Or Pedants’ Corner. If anyone from Plymouth City Bus is reading this, may I ask what is wrong with the following news announcement of 18 February 2011,
“Service 20—the section of route between Mudge Way and the Merafield Plympton is to be withdrawn”The answer is nothing is wrong, nothing at all. Except by phrasing this is the so-called “passive voice” it implies no one is taking responsibility. “Is to be withdrawn” sounds like someone is hiding. It’s like an operator answering angry protesters with “mistakes were made” when actually it might be best to hold your hands up and say “we made mistakes”. There’s a world of difference. Both are grammatically correct. The former accepts no responsibility, the latter does. (Grammarians will know this as a passivised verb, moving from the transitive to intransitive). Better then for City Bus to say,
“Service 20—it is with regret that we will withdraw the section of route between Mudge Way and the Merafield Plympton”But before you think I’m over-critical of Plymouth City Bus, may I make two observations.
- First, this is by no means an isolated example of an operator phrasing in this way. I am sorry I seem to be picking on one operator (for illustrative purposes)
- Secondly, it’s a lot easier when you have someone to blame for negative revisions (other than yourself).
“Service 48 (Plymouth-Wembury): Devon County Council has withdrawn its support for journeys that run on Sundays and Public Holidays…”But ironically the same paragraph finishes badly in the passive voice,
“As a result, all Sunday/Public Holiday journeys will be withdrawn from 11 April”.Interested grammarians may find more information here on suitable uses of the passive voice. The rest of us might like to head over to Plymothian Transit for regular Plymouth updates.
18 comments:
Just nit picking but I do believe it's Plymouth Citybus not City Bus
I'd be more worried by your use of 'affective' when it should be 'effective'.....
Reminds me of National Bus Company internal letters, which used to begin: "It has been decided..." as though nobody was actually responsible.
At least they actually say something! TfL would just go 'Route X will run between A and B', neglecting to mention that the section to C is withdrawn. That's when they actually publicise any changes at all.
I'm wondering if "...we will withdraw..." is also not quite correct? Plymouth City Bus is an entity in itself, and is therefore singular (and not just because the title only refers to one bus!). First are correct in saying "..Devon County Council has withdrawn its support.." - 'its' and not 'their' support.
The operator could, of course, repeat its own name in that context - i.e. "...Plymouth City Bus will withdraw..."; but that seems a little cumbersome, so I guess the thinking is that the passive form is easier to use.
"Just nit picking but I do believe it's Plymouth Citybus not City Bus."
Given the new logo, with "bus" very much separated from "city", you can easily get away with either.
But yes, technically, Citybus is right.
At least Bluestar have finally decided what their name is and the new website doesn't have half the mentions of the name as "Blue Star"!
Getting back to the use of the passive to describe service changes, if the notice includes a statement at the beginning saying something to the effect that:-
"Plymouth City Bus will make the following changes to services on 'date':-"
The subsequent listings for individual services can use the passive to avoid the anomalies mentioned previously, while honour is satisfied in that the operator has accepted responsibility in the opening statement.
I cannot find the notice that you mention from February, so I cannot tell if it was set out in that manner, but I should have thought that would have been an acceptable solution.
(Blogger seems very fussy - you cannot enter 'date' surrounded by chevrons!)
Another nice hang-over from the municipal mindset that Plymouth still have. Why is the 'local' bus operator sounding so remote and distant from its customers? I'm sure you find this passive mindset in former muncipal companies as well as existing ones....
I have to say that I notice many more grammatical and spelling errors in publicity, both hard copy and web, these days. Some are wince-inducingly obvious, for instance this sentence from the website of Grant Palmer, a Bedfordshire independent (and actually not a bad operator); 'At present all our services are operating as per there scheduled timetable.'
Doesn't do much to give a professional image, does it? But at least they have timetables for all the services they operate.
Amazing how many people use there in mistakadennine for their.Is it the modern way of teaching that is at fault?
Amazing how many people use there in mistakadennine for their.Is it the modern way of teaching that is at fault?
Oops!! last comment garbled.Faulty mouse. What i said was its amazing how many people use there in error for their.Is it the modern way of teaching thats at fault?
Oops!! last comment garbled.Faulty mouse. What i said was its amazing how many people use there in error for their.Is it the modern way of teaching thats at fault?
I don't think it's anything to do with teaching methods; it's because people on blogs, forums, etc often don't bother to check what they're writing.
It's no worse than forgetting to use a capital letter for the personal pronoun "I" or leaving apostrophes out of words like "it's" (when short for "it is") and "that's".
Anonymous said...
"It's no worse than forgetting to use a capital letter for the personal pronoun "I" or leaving apostrophes out of words like "it's" (when short for "it is") and "that's"."
...just a couple of examples, of course!
I suspect that this type of error is more prevalent now because they are seldom, if ever, corrected. On most internet forums and discussion boards, anyone criticising incorrect grammar or spelling would be seen as a pedant, a killjoy, or perhaps just plain 'off topic'. The result is that we tolerate such errors in other situations as well, and only the real howlers are noticed and pointed out, or perhaps held up to ridicule.
The example that Mel Durrant quotes is typical - we can see the error, but we know what the person is trying to say, so we let it go. A non-English speaker, putting the incorrect version into the Google Translator will no doubt get an even more garbled version in their own language than they would without the error!
If a passenger sees a notice advising that a service is being withdrawn, they tend to be more concerned about alternatives (of lack of) to getting to work/school/shops, rather than the grammatical correctness of the notice!
Well at least they informed people of the cuts which is more than most operators do
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