospitalized for long periods many fortuitous omens graced us at of time,” E—— said. once. The administrator was mixed up and the This time “fortuitous” would well be re- reporter probably was too. They may placed by favorable. have confused “fortuitous” with a com- An adverb related to fortuitous is for- bination of felicitous, meaning apt or ap- tuitously. A related noun is fortuitous- propriate, and fortunate, meaning lucky. ness. Either word would have been a better FORTUNATE. See FORTUITOUS. choice than “fortuitous.” That which is fortuitous may be inter- FORTUNE. See DESTINY. preted as appropriate or inappropriate, lucky or unlucky. Natural disasters are FORWARD and BACK (time). fortuitous. Like felicitous, it is a four- syllable word beginning with f and end- When daylight-saving time arrives in ing with -itous. It shares the ﬁrst ﬁve the spring, we are advised to move our letters of fortunate. Otherwise fortuitous clocks “forward” one hour; that is, has little in common with the other two move them in the direction in which adjectives. The Latin equivalents and an- clocks automatically move. Turning the cestors of fortuitous and fortunate are clock “back,” say from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m., fortuitus and fortunatus, which in the is what we are advised to do in the fall distant past evidently had a common when standard time returns. The mne- root in fors, chance, luck. monic “Spring forward, fall back” does A book by two scientiﬁc writers ap- not help some people, who misunder- pears to suggest that accident and uncer- stand those adverbs and arrive at places tainty pervade the universe. The two hours late or two hours early. components of such a universe could An announcing of a shift in time re- truly be called fortuitous. In the follow- quires caution. The new hour or date ing example, no problem appears up to needs to be stated precisely. the second comma. The manager of a television station decided to start its network programs at For some people, the exceedingly 7 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. A newspaper re- fortuitous arrangement of the physi- ported that she was “moving prime time cal world, which permits the very spe- forward one hour.” cial conditions necessary to human Sometimes forward (as an adjective) observers’ existence, conﬁrms their can indeed mean early: “A forward con- belief in a creative Designer. tingent is on its way.” But forward (as an adverb) can refer also to the future: In this example, felicitous would itself be “From this day forward” / “I look for- more felicitous than “fortuitous.” Fortu- ward to the party.” Similarly, back can nate also would pass muster. suggest an earlier time to some (“Think A similar problem appears in another back to your school days”), a later time book, by a traveler telling about car to others (who may recall the movie trouble in Africa. Back to the Future). If a meeting originally scheduled for Within a few moments, the engine May 3 is postponed, or put off, to May ﬁred. The mechanic danced a few 10, is it moved “ahead” one week? The
frankenstein 141 future lies ahead, but three comes ahead speech. That fact may acquit the tele- of ten. Stating the new date avoids con- caster of verbal malfeasance but not of fusion. verbosity. Obviously $30,000 is a frac- tion of $250,000. Had he made a calcu- FORWARD and FOREWORD. lation and reported, “It’s a mere 12 See FOREWORD and FORWARD. percent of the $250,000,” at least he would be imparting information. FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. A press example also deals with Rus- See WHO and WHOM, 1. sia: FOUNDATION, FUNDAMEN- . . . The total of about 7,000 work- TAL, and FUNDAMENT. All ing churches is only a fraction of the three words stem from the Latin fundus, 54,000 that existed before the 1917 bottom, yet their meanings are not all Bolshevik Revolution. similar. The writer of this sentence did not know that fundament bears only su- A replacement for “is only a fraction of” perﬁcial resemblance to fundamental: might have been “is only 13 percent of” “That event was the fundament of Polish or (if the writer could not handle the nationalism.” arithmetic problem) “contrasts with.” Foundation, meaning base, basis, or Another example is in Gerund, 3A. founding, would have been a better Fractions. See FRACTION; HALF; choice of nouns. Fundamental is a basic principle or (as an adjective) basic or es- Numbers, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11; Verbs, 3 (end). sential. Take away -al and we have fun- FRANKENSTEIN. This error is a dament, meaning anus or buttocks. hoary one and very widespread. Even a FOUNDER. See FLOUNDER and brilliant scientist-author has made it. He FOUNDER. writes that the public distrusts science, adding: FRACTION. When the anchor man for a television network placed President This distrust is evident in the cartoon Gorbachev’s salary at $30,000 a year ﬁgure of the mad scientist working in and remarked, “It’s a mere fraction of his laboratory to produce a Franken- the $250,000 that President Bush stein. makes,” was he saying anything wrong? Strictly speaking, any number below Nobody produces a Frankenstein (ex- one is a fraction. Nine-tenths or even cept, perhaps, Mr. and Mrs. Franken- 99/100 is a fraction and it is not small stein). Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s and not subject to the modiﬁer “mere” 1818 novel of that name was not the or “only.” (In mathematics, any number monster but its creator, Victor Franken- with a numerator and denominator can stein. The monster, which ultimately be called a fraction, even if it exceeds killed him, had no name. one; for example, 3/2.) On the other The term Frankenstein’s monster or hand, one-twentieth could be described Frankenstein monster may be applied to as a small fraction of something, one- any creation that escapes from the cre- thousandth a tiny fraction. ator’s control and threatens to, or actu- Therefore it is not reasonable to re- ally does, crush him. “Nuclear energy is strict fraction to a small part, a little Frankenstein’s monster,” or “In develop- piece, or a minute fragment. Neverthe- ing nuclear energy, man created a less such use is entrenched in popular Frankenstein monster.”
