Let’s face it: Bureaucrats, lawyers, and not just a few academicians use a lot of officious stock phrases in both their written and spoken communication, among them “by virtue of,” “with reference to,” “in connection with,” “with regard to,” “in order to,” “with respect to,” “in line with,” and—perhaps the most irksome of them all—“this is to inform you that” for both bad and good news and everything in between. These phrases make their English sound so highhanded—even somewhat threatening—but we learn to tolerate them because they are actually part of their professional jargon.
The problem though is that owing to our repeated exposure to them, these stock phrases creep into our own writing and speech. They make us sound like bureaucrats, lawyers, and academicians ourselves although we are not. Our English becomes contrived not only in our day-to-day conversations with friends and coworkers but also in our job applications and office memos, letters, and reports.
But should we really allow abstruse tradition and peer-group pressure to tyrannize us into using these officious stock phrases despite our better judgment? In business and in our personal lives, wouldn’t it be advisable and desirable to speak in more concise, more pleasant, and friendlier English?
Way back in 2004, I advocated in this column that we should always use the most forthright but pleasant English to clearly and precisely convey our meaning. To get along with people and get things done promptly in the workplace and most everywhere, we definitely don’t need bureaucratic, lawyerly, or academic language but plain and simple English instead.
To start with, the most commonly used officious English words or phrases today are these six: “about,” “regarding,” “concerning,” “touching on,” “in terms of,” and “on account of.” The shortest of them—“about”—conveys essentially the same sense as “regarding,” “concerning,” and “touching on.” Also the most natural and most forceful, it’s clear that “about” is our best choice for informal statements that need to refer to something: “
About our agreement last night, put it on hold until next week. I have second thoughts about some of the provisions.”
“Regarding” and “concerning” have a mildly officious and legalistic undertone, but if that doesn’t bother us, we can use them freely instead of “about.” Feel how they sound:
“Regarding your application for a loan, you may expect release in two weeks.” “We are writing
concerning your daughter’s academic performance.”
On the other hand, the phrase “touching on” is of very limited use, appropriate only in constructions like these two: “
Touching on the subject of romance, he became a spellbinding speaker.” “It will help if you
touch on the subject of overtime pay in your briefing.” By some quirk of the language, “touch on” seems to work only when it latches on to the phrase “the subject of.” We thus must avoid “touch on” if we can.
The prepositional phrases “in terms of” (which means “considering”) and “on account of” (“because”) are respectable business English, if a bit officious: “A time deposit is superior to a savings deposit
in terms of interest income.” “We canceled the games
on account of the inclement weather.” We must take note though that “in view of,” “owing to,” and “due to” can very well take the place of “on account of” in that second sentence; the choice really depends on what we do for a living and the company we keep. (Lawyers gravitate to “in view of” for their own reasons, but if you ask a non-lawyer like me, I’d much prefer to use “due to” most of the time.)
English abounds with more prepositional phrases that mean the same thing as “about”—“in accordance with,” “in connection with,” “in conformance to,” “by reason of,” “as to,” “apropos of,” and “anent.” We are well advised to stay away from them altogether, for they are too abstruse and can give our everyday prose a false, awkward tone.
Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in
The Manila Times:
Avoiding very officious stock phrases in our English -1 Next:
Avoiding very officious stock phrases in our English -2 October 12, 2023
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
