Plain Words (29 page)

What is certain is that sometimes we feel one construction to be the more idiomatic, and sometimes the other, and, in particular, that proper names and personal pronouns seem to demand the gerund. Nobody would prefer ‘He coming (or Smith coming) surprised me' to ‘His coming (or Smith's coming) surprised me'. That is sure ground.

For the rest, it is always possible, and generally wise, to be on the safe side by turning the sentence round, and writing neither ‘the Bill getting, etc.' (which offends some purists) nor ‘the Bill's getting, etc.' (which sounds odd to some ears) but ‘everyone was surprised that the Bill got a second reading'.

(2) Subjunctive

The subjunctive is the mood of imagination or command. Apart from the verb
to be
, it has no form separate from the indicative, except in the third person singular of the present tense, where the subjunctive form is the same as the indicative plural (
he have
, not
he has
;
she go
, not
she goes
). Generally therefore, in sentences in which the subjunctive might be fitting, neither the writer nor the reader need know or care whether the subjunctive is being used or not.

But the verb
to be
spoils this simple picture. The whole of the present tense is different, for the subjunctive mood is
be
throughout—
I be
,
he be
,
we be
,
you be
and
they be
. The singular (but not the plural) of the past tense is also different—
I were
and
he were
instead of
I was
and
he was
. In the subjunctive mood what looks like the past tense does not denote pastness, it denotes a greater call on the imagination. Thus:

‘If she is here' implies that it is as likely as not that she is.

‘If she be here' is an archaic way of saying ‘if she is here'.

‘If she were here' implies that she is not.

The only remaining regular uses of the subjunctive are:

(
a
) In certain stock phrases:
be it so
,
God bless you
,
come what may
,
if need be
and others.

(
b
) In legal or formal language: the subjunctive is often used in a phrase such as ‘I move that so-and-so be appointed secretary'. In America this usage is not confined to formal language, but is usual in such sentences as ‘I ask that he be sent for', ‘It is important that she be there', and even in the negative form, ‘He insisted that the statement not be placed on record', in which the custom in this country has been to insert a
should
(‘It is important that she should be there'). With our present propensity to imitate American ways, we may follow suit, as here: ‘There have been many suggestions … that the river be made the basis of a large-scale irrigation scheme' (
The Times
).

(
c
) In conditional sentences where the hypothesis is not a fact:

Were this true, it would be a serious matter.

If he were here, I would tell him what I think of him.

(
d
) With
as if
and
as though
, if the hypothesis is not accepted as true, thus:

He spoke of his proposal as if it were a complete solution of the difficulty.

Other correct uses of the subjunctive may be found in contemporary writings, but it is probably true of all of them that the indicative would have been equally correct, and certainly true of many of them that the subjunctive has a formal, even pedantic, air.

Note
. Gowers supplied an example of a subjunctive that he thought sounded particularly archaic, a stock phrase he associated with ‘academic front doors' : ‘Please do not ring unless an answer be required'. (The pretension of this formula had already been
comprehensively squashed by John Gray, a friend of Oscar Wilde, who in 1926 capped it in verse with ‘—protects the villa uninspired, desirable and undesired'.) Yet Gowers's bald conclusion, ‘the subjunctive is dying', was quite wrong. The English have not lost (what he also noted) their propensity to imitate American ways, and the subjunctive, far from being dead, or even idling largely out of view, is now here, there and everywhere. Recent copies of
The Times
contain numerous examples: ‘the independent adjudication panel did not follow the GMC's own recommendation that he be struck off'; ‘it is essential that you be able to support your claims about matters of fact'; ‘The commission is proposing that they be forced to ring-fence their retail arms from their other operations', etc. ~

(3) Misuse of the passive

Grammarians condemn such constructions as the following, which indeed condemn themselves by their contorted ugliness:

The report that is proposed to be made.

Several amendments were endeavoured to be inserted.

A question was threatened to be put on the paper.

A sensational atmosphere is attempted to be created.

Anyone who has written a sentence like this should recast it, e.g. ‘the proposed report', ‘attempts were made to insert several amendments', ‘a threat was made to put a question on the paper', ‘an attempt is being made to create a sensational atmosphere'.

Hope
should not be used in the passive except in the impersonal phrase
it is hoped
. We may correctly say ‘It is hoped that payment will be made next week', or ‘payment is expected to be made next week', but not ‘payment is hoped to be made next week'. The phrasal verb
hope for
, being transitive, can of course be used in the passive.

(4) Omission of verb

Where a verb is used with more than one auxiliary (e.g. ‘he must and shall go') make sure that the main verb is repeated unless, as in this example, its form is the same. It is easy to slip into a sentence such as this:

The steps which those responsible can and are at present taking to remedy this state of affairs are unlikely to work.

Can taking
makes no sense. The proper construction is shown in:

The board must take, and are in fact taking, all possible steps to maintain production.

Note
. Constructions such as ‘can and are at present taking' remain commonplace, but this does nothing to dispel their air of illiteracy. A journalist and recent winner of the Orwell Prize defended himself against accusations of plagiarism by saying ‘I did not and never have taken words from another context and twisted them to mean something different'. This ought (if true) to have read, ‘I did not take and never have taken …'. Likewise, but with yet more resolve, an official at the White House, called upon to say whether American spies had intercepted the private messages of the British Prime Minister, replied: ‘I can confirm that his communications have not, are not and will not be monitored by the US'. To say
have not be
and
are not be
makes no sense either. What the official meant to confirm was that the messages ‘have not been, are not being and will not be' monitored. ~

(5)
Shall
and
will

Twenty pages devoted to this subject in
The King's English
begin with the following introduction:

It is unfortunate that the idiomatic use, while it comes by nature to southern Englishmen (who will find most of this
section superfluous), is so complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire it; and for them the section is in danger of being useless. In apology for the length of these remarks it must be said that the short and simple directions often given are worse than useless. The observant reader soon loses faith in them from their constant failure to take him right; and the unobservant is the victim of false security.