142 “freak accident” “FREAK ACCIDENT.” No news tion “for” makes no more sense with story of a distinctive accident is complete free than with the adverb expensively. unless the reporter drags in this phrase. Whether the illegitimate phrase origi- It is never a freakish or freaky accident, nated in a mistaken analogy with for to use a bona ﬁde adjective, but a nothing or in a conscious attempt at “freak” one. cuteness is not known. Sometimes the happening is not even (The last quoted sentence, while con- very freakish, freaky, or “freak.” For in- taining a surplus word, omits a desirable stance, a network anchor man described word after “boast”: the conjunction “a freak accident” in which a tree was that.) blown down upon a van. And a newspa- See also Prepositions, 7. per reported “a freak accident” in which debris on a highway stopped a truck, 2. FREE and FREELY causing it to be hit from behind by an- Freely is an alternative to free as an other truck. adverb meaning in an unrestrained or unlimited manner. The horses run freely FREE. 1. FREE and “FOR FREE.” 2. or free. To say “The publication is dis- FREE and FREELY. tributed freely” when free of charge is meant can be ambiguous. 1. FREE and “FOR FREE” Free is also a common adjective: a free Two news magazines, which normally country. prize conciseness, ran the following two FREEDOM. See DEMOCRACY, FREE- sentences, each containing a useless word. DOM, and INDEPENDENCE. FROM . . . TO. See BETWEEN, 3; Perry planned to lease the planes to Jordan for free. . . . RANGE, true and false; Punctuation, 4C. Soldiers, trying to build good will, cut “FROM WHENCE.” See WHENCE hair for free [in China]. and “FROM WHENCE.” “For” serves no purpose in those sen- -FUL ending. See Plurals and singu- tences or in these two, found in newspa- pers: lars, 2B. FULL STOP. See Punctuation, 8. Since Oct. 1, Capital Metropolitan Authority patrons have been riding FULSOME. Fulsome fools some city buses for free. . . . people. It means not just full, but dis- The company has grown from 300 tastefully so; offensive to the senses, es- outlets in 1980 in part on its boast it pecially by being excessive or insincere: would deliver the pizza for free if its “Belshazzar’s fulsome feast” / “Castro’s drivers were late. fulsome promises.” Although in Middle English fulsom People are being offered the planes, the meant simply full or abundant, it took haircuts, the bus rides, and the pizza free on a negative connotation. Perhaps ful or free of charge or for nothing, but not suggested foul. Anyway, in modern En- “for free.” Free serves as an adverb, glish it combines the idea of abundance whereas nothing is a noun. The preposi- with the idea of excess or insincerity.
furor and fury 143 One of those fooled was a TV net- For the three months ended June work’s chief anchor man. He said, in de- 30 . . . funds from operations was scribing Robert Dole’s last day in $45,521,000. . . . Revenues . . . were Congress: $62,173,000. . . . Funds from opera- tions for the six months ended June And so the senator leaves the Senate 30 . . . was $85,990,000. . . . Rev- with the most fulsome praise ringing enues . . . were $12,500,000. . . . in his ears. “Funds . . . were,” just as “revenues The broadcaster probably did not intend were.” A singular phrasing would be to describe the praise as excessive or in- “income from operations was sincere, but that is essentially what he $45,521,000.” said. Although some opposing partisans A fund, singular noun, is a supply of may have secretly agreed with such an money set aside for a speciﬁc purpose assessment, another expression would (the emergency fund); or a supply of have been preferable, say a lavish chorus something else (a fund of knowledge). of praise. (That corrects the misuse and ties in with the ear-ringing theme.) FUNDAMENTAL and FUNDA- MENT. See FOUNDATION, FUN- FUN. The ﬁrst time I heard someone DAMENTAL, and FUNDAMENT. say anything like “It’s so fun,” I was in Europe and appreciated that the woman FURIOUS, FURIOUSLY. See talking to me could speak my language FUROR and FURY. at all. But for an American television re- porter to speak of “the career that had FUROR and FURY. Fury (noun) is looked so fun and so glorious” could not be easily condoned. A substitute for “so violent action or violent rage: “the fury fun” would have been like such fun or so of the battle” / “the storm’s fury.” full of fun or so enjoyable. A tabloid headline screamed, “FURY Fun is properly a noun, usually mean- OVER CLAIM IKE KILLED 1M GER- ing enjoyment or merriment, or a source MAN POWs.” The article did not bear of it. “We had fun.” / “This game is out the headline. A book about Eisen- fun.” (As a noun, it is modiﬁed only by hower was not met with “fury” (as The an adjective—e.g., “great fun” or “some Satanic Verses was, for instance). How- fun”—not by an adverb. In a sentence ever, on the basis of the article, the book such as “It seems so enjoyable” or “so could be said to have created a mild funny,” so is an adverb, modifying a furor. predicate adjective.) Furor can range in intensity from Fun is partially accepted as an adjec- harmless to violent. It can be a fad, a tive before the noun (attributive adjec- public commotion or uproar, a state of tive). Informally people may speak of “a high excitement, a frenzy, or violent fun trip” or “a fun city.” In a superlative anger or fury. (Furore is a variation in misuse, a departing talk show host said, the sense of a fad. It is mainly British, an “It was probably the funnest two years I import from Italy.) ever spent.” Both words have the same Latin root, furere, to rage. FUND. In the sense of money avail- Furious (adjective) and furiously (ad- able for use, funds is a plural noun. A verb) can mean full of or with fury, im- company reported to stockholders: plying violence; or it can mean ﬁerce(ly)
144 further Fused participle. See Gerund, 4. or vehement(ly) without the implication of violence. FUSION and FISSION. See NU- FURTHER. See FARTHER and CLEAR. FURTHER. Future tense. See Tense, 1 and 4. FURY. See FUROR and FURY.
G GAL. See GUY. The word gambling has had disrep- utable associations; gaming, like games, GAMBIT. A chess maneuver in which sounds clean and recreational. General a player sacriﬁces a pawn or piece to try dictionaries consider them synonyms. to gain an advantage is a gambit. Usu- GAMUT. See GANTLET and GAUNT- ally it occurs at the beginning of a game and involves a pawn. Gambit or open- LET, 2. ing gambit may be used ﬁguratively, GANTLET and GAUNTLET. 1. outside of chess, to denote an early con- cession, as in diplomacy or business ne- The difference. 2. GAMUT. 3. More gotiation. meanings. Looser uses of that noun in place of opening move, opening remark, maneu- ver, move, strategy, have become wide- 1. The difference spread, dulling the word. Magazines Confusion between these two words have described a remark to initiate a is rampant. The main use of either is in a conversation as a “conversational gam- common expression. The historian bit” and a move in Congress as a “leg- Francis Parkman wrote: islative gambit.” Those uses omit the main element of a gambit: the sacriﬁce. They descended the Mississippi, run- ning the gantlet between hostile GAMBLING and GAMING. To tribes. bet or risk money on the outcome of a contest or of a game of chance is gam- A radio newscaster said, referring to gun bling (noun). A euphemism for it is gam- battles between drug dealers: ing, used by those who advocate or play a role in legal gambling. Residents have to run a gauntlet just The word gambling was scarcely used to get to their front door. in an initiative measure to make it easy to put gambling devices and games of And this was in a news agency’s dis- chance on Indian reservations in Califor- patch: nia, but “gaming” appeared hundreds of times. The Nevada Gaming Control [Kenneth Starr] must run a daily gant- Board regulates gambling casinos in that let of reporters and cameras just to state. leave his driveway. gantlet and gauntlet 145
