Light Reading for the New Year
As we promised in our last newsletter of 2021, we’ve taken some down-time over the holiday period, so rather than a new piece this week, we’re republishing this still-timely entry from 2020. As book authors, we have had plenty of run-ins with copy-editors, who have forced us to think hard about usage and clarity. This decidedly non-technical piece aims to encourage, as David Foster Wallace put it, “sedulous respect for the convictions of others”, which seems like a good place to start the new year.
“And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before – and thus was the Empire forged.” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I’ve been interested in language and usage for as long as I can remember. I took Latin for five years in school, partly because the strict rules of grammar appealed to my logical side – it was probably the only humanities subject that I naturally gravitated to. (If you’re bothered by my ending that last sentence with a preposition – hold onto that thought.) My father was a strong proponent of correct English usage, and one of my early memories is of watching TV with him as a politician carefully avoided splitting an infinitive – something my father commented on approvingly. There’s just one problem with that story: most guides to English usage agree that the strict rule against splitting infinitives is bogus.
It’s worth quoting “Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage” at length on this topic:
As Fowler put it: ‘The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; (5) those who know and distinguish’. The aim here is to convert to the fifth category anyone included in the first four.
In case you can’t be bothered to read the whole article in Fowler’s and you belong to category (1) or (2), the split infinitive is famously exemplified by the introductory sequence of Star Trek, containing the phrase “to boldly go”. In this case, “boldly” splits the infinitive “to go”. This was played upon in the quote from Douglas Adams above.
Another good example of a language rule that isn’t as hard-and-fast as some would believe relates to ending sentences with prepositions. I somewhat intentionally violated that rule above. A great language reference that I grew up with, The Complete Plain Words, by Sir Ernest Gowers, deals with this rule as follows: “There used to be a somewhat half-hearted grammarians’ rule against doing this, but no good writer ever heeded it…”
Which brings me to “on-premises”. I need hardly point out that many people say “on-premise” when referring to equipment that sits at a customer site (i.e., on the customer premises) as opposed to, say, in a cloud data centre. And there is a significant number of people who get extremely upset about this, on the basis that the word “premise” means “the basis for an argument or conclusion” and has nothing to do with a customer site.
Now, the people who argue vehemently in favour of always saying “on-premises” have logic and etymology on their side, but there is more to language – especially English – than logic. The fact is that languages are constantly evolving, not only in that new words are invented for new things, but that the meanings of words also change over time. Indeed, for this reason, books on usage are constantly being updated.
In my view, the definitive article on usage was written by David Foster Wallace in 1999, subtitled “Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage”. Like much of Foster Wallace’s writing, it’s dense, intelligent, witty, and heavily footnoted. It’s full of great nuggets like this: “Did you know that U.S. lexicography even had a seamy underbelly?” The centrepiece of his argument is the need for what he calls “A Democratic Spirit” – “passionate conviction plus sedulous respect for the convictions of others”. I won’t spoil the article by trying to summarise it further – it really is worth your time to read it in full. [1]
This emphasis on “respect for the convictions of others” guides my approach to “on-premises” versus “on-premise”. It’s clear that “on-premises” has the upper hand with prescriptivists – those who believe that rules of grammar and usage are fixed, and we ignore them at our peril. At the same time, “on-premise” has achieved widespread usage (in part, I suspect, because it’s easier to say aloud) thus making it a valid choice for descriptivists – those who argue that language guides should focus on how language is actually used. Foster Wallace’s Democratic Spirit would lead us to agree that both sides have a point. Rules of grammar are important, but language evolves. Neither rigid prescriptivism nor anything-goes descriptivism gets to the subtleties of usage.
Using “on-premise” in a sentence won’t leave anyone confused – but it may cause a prescriptivist to look at you like you’ve just run your fingernails down a chalkboard. And going on a rant about “on-premise” being manifestly wrong tells the world that you are, on this matter at least, a prescriptivist – which isn’t a position I’d take up casually. I’d rather be known as someone with the eye for nuance that David Foster Wallace advocated and exemplified. Rigid prescriptivism might be cathartic – I enjoy a good rant as much as the next person – but acknowledging that language evolves will help you to better understand the perspectives of others.
I’ll wrap this up with a quote from The Complete Plain Words which gets to a key point: our goal should be to communicate clearly and unambiguously. There is a story of a nurse ending a sentence with not one, but four prepositions as follows:
“What did you choose that book to be read to out of for?”
To which Gowers comments:
“She said what she wanted to say perfectly clearly, and in words of one syllable, and what more can one ask?”
Of course, you can always try to sidestep this debate by using the common abbreviation “on-prem”. It’s easy to say and gets your meaning across clearly. Just don’t forget to hyphenate your compound adjectives!
[1]. Unlike most of our writing at Systems Approach, this article uses British English spelling. Foster Wallace has some good commentary about the different variants of English and how they relate to the usage wars.
Thanks to everyone who signed up for our newsletter in 2021. We passed the 500 subscriber mark and had eight of our articles published in The Register. We have a long list of projects lined up for 2022 and we look forward to sharing our thoughts with you.