Tuesday, November 14, 2006

LibDem News: grammar no object?

That's as in: grammar no object to LibDem News? Grammar may indeed feel aggrieved as that usually estimable organ slipped up last week.

The debate over Trident may become heated and, in the passion of it, the participants may stumble over their words, but when Prof. Paul Reynolds of the University of Westminster writes that 'it is anything but unclear how a vote would go in Parliament', it is anything but clear that that is what he meant to say. Is he so convinced of the outcome?

And can we take it that LibDem News concur with whatever his view is, considering they made that sentence the pull-down quote for the article? In good liberal circles, anything goes -- but must that extend to a grasp of the English language? I would suggest establishing a wing of the party devoted to pedantry, if it were not for the fact that in these times that might be a lynchable activity. After all, it sounds dangerously like a group of pediatricians.

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