146 gas Is it “gantlet” or “gauntlet”? Ameri- GAUNT-let, and to use the former for can tradition leans toward the former. running and the latter for throwing The latter, a British import, has become down. All sources agree that only the more common in colloquial use. Both gauntlet is thrown down. are corruptions. Originally one ran the gantlope. 2. GAMUT A gantlope, from the Swedish gatlopp, Gamut (noun), which appears in the was used in a punishment of thieves and expression run the gamut, usually means then of soldiers. It consisted of two rows the complete range or extent of things; of men facing one another and holding for instance, “The chefs ran the gamut of such objects as sticks and knotted cords. ﬂavors.” The offender was stripped to the waist It is sometimes confused with the and forced to run the gantlope as the other g-words. This was from a news re- others struck him. port: “Prisoners were forced to run a It was not long before people began gamut.” Gantlet would be right, not confusing gantlope with a then familiar “gamut.” The host of a talk show said, word, gauntlet, a type of glove, of which “Once someone has served as president, gantlet was a variant. The ﬁrst quotation he has run the full gauntlet of accom- of gantlope in The Oxford English Dic- plishment.” Gamut, not “gauntlet.” tionary is from 1646; ﬁfteen years later “A complete gamut of colors,” a dic- “run the gantlet” appears; afterward we tionary’s example, unnecessarily modi- see both gauntlets and gantlets as well as ﬁes gamut. A gamut is complete. gantlopes. Gamut (from gamma and ut, me- The phrase was used almost from the dieval musical notes) denoted the musi- start in both a literal and a ﬁgurative cal scale in medieval times. It has since sense. Today it is nearly always used ﬁg- been applied to the whole series of rec- uratively, meaning to suffer attacks, par- ognized musical notes or, sometimes, to ticularly from two sides; to risk perils; or just the major scale. even to endure any series of troubles. Literally “run the gauntlet” is like 3. More meanings saying “run the old glove.” A gauntlet Gantlet is also a railroad term. It is a was an armored glove of medieval times. section where two tracks overlap, en- A man who cast his gauntlet to the abling a train from either line to pass in a ground was issuing a challenge to ﬁght. narrow place. If another picked it up, he was accepting Gauntlet for glove is not wholly obso- the challenge. The custom gave rise to lete. Certain types of work and dress the expressions throw down the gauntlet gloves and glovelike athletic devices are and take up the gauntlet, meaning to is- known as gauntlets. sue or accept a challenge. GAS. 1. Confusion. 2. Deﬁnitions. To run the gantlet is favored by four works on English usage and the manuals of the Associated Press and The New 1. Confusion York Times. It was the preferred term in An automobile company was selling a American dictionaries through 1960. low-pollution van, “powered by natural Later dictionaries have offered both gas instead of gas,” a news agency re- spellings for each sense. The books have ported. never agreed on pronunciation. The sug- On its face, the quoted phrase seems gestion here is to pronounce the words to part with logic. Natural gas is a gas. as they are spelled, GANT-let and No doubt the writer meant gasoline, for
gay 147 which “gas” is a common, colloquial hearted, merry, or mirthful. Chaucer, for American term. Displayed in serious instance, wrote that a pilgrim “iolif writing, it does not fare well. When it is [jolly] was and gay.” It can also mean being contrasted with the real gas, “gas” bright or showy. Tennyson: “when all is is particularly ill-chosen. It can perplex gay with lamps.” Probably of Teutonic those who are unaccustomed to informal origin, the word came to Middle English Americanisms and do not recognize it as from the French gai. the British petrol. The use of gay in the above senses A newspaper article used the phrase dates back at least to 1310, antedating “gas tax” eleven times (counting the Chaucer, The Oxford English Dictio- headline), never once spelling out the nary indicates. Records of its occasional topic: the federal gasoline tax. euphemistic use to mean a man “of loose Even Americans are not always sure and immoral life” begin in 1637; a what is meant by, say, “I smell gas.” woman, 1825. Its use as a euphemism for the adjective homosexual did not be- 2. Deﬁnitions come popular until close to 1970, al- Gas is a substance that is neither solid though rare uses dating from the 1880s nor liquid and is characterized by very are documented. low density and readiness to expand and Used in the sense of homosexual, the ﬁll its container. The Flemish chemist J. adjective gay used to be considered slang B. van Helmont (1577–1644), who dis- but now is accepted as standard by all covered carbon dioxide and distin- dictionaries. Gay as a noun, meaning a guished gases from liquids and solids, homosexual person, has been so ac- coined the word, basing it on the Greek cepted by American dictionaries but is khaos, chaos. considered slang by the Oxford. In colloquial use, gas means gasoline; in slang use, empty or boastful talk. 2. The Press Gasoline is a ﬂammable, liquid mix- The publicly sold style manual of The ture of hydrocarbons, obtained in the New York Times disapproves of gay for distillation of petroleum and used as a homosexual, although in 1987 the staff fuel in internal-combustion engines. was told that the adjective was accept- Natural gas is a mixture of gaseous able. (Gay could describe both sexes, but hydrocarbons, mainly methane, found in lesbian was preferred in speciﬁc refer- the earth in oil deposits and used as a ences to women.) However: fuel. Petrol, the British term for gasoline, is The noun will continue to be homo- pronounced PET-trull. sexual(s). Thus we’ll write gay author, but not “a gay”; gay men (or homo- GAUNTLET. See GANTLET and sexuals) but NOT “gays.” GAUNTLET. The distinction made grammatical sense. GAVE and GIVEN. See Tense, 5A. If someone can be “a gay,” can someone else not be “a sad” or “a tall”? GAY. 1. History. 2. The press. 3. Two Most of the press had been quicker to meanings. adopt gay in the sexual sense, particu- larly in headlines, where news essences 1. History must be squeezed into small spaces. Be- Gay is an adjective that, for seven cen- ing able to replace a ten-letter word with turies, has primarily meant joyful, light- a three-letter word pleases a typical edi-
148 gendarme tor. So to see a headline in 1990 in a San come to ogle the gay domes of St. Francisco newspaper saying “Homosex- Basil’s Cathedral. ual rights law challenged” was surpris- ing, particularly when the text of the See also HOMOPHOBIA. article said: GENDARME. Americans who use Federal courts have found that gays the word gendarme think it is French for are not protected against bias by the policeman. They are partly right, as right U.S. Constitution. Gov. Deukmejian as a European would be in using “con- vetoed a bill in 1984 to give gays stable” or “sheriff” for an American po- equal rights under state law. [A mis- liceman. placed prepositional phrase produces A movie guide book describes the plot “bias by the U.S. Constitution.” See of the 1963 ﬁlm Irma la Douce: “A gen- Modiﬁers, 3.] darme pulls a one-man raid on a back street Parisian joint and falls in love with The same paper ran the headline “A one of the hookers he arrests.” The lead- GAY BASHER ASKS: WHY?” Was he a ing actress recalled in a TV documen- basher who was gay? No, but that sense tary: “I played a prostitute and Jack results from the adjectival use of a noun played a young gendarme who tried to adopted from an adjective. rescue me from the street.” Homosexuals themselves have em- Jack (Lemmon) did not play a “gen- braced gay, as adjective and noun, al- darme.” One French-English dictionary though many originally resisted it. Some deﬁnes gendarme as a policeman “in of them annually celebrate “Gay Pride