Oy Vay!
From Philip Hensher
Sir: Benedict le Vay is surely being rather hard on Lynne Truss's English (Pluck Truss and grieve', 10 January), and the examples he chooses of her bad English are debatable at best. 'Anticipate' long since stopped being restricted to the meaning 'take action before an expected action', if indeed it ever did mean only that. There is surely nothing much wrong with the structure 'before doing X, first let us'. Another objection is much stranger: there are things in English called phrasal verbs, and one of them is 'add in', clearly distinct from 'add' and 'add up', perfectly idiomatic and correct. A famous piece of mockpedantry turns up with Mr le Vay's contention that you should not write 'the group thankfully folded within 18 months': if that is wrong, then surely so is 'the house sadly burnt down last year'. And for heaven's sake, can we really accept that Miss Truss and every other native user of English demonstrates incompetence by the use of the phrase 'I wonder why?' I don't agree with all Miss Truss's prescriptions about punctuation, and would not claim to be an infallible user of English myself, but anyone can see that she writes vividly, freshly and correctly. The same could not be said about Mr le Vay, with his wild talk about alarm bells ringing on redundant desks, creeps who can simultaneously fawn and spring up, frigates, bulkheads, shrouds, magazines, toys, prams and all.
Philip Hensher
London SW8
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