The Fowler view in short amounts to this: that those brought up among speakers who use the right idiom have no need of instruction, but those who lack this advantage are incapable of being instructed, because any guidance that is short and clear will mislead them, and any that is full and accurate will be incomprehensible to them.

Every English textbook will be found to begin by explaining that to express the ‘plain' future,
shall
is used in the first person and
will
in the second and third:

I shall go

You will go

He will go

and that if it is a matter not of plain future but of volition, permission or obligation, it is the other way round:

I will go (I am determined to go or I intend to go)

You shall go (You must go, or you are permitted to go)

He shall go (He must go or he is permitted to go).

But the idiom of the Celts is different. They have never recognised
I shall go
. For them
I will go
is the plain future. The story is a very old one of the drowning Scot who was misunderstood by English onlookers and left to his fate because he cried, ‘I will drown and nobody shall save me'.

Note
. Most English speakers are without a doubt now Celts in saying ‘I will'. Even when Gowers was writing he found it judicious to end, ‘we can no longer say dogmatically that
I will go
for the plain future is wrong'. He cautioned English officials to stick to ‘textbook orthodoxy' in their own writing, but as that orthodoxy no longer holds, anyone these days who finds
shall
too old fashioned to be useful is at liberty to dispense with the shades of meaning that Gowers was here attempting to explain.

If there are those who seek to know more, but find Gowers's short and simple directions here ‘worse than useless', as the Fowler view has it, they do at least have Gowers's own writing in this book as a model for the distinction between
shall
and
will
(‘I shall have more to say about pedantry when we consider grammar …'), as also for the distinct uses of
should
and
would
discussed below (‘It is an arbitrary and pointless rule … but for the present its observance is expected from those who would write correctly'). Contrary to what is sometimes said, this style of writing, speaking and indeed thinking is not altogether lost in modern English. ~

(6)
Should
and
would

The various shades of meaning of
should
and
would
derive in the main from the primary ideas of obligation in
shall
and of resolve in
will
: ideas illustrated in their simplest form by ‘he should go' (he ought to go) and ‘he would go' (he was determined to go, or he made a habit of going).

As colourless auxiliaries, merely indicating the subjunctive mood, the textbook rule is that
should
is used in the first person and
would
in the second and third.
Should
, which is colourless in the first person, resumes its tinge of
ought
in the others: in ‘if you tried you should succeed' it has a nuance not present in ‘if I tried I should succeed'. But the rule requiring
should
in the first person
is now largely ignored (compare
shall
and
will
):
would
and
should
are used indifferently.

In the stock formula ‘In reply to your letter of … I would inform you …',
would
is not a mere auxiliary expressing the conditional mood, it retains the now archaic meaning of ‘I should like to'. In
Chapter III
I deprecated the use of similar expressions on the ground of their stiffness, and here too it is almost as though one were to say, ‘I would have you know'.

Because
would
has this meaning, old-fashioned authorities condemn such phrases as ‘I would like to', ‘I would be glad if', ‘I would be obliged if' and so on.
Should
, they say, ought always to be used: to say
would
is tantamount to saying ‘I should like to like to', ‘I should like to be glad if', ‘I should like to be obliged if' and so on. This too is a losing battle. But ‘It would appear' and ‘I should think' remain less dogmatic (and therefore more polite) ways of saying ‘it appears' and ‘I think'.

(7) Split infinitive

The well-known rule against splitting an infinitive means that nothing must come between
to
and the verb (‘to wantonly split the infinitive' splits the infinitive). It is a bad name, as was pointed out by Jespersen, a grammarian as broadminded as he was erudite:

This name is bad because we have many infinitives without
to
, as ‘I made him go'.
To
therefore is no more an essential part of an infinitive than the definite article is an essential part of a nominative, and no one would think of calling ‘the good man' a split nominative. (
Growth and Structure of the
English Language
, 1905)

It is also a bad rule: it makes for ambiguity by inducing writers to place adverbs in unnatural and even misleading positions. Consider the following:

He decided gradually to kill himself.

The hailstones failed completely to melt.

She chose properly to rewrite the letter.

Was the decision to commit suicide a gradual one, or was the suicide itself particularly slow? Did the hailstones melt almost completely, or melt not at all? Was it proper to choose to rewrite the letter, or was the rewriting of it to be done properly?

The split infinitive taboo, leading as it does to the putting of adverbs in awkward places, is so potent that it produces an impulse to place adverbs awkwardly even when there is no infinitive to split. I have myself been taken to task by a correspondent for splitting an infinitive because I wrote ‘I gratefully record'. My critic was, no doubt, under the influence of the taboo to an exceptional extent. But sufferers from the same malady in a milder form can be found on every hand. We cannot doubt that the writer of the sentence ‘they appeared completely to have adjusted themselves to it' put the adverb in that uncomfortable position from a misplaced fear that to write ‘to have completely adjusted' would be to split an infinitive. The same fear, probably subconscious, may also be presumed to account for the unnatural placing of the adverb in ‘so tangled is the web that I cannot pretend for a moment that we have succeeded entirely in unweaving it'. In this there was no possibility of splitting an infinitive because there is no infinitive.