countryside and small towns.” Another Day.” No one has explained why a eu- deﬁnes it as a “member of the state po- phemism is needed for that which one lice force,” approximately equal to a takes pride in. “police constable.” It is possible to speak of a Parisian po- 3. Two meanings liceman without dragging in “gen- Harper Dictionary (1985) reported darme.” that only 36 percent of a usage panel of GENDER and SEX. Gender is a 166 members accepted the modern sense of gay. Some expressed anger. Isaac Asi- term of grammar. It is the classiﬁcation mov: “This use of ‘gay’ has killed a won- of certain words as masculine, feminine, derful word. . . .” Erich Segal: “It robs or neuter. In English those words are our language of a lovely adjective. . . .” nouns and pronouns, the great majority While gay in the traditional sense, that of them neuter, like table, song, it, its. of merry or bright, can at times be mis- Among masculine words are man, boy, understood—“It was a gay party” per- he, his. Among feminine words: woman, mits two interpretations—reports of its girl, she, her. demise have been exaggerated. Anyone In English, gender for the most part is who wants to use the word in that way natural. That is, most words of mascu- has a perfect right to do so but should line or feminine gender represent sexual, see that the context makes the meaning or at least human, qualities. But the clear. It was clear in a 1990 article in the word gender is not synonymous with The New York Times: sex. In various languages it often has nothing to do with sex—or with any- But today the only people walking thing else. in Red Square were tourists who had In the Romance languages, grammar
gerund 149 arbitrarily decrees nouns to be masculine coitus or any sexual activity has become or feminine, regardless of any sexual more common. For instance, the mes- qualities. Thus, in Spanish el día, the sage that “We had sexual intercourse” is day, is masculine, while la noche, the more likely to take the form of the “slept night, is feminine. In French la plume, together” euphemism or “We had sex.” the pen, is feminine, while le crayon, the Strictly speaking, all of us have sex all pencil, is masculine. the time. It is either male or female. Even in English, the feminine pro- Genitive (possessive). See Double nouns she and her are often applied to such neuter things as ships and coun- possessive; Gerund, 4; Possessive prob- tries. His in a phrase like to each his lems; Pronouns, 1, 2, 9, 10A; Punctua- own, while masculine in gender, is used tion, 1. in a neuter sense. Germanisms. See Adjectives and ad- In recent decades an increasingly pop- ular use of gender has been as a eu- verbs, 2; Backward writing, 3; Inﬁnitive, phemism for sex, meaning the 4; Joining of words; ONGOING; OUT- classiﬁcation of human beings and ani- PUT; PLAY DOWN and “DOWN- mals as male or female. It is not obvious PLAY”; UPCOMING. why sex, in such an innocent sense, Gerund. 1. Deﬁnition. 2. Errors of needs a euphemism. Thus, a magazine chart lists library omission. 3. Gerund or inﬁnitive? 4. Pos- visits by demographic categories, includ- sessive with gerund. ing “AGE . . . INCOME . . . EDUCA- TION” and “GENDER.” On another 1. Deﬁnition page, an essayist criticizes “double stan- When the -ing form of a verb is used dards that have the effect of . . . pitting as a noun, it is called a gerund. race against race, gender against gen- It serves every function of a noun. It der.” Sex, rather than “gender,” would may be a subject (“Laughing makes me be quite ﬁtting in both instances and in happy”), a direct object of a verb (“Jane the newspaper sentences below. loves kissing”), the object of a preposi- tion (“By oversleeping, John missed the Prosecutors and defense lawyers plane”), or a subjective complement may not bar a potential juror from (“His goal was ﬁnding the missing serving in a criminal trial solely be- link”). cause of the person’s gender. . . . Many -ing words are not gerunds. “Reinforcements are coming.” / “The [Under a proposed bill] a man could senator delivered a stinging rebuke.” / sue a woman for a violent attack, ar- “Laughing hysterically, he could barely guing it was based on his gender. resume the broadcast.” In those exam- ples coming, stinging, or laughing is a Not even an editor’s normal penchant present participle. It is a verb form that for short words in headlines overcomes expresses present action (in relation to the squeamishness toward sex. The ﬁrst the tense of the ﬁnite verb) and can serve news story was headed “Potential Jurors as an adjective. Can’t Be Barred Because of Gender, Do not confuse a gerund with a pre- Court Rules.” sent participle. It appears that an editor While gender has increasingly did so in program notes for a recording: usurped the role of sex in genteel use, the A music critic “reproached Beethoven casual use of sex as a noun denoting for the absence of a great vocal fugue
150 gerund considered traditional in every musical, teers.” The result is hardly what the setting of a religious drama. . . .” A writer intended. comma does not belong in musical set- ting but ﬁts this sentence, in which set- Grateful thanks to the three Muske- ting does act as a present participle: “He teers who carried Mrs. Pride home af- strode inside, setting the statuette on the ter breaking her leg on Wednesday. ﬂoor.” (A comma should follow “fugue.” See Punctuation, 3C.) The magazine commented, “Least they could do.” 2. Errors of omission See also Modiﬁers, 1. One who uses a gerund carelessly and fails to indicate the subject of an action 3. Gerund or inﬁnitive? can create a dangler. The result may be an awkwardly ungrammatical sentence A. Examples and worse: the gerund may link with a Some people who use our language wrong part of its sentence and produce lack a command of idiom. They do not an unintended meaning. always know whether a particular con- This sentence is typical: “The whales struction calls for an inﬁnitive, that is, can be protected only by being ever vigi- the basic form of a verb; or a gerund, lant.” It seems to be calling on the that is, the -ing form used as a noun. whales to take action. The trouble is that The resulting errors are excusable “being” is a dangling participle. Preced- when committed by foreigners who are ing it with our would make it a gerund unfamiliar with English. A Japanese- and indicate the intended meaning. owned jewelry store displayed a sign Although a similar grammatical error that said, “PLEASE GET AN AP- did not obscure the meaning of an edito- POINTMENT BEFORE GO IN.” rial, it is not what the newspaper tradi- When advised that the sign could stand tionally considers ﬁt to print: improvement, especially by inﬂection of the verb “GO,” the management re- placed it. The new sign said, “PLEASE It costs only $500 to provide an ex- MAKE AN APPOINTMENT BEFORE pectant mother with adequate prena- GOING THANK YOU.” tal care. Yet treating a low-weight Such errors are less tolerable when infant can cost $180,000 even before committed by an English-speaking per- leaving the hospital. son, particularly one whose regular job is to communicate information to the “Treating,” a gerund and the subject of public. An example is provided by a “can cost,” seems to take over—sense- news service: lessly—as the subject of “leaving” too because the writer failed to indicate any There were 299 rapes, assaults and other subject. “Leaving” is a dangling murders last year on campuses of the participle. To precede it with a pronoun, UC system, which devotes a fraction “its leaving,” thereby making it a of its $6 billion yearly budget to pro- gerund, would be a correction; it leaves tect students. [See FRACTION.] would be better still. The ﬁnal example in this section, The verb devote does not go with an in- quoted by Punch of England, originates ﬁnitive, such as “protect.” Protecting in a column of personal items. Gram- would be right. The two made-up exam- matically the only subject is the “Muske- ples below will help to explain.
