A nice article, a nice argument from yesterday:
Open door
The readers' editor on ... saying what you mean to say, precisely
Ian Mayes
Monday January 29, 2007
The Guardian
Nothing excites monitors of Guardian English quite so much perhaps as the misuse of the words "refute" and "enormity". Both words have occurred in the paper in the past 10 days - "refute" used incorrectly, by the paper's own definition, on the front page, and "enormity" used with exemplary precision on the Comment pages, both broadly in the context of the cash for honours affair.
"Enormity" occurred in a column on January 23: "It will be supremely ironic if Blair ends up disgraced by the honours issue. This seems so paltry by comparison with the enormity of Iraq. It is hard to imagine a graver charge than taking the country to war under false pretences." In the headline it was writ large: "Compared to the enormity of the war, this is a paltry scandal." The author's intended sense seems perfectly in accord with the definition on which the Guardian stylebook insists: "Enormity - something monstrous or wicked; not synonymous with large."
"Refute" occurred on the front page on January 20 in a report headlined, "Honours inquiry moves closer to PM as aide arrested at dawn". The report referred to the detention, questioning and release on bail of "one of Tony Blair's closest political advisers", Ruth Turner. Ms Turner, in a statement, said: "I have been completely open with the police throughout and will continue to cooperate with them fully. I absolutely refute any allegations of wrongdoing of any nature whatsoever." In a subheading, the Guardian said: Ruth Turner refutes any wrongdoing 'absolutely'.
The quotation marks there, readers were quick to note, enclose only the word absolutely.
A reader writes: "Your front page asserts that Ruth Turner refutes 'absolutely' any wrongdoing. If she has indeed proved that she has done no wrong then she and your headline writer are entitled to the word 'refute'. It seems more likely, however, that she is confusing refutation and denial, and I fear that your headline writer is guilty of the same confusion, since he or she uses 'refute' without quotes. To refute a claim, accusation etc, is not just to assert but to prove its falsehood.
"Many, perhaps especially politicians, would like to elide the distinction. To ensure that the distinction between the two things is understood it is important to preserve the meanings of the words that mark it. The terms 'deny' and 'refute', like the terms 'assert' and 'prove', mark the difference between merely saying that something is so, and showing that it is."
There is no question of suggesting that Ms Turner is deliberately seeking to blur the distinction that this reader and others believe should be preserved. Ms Turner is clearly saying that she categorically or vehemently denies any allegations of wrongdoing, and appears to be using the word "refute" to underline the strength and totality of her denial.
Here is the Collins dictionary definition of refute: "To prove (a statement, theory, charge, etc) of (a person) to be false or incorrect; disprove." It adds: "Refute is often used incorrectly as a synonym of deny. In careful usage, however, to deny something is to state that it is untrue; to refute something is to assemble evidence in order to prove it untrue: 'all he could do was deny the allegations since he was unable to refute them'."
Chambers and Oxford dictionaries more or less concur in this. The Bloomsbury dictionary in its note on usage, however, says: "The core meaning of refute is 'to prove false or in error', though a more general sense 'to deny' has developed and is now widely established. In US English, especially, it is acceptable to use refute and rebut interchangeably in the sense 'to deny or contradict something'".
Ms Turner's use of the word is one thing. The Guardian's apparent adoption of it is another - and it is in clear conflict with the paper's stylebook: "Refute - use this much-abused word only when an argument is disproved; otherwise 'contest', 'deny', 'rebut'."
As another reader writes: "There is a difference and it would be sad to lose it."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2000824,00.html
