44

The Penguin Guide to Plain English

Sight Savers International desperately needs your help to wipe out this cruel
and unnecessary disease.
This illustrates the increasing tendency to misuse the w ord unnecessary.
The question o f necessity or its absence simply does not arise. W hat the
w riter means is: Sight Savers International desperately needs your help
to wipe out this cruel and avoidable disease.
vandalism
This w ord is chosen as representative o f abstract nouns ending in -ism .
If one considers, say, the verb to colonize, it is matched by two distinct
nouns, colonialism and colonization. Colonialism is the abstract
w ord for the theory and practice o f colonizing, but any single act of
colonizing itself represents colonization. It w ould be a mistake to
confuse the two words.
His head chef at lOranger, the restaurant, has been arrested after the alleged
theft of i ,500 and the vandalism of the restaurant, the night after he was
sacked.
Here that mistake is made w ith the w ord vandalism. To vandalize a
building is to com m it an act of vandalism, but the process of vandalizing
a building is vandalization. Here the sentence could read: has been
arrested after the alleged theft of 1,^00 and the vandalization o f the
restaurant, or: and the vandalizing of the restaurant. Better still w ould
be: has been arrested for allegedly stealing 1,5-00 and vandalizing the
restaurant.
virtually
Virtually means in effect as opposed to in fact. We m ight say She
was only a recently elected m em ber of the committee but she was
virtually in charge o f everything. But increasingly the w ord is being
weakened.
It was virtually sixty years ago that Edith Smith took the photograph.
There is no contrast here between w hat happened in effect and w hat
happened in fact. To use virtually to mean alm ost or nearly is bad
enough. But here it means neither. W hat is meant is: It was about sixty
years ago that Edith Smith took the photograph.