gerund 151 • “The university devotes most of its Noun followed by gerund budget to salaries, buildings, and (laughing, winning, etc.) protecting students.” That is, it enthusiasm for, fear of, appropriates funds for certain habit of, hope of, idea of, purposes; each purpose is a noun indulgence in, insistence on, (“salaries, buildings”) or a gerund love for, possibility of, (“protecting students”). Here to resistance to introduces the ultimate recipients of Noun followed by inﬁnitive the action. (to sing, to build, etc.) • “The university’s police try to ability to, determination to, protect students.” The verb try, duty to, effort to, failure to, unlike devote, can go with an hesitation to, inclination to, inﬁnitive: the police try to do obligation to, opportunity to, something (“protect students”). This tendency to time to indicates the inﬁnitive. Verb followed by gerund Erroneous analogies may account for boast of, commit (someone or some misuses. A book says “the something) to, despair of, decision . . . contributed notably to re- dream of, keep (someone or dress the constitutional balance. . . .” something) from, look forward The unidiomatic “contributed . . . to to, object to, prevent redress” parallels served to redress, (someone or something) from, which would be correct. “Contributed” prohibit (someone) from, can stand if the inﬁnitive is changed to succeed in the gerund: “contributed . . . to redress- Verb followed by inﬁnitive ing. . . .” Here the to does not indicate an agree to, dare to, encourage inﬁnitive; rather it points to that which (someone) to, forbid (someone) beneﬁted from the action. to, force (someone) to, hope There is no general rule, except that a to, neglect to, permit writer or speaker needs to be secure in (someone or something) to, his knowledge of any verb’s properties persuade (someone) to, pledge before using the verb. In case of doubt, a to, prepare to, presume to, dictionary that offers examples of the refuse to, try to, want to verb’s use may help. See also Inﬁnitive, 2; POSSIBLE (etc.), Adjective followed by gerund 2; TO, 2. capable of, grateful for, hopeful of, wary of, B. Lists thankful for, tired of, It would be impractical to try to list worthy of all the many other words that could pose similar problems of idiom. Here are Adjective followed by inﬁnitive sixty such words: nouns, verbs, and ad- adequate to, competent to, jectives. Each is followed by the preposi- eager to, glad to, inclined tion that usually goes with it, and each is to, likely to, pleased to, categorized according to part of speech ready to and whether a gerund or inﬁnitive can Some words may go with either follow idiomatically. (Other forms that gerund or inﬁnitive, depending on con- may follow instead are not listed.)
152 gerund text. Examples are the nouns chance (of . . . A search and rescue situa- or to) and intention (of or to), verbs fail tion . . . could end up in me [my] being (at or to) and think (of or to), and adjec- charged half a million pounds. tives sorry (about or to) and sure (of or to). He blamed Democrats last year for Susan Smith [Smith’s] drowning her 4. Possessive with gerund two young children in South Car- Just as nearly every noun may be pos- olina. sessed (“He took his suitcase” / “They pledged their love”), so may a gerund: This [Chinese protest to a U.S. visit by “She was shocked at his winning the Taiwan’s leader] is despite Mr Lee money.” His modiﬁes the gerund win- [Lee’s] indicating he would not be ning. It would not be strictly correct to travelling abroad for some time to say “. . . at him winning the money.” come. Not “him” but his winning shocked her. See sharks without it [its] costing an A similar example: “Children’s drink- arm and a leg. ing vexes the councilman.” Note the apostrophe-s. Children’s modiﬁes the Sometimes the possessive form does gerund drinking. “Children drinking not work. We look at three examples vexes . . .” is wrong, the grammarian H. that are technically ﬂawed according to W. Fowler would say: What would be the principles stated above. (Each fused the subject of the sentence, “Children”? participle is emphasized:) But vexes is singular. Making it “vex” would be of no help. The children do not A. “He wouldn’t hear of that being pos- trouble the councilman; only their drink- sible . . .” (Dickens). You would not ing does. Could the subject be “drink- say “that’s being possible.” The sen- ing”? That would leave “Children” tence is best let alone. hanging there without any grammatical B. “I hate the thought of any son of mine purpose. marrying badly” (Hardy). You would Omitting the possessive produces a not say “son’s” or “mine’s.” Besides, form that Fowler condemned for as a colloquial sentence, in a novel, it “rapidly corrupting English style”: a is tolerable. fused participle, “a compound notion” C. “This state’s metropolis undergoing resulting from the fusion of a noun or a chaos is an unhappy sight.” If said pronoun in the objective case and a par- aloud, “metropolis’s” would sound ticiple. He did not invent the concept of like a plural. Anyway, how desirable possessive with gerund, which went are a double possessive and all those back several centuries, but did introduce esses? The sentence needs rewriting. the name for the questionable form (with his brother in The King’s English, In two instances, Fowler’s own cure 1906) and publicize it (in his famous seems worse than the disease: He would Dictionary of Modern English Usage, “deny the possibility of anything’s hap- 1926). pening” and would not mind “many’s The four examples below come from having to go into lodgings.” a book of true adventure, an editorial, Writers on grammar have generally an article from a Hong Kong newspaper, accepted a possessive pronoun with a and an ad for an aquarium respectively. gerund (my being charged) or a proper Corrections are inserted in brackets. noun with a gerund (Lee’s indicating) in
gone and went 153 GIRL. See GUY. a simple sentence. But they have found numerous exceptions, particularly in complicated sentences. Some grammari- GIVE AWAY and GIVEAWAY. A ans (not quoted here) have justiﬁed the printed election poster attacked a local fused participle as a valid alternative in ballot proposition as “The $100 Mil- any sentence. lion-a-Year Give Away!” From a techni- Not even Sir Ernest Gowers, the sym- cal standpoint, it was in error. For one pathetic reviser of Fowler’s dictionary, thing, “Give” and “Away” should have could accept the pure precept. He agreed been united. that “upon your giving” was undoubt- Give away, in two words, is a verb edly more idiomatic than “upon you giv- phrase meaning (1) to present (some- ing.” But he found that a more thing) as a gift; (2) to disclose (informa- complicated sentence could make a pos- tion): “Don’t give away our secret”; or sessive impossible, for example: “We (3) to ceremonially transfer a bride from have to account for the collision of two her family to her husband: “Mr. Green great ﬂeets . . . ending in the total de- gave his daughter away.” struction of one of them.” He would Uniting the words yields the informal waive the possessive also when it was noun giveaway, which means (1) some- possible but “ungainly.” (“Anything’s thing given away or the act of giving happening”?) away: “Vote against the giveaway”; or In literature, the grammarian George (2) that which discloses: “His ﬁnger- O. Curme