Standard usage
From Professor Geoffrey Sampson Sir: 'Buying spectrum' does sound odd when first encountered, but the usage was standard before the Ofcom report which Dot Wordsworth complains of (Mind your language, 20 January). 'Spectrum' is not being misused as a plural: it is being used as a singular mass noun, like sugar or land. Like land, the radio spectrum is inherently continuous, but has to be divided into chunks if it is to be traded. We have been buying and selling land for so long that the grammar of it does not trouble us, but spectrum trading is a novelty. If we avoided using 'spectrum' this way, what other word could we use? A 'wavelength' is a dimensionless point. 'Selling wavebands' would suggest that the chunks existed before people began dealing in them — they didn't. I am as linguistically conservative as anyone, but when the world changes I think we must allow English to adapt to the change.
Geoffrey Sampson Uckfield, Sussex
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