Mind your language
Every now and then, I come across a way of using language that is so divergent from the norm that I wonder how anyone can have adopted it. This seems to have happened to spectrum. Ofcom declared in 2005, 'One of Ofcom's primary statutory duties is to ensure the optimal use of the radio spectrum in the interests of citizens and consumers.' Whether one likes that or not, at least it is English. Ofcom then refers to 'spectrum management' and 'spectrum trading'. This too is English. The noun spectrum is there being used attributively, with an adjectival force, qualifying another noun, as with dog biscuit or brain fever.
The misuse comes when Ofcom starts to use phrases such as 'buy and sell spectrum in the market', 'release of newly available spectrum', 'the likelihood that spectrum will be held by those who can make best use of it'. If spectrum is used without a definite article, it suggests that it is a noun like sugar (a mass, uncountable or non-count noun). But it isn't. Another reason for dropping the the would be if spectrum were a plural. It would make sense to talk of 'release of newly available spectra'.
The plural of spectrum is spectra or spectrums. The New Fowler's prefers spectra, as it does compendia, dicta, emporia, memoranda, podia, rostra, scriptoria, symposia, and sterna, but encomiums, acordiums, interregnums, mausoleums, planetariums, referendums and ultimatums. For stadium it prefers stadia in an ancient context, and stadiums in a modem.
The other difficulty is the meaning of the word spectrum. A dictionary definition is 'the entire range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation'. Visible light has a visible spectrum. Red is at one end of that spectrum, violet at the other. Infrared is off the scale of the visible spectrum, as is ultraviolet. But Ofcom does not use spectrum like this. It says things like,'Award of available spectrum: 10 GHz, 28 GHz, 32 GHz and 40 GHz'. So it seems that spectrum is being used to mean 'wavelength' or 'waveband'.
I think that if spectrum is being used as a plural, it mirrors the misuse ofphenomena, which is often used as a singular. Criterion and criteria are mixed up in a similar way. But one does not expect that sort of confusion from people who are supposed to know what they are talking about. Ofcom says that it is 'the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, with responsibilities across television, radio, telecommunications and wireless services'. Fortunately its authority does not extend to control of the written word.
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