found, the possessive has been prints were a giveaway.” A giveaway (1) most common when the gerund’s show is a quiz program, usually on tele- subject is a pronoun; (2) rendered useless vision, in which prizes are given away. by modifying phrases or clauses (“Have As an alternative, give and away may be you heard of Smith, who used to be hyphenated: give-away. pitcher, being injured?”); and (3) The poster also needed to follow avoided for an emphatic subject (“She “$100” with a hyphen (-) to connect it was proud of him doing it”) or contrast- to “Million-a-Year.” ing subjects (“We seem to think nothing (The ballot proposition, to eliminate of a boy smoking but resent a girl smok- public voting on rule changes for city ing”). employees, lost by three to one despite The ﬁnal example is drawn from a rel- its opponents’ mistakes in English.) atively recent book about words. Ironi- cally, the author is praising Fowler, who GIVEN and GAVE. See Tense, 5A. railed against just such usage: GLANCE and GLIMPSE. See Con- fusing pairs. Too often a name is legendary without many people knowing about the person. GO. See COME and GO; GONE and WENT. Fowler would have insisted on people’s. GOING ON. See ONGOING. You may decide for yourself whether it would be an improvement. (See also GONE and WENT. “The drug ac- LEGEND, LEGENDARY.) tivity has went down in this area dra- GHOULISH. See FESTOON, FES- matically.” A police ofﬁcial in an Illinois town said that on nationwide television. TOONED.
154 good and well “. . . Has gone” would have been cor- In the sense of health, “I feel good” is rect. quite informal; “she’s not good” is di- “The child had opened the car door, alectal. One is well or feels well. climbed in, and went to sleep,” a news- A baseball umpire said, in an inter- caster said on nationwide radio. “. . . view on a radio sports program, “We And gone” would have been correct. cover the games pretty good.” Change Has, have, or had does not mix with “good” to well. Here it means properly “went.” Went is the past tense of the or skillfully. (In this context cover is verb go. The past participle of go is gone. modiﬁed by well. This time well is used Therefore a correction of the ﬁrst exam- as an adverb. Cover is a transitive verb. ple is either “The drug activity went “Good,” not being an adverb, cannot down . . .” (in the past tense) or “The modify a verb. Usually good is an adjec- drug activity has gone down . . .” (in the tive, which modiﬁes a noun: good boy; present perfect tense). the food is good.) In the second example, deleting “had” Interviewed on a television “maga- would permit “went to sleep.” Keeping zine,” a designer of military aircraft said “had” requires “gone to sleep.” Some- about one of his planes, “It worked one seemed to have forgotten that “had” as good or better than we expected.” applied to three participles: “opened A partial correction: “It worked as . . . climbed . . . and gone.” well. . . .” (Well, an adverb, modiﬁes See also COME and GO; Tense, 1, 5. worked, an intransitive verb.) A further correction: “as well as or better than we GOOD and WELL. A Polish leader expected” or “as well as we expected or was toasting the American president in better.” See AS, 3. Warsaw. A metropolitan newspaper in An essayist on that program said later, the United States quoted him, in part, referring to a supposed winner of two this way: monetary prizes, “Mary’s doing pretty good.” She is doing well (adverb), not What is more, we were able to meet in “good.” If she were performing charita- a friendly atmosphere. And I believe ble deeds, one could say “She is doing we have felt well together. good.” (Good would be used as a noun. There would be no place for “pretty.”) The defect can easily be forgiven if the Still later, a reporter on the same pro- Pole was speaking in English. It is more gram correctly used both words in the serious if he was speaking in Polish and same sentence: “Before he did well [be- this was an English translation. came successful], he did good [per- A correction: “we have felt good to- formed altruistic acts].” gether,” that is, happy, content, or opti- GO OFF and GO ON. Occasionally mistic. In the context of feeling, well usually pertains only to health. On rare the phrase go off is ambiguous. It can occasions it pertains to touch or the abil- mean the same as go on—even though ity to feel things. off and on are opposites, as anyone who “I feel well” means I suffer no sign of has ﬂipped an electric switch knows. illness. (Feel is not modiﬁed by well. Feel Go off can have these contradictory acts there as an intransitive verb, also as meanings: (1) to take place (“The show a linking verb: It links the subject, I, to went off as planned”) and (2) to discon- the verb’s complement, the adjective tinue or go away (“The show went off well. Or, in the sentence “We felt good,” the air”). it links we to the adjective good. See The execution of a prisoner was hours FEEL.) away when the news came that the
great 155 Supreme Court had agreed to review his write, grafﬁto and grafﬁti come to us case. A television newscaster announced, from Italian. They used to have archeo- “Prison ofﬁcials are proceeding as logical and, later, political connotations. though the execution will go off.” Now the words, more commonly graf- Did he mean “as though the execu- ﬁti, popularly connote the defacing of tion will go on” (or “take place”) or “as structures and vehicles by callow van- though the execution is off” (or “will dals. not take place)? Probably he meant the GRAZE. A restaurant reviewer tells former, although the “prison ofﬁcials” did not explain what good a Supreme readers: “Graze on skewers of grilled Court review would do if the prisoner food—the list spans 27—in this noisy yet were dead. convivial yakitori bar.” By the way, the newscaster said that Animals such as cows and horses the Supreme Court had issued a “writ of graze. To graze (verb, intransitive) is to certiori.” He left out a syllable. It is cer- feed on growing grasses and similar tiorari (sir-she-a-RARE-ee), an order plants. The verb came from the Old En- from a higher court to a lower, request- glish grasian, from graes, meaning grass. ing the records of a case for review. Sometimes graze is humorously ap- plied to the eating of raw, leafy vegeta- GRAFFITI and GRAFFITO. Graf- bles. Applying it to the eating of ﬁti is a plural word. It denotes crude in- barbecued meat, however, is far-fetched. scriptions, drawings, or scrawlings, Farmers and ranchers use graze (verb, often on walls, meant to be seen by the transitive) in a variety of ways: to feed public. One such marking is a grafﬁto. on (a type of herbage or the herbage of a The two quotations are from a news particular pasture), to put (animals) out agency’s dispatch and an editorial re- to feed, to tend (feeding animals), and so spectively: on. Graze (verb, transitive and intransi- Stylized grafﬁti was even scrawled on tive) means also to scrape, rub, or touch a sign—the “z” on the Hollywood lightly in passing. “The bullet grazed his Freezway ice cream parlor—for a hint skin”). The way bees or butterﬂies skim of hometown believability. along the grass of a ﬁeld could conceiv- ably have suggested this sense. The city of Dublin is discussing a GREAT. This adjective, of Old En- ﬁve-day grafﬁti-removal program on the theory that the longer grafﬁti re- glish lineage, primarily expresses magni- mains, the more publicity it gives the tude: being large in size, area, amount, gang that did it. number, importance, or other attributes. The Great Lakes and the Great Plains Both sample sentences are ungrammati- are aptly named. cal in their mixing of plural and singular. That traditional sense of great can The ﬁrst sentence refers to only one conﬂict with a newer, informal sense. marking, so change “Stylized grafﬁti Talking about cars, a syndicated radio was” to “A stylized grafﬁto was.” If host asked, “Why are prices so there had been two or more markings, great?”—leading some of his audience to grafﬁti were would be correct. A correc- assume that prices were high. His own tion of the second sentence is “The answer was that foreign competition had longer grafﬁti remain, the more publicity caused prices to be low. They were they give the gangs that make them.” “great”—that is, very good—for the Originating in the Greek graphein, to consumer.
