Mea Culpa: Advocating the proper use of verbs

Susanna Richards is minding our language in this week’s Independent

An underwater creature, happiest under water (Getty/iStock)

We seem to have forgotten ourselves a little this week, perhaps because John Rentoul is not watching. The phrase “advocate for” has popped up in copy a number of times, which isn’t surprising given its ubiquity, but it would be better if we could avoid it just the same.

One comment piece contained this assertion: “I am proud to represent a party with a long history of advocating for the UK to meet its obligations to the world’s poorest.” In the context, something like “campaigning for” might have been better, though it could also have said “with a long history of advocating that the UK meet its obligations”.

When we use the verb “to advocate” correctly, it is elegant. When we don’t, it’s a shame. Remember: we advocate the doing of something; we are advocates for (or of) the thing being done.

Due care and attention was absent from an article written for us on the efforts of train companies to improve their environmental credentials. The verb “to drive” was used twice – indeed twice in one paragraph – to mean things other than driving.

First there was talk of developing “innovative solutions that drive down greenhouse gases”, where the simple “reduce” would have done just as well; and then came the exhortation to work together to “drive the green growth and prosperity we need to get Britain back on track”, which could just as easily have been “create” (leaving aside “green growth”, which... well, you can’t complain about everything).

Perhaps it seemed a good idea to go for a transport-related metaphor, given the subject matter, but it can be distracting if we do it too much.

Trademark infringement: We managed somehow to refer to the prime minister’s former adviser as “Domininc Cummings” in a headline this week. It occurred to me, given the theme of the article, that it might have been a deliberate, lighthearted reference to his efforts at brand-building; sadly it was just a typographical error, and was corrected accordingly.

Ghost writer: In a report about an article written by the former speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, and Labour MP Dawn Butler, we said: “In a joint piece with the Labour backbencher, Ms Butler and Mr Bercow wrote...” – thus appearing to allude to a mysterious third author. There was no such person; as often happens, a sentence was started along a certain line of thought, and wandered off it, in this case rather quickly.

Compounding error: We said in a leader column the other day that certain aspects of the climate “would help explain why places such as Worcester and Salisbury have for some years been underwater so often”. “Underwater” is an adjective comprising two words that would do perfectly well here without being joined up.

A similar situation can arise when a noun is coined from a phrasal verb – for instance, “lockdown”. Writers frequently use the noun form when the sentence requires the verb: “The decision to lockdown was made in the light of advice from scientists.” We almost did it this week in an article about the effect of the pandemic on industry, asking whether “a stronger third wave of Covid will setback an already modest recovery”.

It is almost as though, once words have been put together in this manner, we are a little afraid to set them asunder.

All we need to do in these instances is gently separate the components to a respectable social distance, so that the grammar guardians can get back to more pressing matters and stop fretting. Not that they ever do for long.