156 grievous, grievously GRIEVOUS, GRIEVOUSLY. A the lead sentence of a news story, quoted mistake that some speakers make in here: uttering grievous and grievously is in- serting an extra syllable. The words A family member was being held are pronounced GREE-vuss(-lee), not Friday for suspicion of murder in the “GREE-vee-uss(-lee).” Sometimes they wake of a grisly stabbing that left four are misspelled “grievious(ly),” with an other family members dead. . . . extra “i.” A newscaster on a radio network said What fatal stabbing is not “grisly”? a bill to ban certain abortions made an exception “to save the life of the mother 2. GRIZZLED and to prevent grievious harm to her.” Writing in a magazine about the frus- He got grievous wrong. trations of his job, a news reporter com- A congressman said on television, plained that he had become “a cynic” concerning the issuance of rubber checks and “a curmudgeon.” One paragraph by colleagues, “There are some people said: here who may have been grieviously wounded.” Grievously. Another sign I’m become more Grievous (adjective) means (1) serious grizzled, I suppose, is I used to call my or grave; or (2) causing or expressing wife excitedly to tell her I’m on a grief. It has two syllables, not three. breaking story. Now I call and say, Grievously (adverb) means (1) seri- “Damn it, I can’t get away.” ously or gravely; or (2) in a way that causes or expresses grief. It has three syl- If he thought that grizzled meant any- lables, not four. thing like cynical or ill-tempered, he was mistaken. Grizzled (adjective) means GRISLY, GRIZZLY, and GRIZ- gray or streaked with gray, or gray- ZLED. 1. GRISLY and GRIZZLY. 2. headed. A picture of the reporter showed GRIZZLED. a rather young man with an abundance of dark hair. (The sentence is otherwise 1. GRISLY and GRIZZLY defective. “Another sign . . . is” heralds a While pronounced the same (GRIZ- noun or nounal phrase, such as “my re- lee), these two adjectives have different action to a breaking story.” Instead, we meanings and histories. A newspaper ad get the clause “I used to call my wife ex- mixed the words up. Warning against citedly. . . .”) selling a house without an agent, it said, Grizzled is related to the verb grizzle, “The stories are grizzly.” A frightening meaning (transitive) to make gray or (in- story is grisly. (It could possibly be a transitive) to become gray. In British En- “grizzly” story if it dealt with bears.) glish, grizzle can mean to worry or fret. Grisly (from the Old English grislic, GROUP OF. See Collective nouns. terrifying) means gruesome, horrifying, or terrifying. GROW. The farmers grow artichokes. Grizzly (from the Old French gris, gray) means gray or grayish. The grizzly Hilda grows kumquats. Wilbur grew a bear was named for its grayish coloring, beard. As a transitive verb, grow means not for its fearfulness. cultivate or raise (a plant or crop) or The misspelling or misuse of grisly cause (something natural) to arise. Its may be less frequent than its unnecessary object should not be an artiﬁcial object use. Technically it was not used wrong in or abstraction.
guilt and innocence 157 Although ﬁguratively a house, a town, ers to “Join Judge Wapner in his struggle a business, or an economy can itself to separate the guilty from the inno- grow (intransitive verb), that is, become cent.” The program being promoted was larger, people do not “grow” it. “The People’s Court,” an unofﬁcial imi- The promise by a gubernatorial candi- tation of a small claims court and strictly date “to try and grow this economy”— civil. A small claims judge does not “sep- instead of broaden, expand, or arate the guilty from the innocent” but strengthen it—was an anomaly. So was settles disputes about modest amounts the headline “Netanyahu promises to of money and property. grow West Bank settlements.” A better A network newscaster announced: “A verb was in the story, which said he jury has found Carroll O’Connor not would build there. Other usable verbs: guilty of slander. . . .” He was not re- enlarge, expand. sponsible for it. The trial was civil. Ver- A ﬁnancial company boasts of “help- dicts of “guilty” and “not guilty” were ing to grow the future of America.” Per- not options. haps people could brighten or insure or secure its future, but the future does not 2. Guilty vs. not guilty “grow.” Under the American system of justice, nobody needs to prove himself innocent. Guilt and innocence. 1. Civil vs. Unless convicted, a person accused of a criminal. 2. Guilty vs. not guilty. 3. In- crime is presumed to be innocent. The nocence presumed. 4. Pleas and charges. prosecution has the burden of proving 5. Some words to watch. him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If he is not found guilty, the verdict must 1. Civil vs. criminal be not guilty. The latter is no synonym The difference between civil and crim- for “innocent” but means that the prose- inal cases escapes some people who are cution has failed to prove the defendant supposed to inform others about such guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. There matters. is no other verdict. President Clinton showed misunder- Prop. 51, the only initiative on the standing of that legal principle when he ballot, would change court rulings said, “Some of these [aliens] are found that now require someone who is par- guilty and some innocent of the crimes tially responsible for an accident to with which they are charged.” He may pay all the victim’s damages if the have got the idea from news items like other guilty parties have no money. the following. That statement confuses civil and crimi- nal law. The proposition (on the Califor- In an ironic turn of court proce- nia ballot) that the news story cites deals dure, a young man pleaded guilty wholly with civil actions. Nobody is Tuesday to a drug-trafﬁcking charge found “guilty” in civil trials, which in the same courtroom where jurors in mainly settle lawsuits in private disputes. 1988 found him innocent of murder- Guilt is a concept in criminal prosecu- ing his mother. tions, which are meant to enforce public laws by bringing their violators to jus- Three former candidates for Sweetwa- tice. The newspaper writer properly used ter County public ofﬁces were found responsible but quickly traded it for an guilty and one was found innocent of incorrect adjective. failing to ﬁle campaign ﬁnancial re- An announcer invited television view- ports in time.
158 guilt and innocence Members of the jury had said they 3. Innocence presumed found the former automaker innocent The presumption of innocence is a because they felt government agents principle that some journalists have yet had lured him into illegal activity. to learn. A criminal charge is far from a conviction. A suspicion is further re- moved yet. Nobody is found “innocent” in Ameri- can courts. Nor is there such a plea—ex- cept in the news media: In the last 18 months, serious damage has been done to national security by convicted or suspected spies in the Marine in Spying Case CIA, the NSA, the Navy’s antisubma- Enters Plea of Innocent rine warfare program and Navy com- munications and Middle East Suspect pleads innocent intelligence operations. in deadly shooting spree Lumping together as “spies” both those Every “innocent” should be not guilty. who have been convicted in court of spy- Now let us explain the reason for the ing and those who have merely been sus- distortion. pected of spying, the writers (the story A hoary newspaper superstition has it has two by-lines) in effect ﬁnd them all that if anyone ever is reported to be “not guilty and declare that all have done “se- guilty,” terrible things will happen: rious damage . . . to national security.” Maybe the “not” will disappear or the t (Style fares no better than substance in “not” will change to a w, the person in that passage. The listed items are jum- on trial will sue, and the paper will go bled. There appear to be ﬁve, but it is out of business. hard to tell. Inadequate punctuation and The odds against such a procession of perhaps an unnecessary “and” befog the events must be huge. The news media series. See Series errors, 7.) should consider whether the perpetua- tion of that superstition is worth the dis- 4. Pleas and charges torted picture of our judicial system that Two additional points are illustrated it fosters. by each of these two samples (each the (As for the incident reported in the lead paragraph of a fourteen-paragraph ﬁrst sample: was it “an ironic turn of news story): court procedure” or “an ironic turn of events” or not very ironic at all? See IRONY, IRONIC, IRONICALLY.) A former soldier from Pearl was What is worse than using an imprecise sentenced to 30 years in prison Mon- term is changing the term in mid sen- day after pleading guilty to kidnap- tence. ping a Jackson teenager and shooting at a police ofﬁcer who tried to arrest him. B—— was found innocent of invol- untary manslaughter in the deaths of two other patients and not guilty of Michael D—— . . . pleaded guilty ﬁve counts of dereliction of duty. yesterday to having engaged in bogus stock transactions with a British bro- ker to evade Federal laws requiring Some readers may have wondered about brokers to maintain minimum the difference between being found “in- amounts of capital. nocent” and being found “not guilty.”
guy 159 First, one does not plead to a crime. One but who was being investigated in con- pleads to a charge of a crime or a count nection with a bombing in a park. The of an indictment. reporter said, “J—— continues to deny Second, in any criminal proceeding, his guilt.” It would have been far better someone is accused of violating the law. to say, “He denies any involvement” or Which law? Neither article tells us ex- “He says he had nothing to do with the actly. The ﬁrst alludes to two charges (in bombing” and to leave out the name as stating the penalty for “kidnapping” and long as the man was not charged with a “assault”). The second refers to “Federal crime. In the end, he was exonerated and laws” without specifying them. A sum- compensated by news companies for mary of the charge might be something slander and libel. like “violation of the Securities and Ex- The preposition for can appear preju- change Act by failing to maintain ade- dicial in a context like this: “Doaks was quate net capital and by falsifying arrested for robbing the First National records.” Bank on May 1.” The “for” juxtaposed Another news story says, “He has with “robbing” links him to the crime. been charged with setting a dynamite This is impartial: Doaks was arrested on bomb that caused extensive structural a charge of bank robbery. The police al- damage” to an abortion clinic (identiﬁed lege . . . (or an indictment alleges . . .). by name and address). That is typical; Some news media justiﬁably forbid any the story details what the arrested man is combination of for and a legal charge or supposed to have done but not what law complaint. he is charged with having broken. “Police said” and “police reported” A news service report tells about a po- are two of the most common phrases in lice chief who “was arrested for allegedly crime reporting. A multitude of misstate- taking cocaine from the police depart- ments have followed. Such attributions ment evidence room to support his 5- do not shield news media against claims year-old addiction.” The sixteenth and of defamation, particularly if no formal last paragraph says, “If convicted” the charges have been ﬁled. chief “could face more than 20 years in See also ACCUSED, ALLEGED, RE- prison.” If convicted of what crime? The PORTED, SUSPECTED; Pronouns, 5. report fails to say. A possible charge GUNNY SACK. See HINDI and might be “unlawful possession of co- caine,” but a reader must guess. HINDU. GUY. The colloquial word for a man 5. Some words to watch A possessive pronoun can be incrimi- came from Guy Fawkes, conspirator in nating, as in the sentence “Doaks has de- the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. To com- nied his guilt.” The pronoun “his” memorate its thwarting, the English es- juxtaposed with “guilt” seems to imply tablished the holiday Guy Fawkes Day that the man is guilty. (Of course, “her” and each November 5 would display and or “their” would have the same effect.) burn grotesque efﬁgies of him. People Conversely, “Doaks proclaims his inno- called them Guys. Guy became a noun cence” displays an apparent bias in his for an odd-looking or strangely dressed favor. An impartial version is Doaks has man, also a verb meaning to jeer at or denied the charge or Doaks insists that ridicule. In the United States it began to he is innocent. be used in the nineteenth century as a A network television reporter identi- slang synonym for chap, fellow, or man. ﬁed a man who had not been arrested For generations, popular speech dis-

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