An interesting discussion arose this week over a term used in a Courier report. The bone of contention was whether “three alternative options” was proper English usage.
A very nice, impressively intelligent, chap emailed to say his university lecturer in the mid-1970s had very definite views on the matter.
The lecturer insisted that an alternative was strictly between two options
Before you read on, what is your view, dear reader? I ask that you nail your colours to the mast.
As with many arguments involving the evolving English language, the rightness or wrongness of “alternative” referring to two, or more, things depends upon when you ask the question and when the answer you find was written.
I like to rely on the 1969 revision of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as a work of reference. It was printed before the OED began to ridiculously accept short-lived neologisms as correct usage, but isn’t an olde worlde tome full of definitions that Dr Johnson himself might have written.
The 1969 OED, in its definition 1, states that an alternative refers to two things. So there we are, case closed!
Well no, not quite.
Because further down the page, definition B3 allows an alternative to be “one of more than two courses which may be chosen” and cites an 1848 date of first usage.
I searched further. My copy of the greatly respected Fowler’s Current English Usage is from 2012. It perhaps clarifies the matter by stating an alternative is “no longer limited” to two options.
What I think is the definitive statement follows. Fowler says: “Only the strictest grammarian will object to our speaking of several alternatives”.
And there’s the crux. I would consider myself to be firmly in the “strictest grammarian” camp.
Indeed, I would argue that a “choice” is also to be made between only two things. I would not, in formal writing, refer to a choice of four dishes for dinner. I certainly wouldn’t write that a surgeon had 27 alternative ways to do an operation.
However, the journalists of The Courier are tasked with writing in English that is easily accepted by modern readers. The essence of effective communication is, after all, to be readily understood. Therefore they would be encouraged by their senior editors (if any were awake, sober, and not fallen into dotage) to use modern language.
So the usage in The Courier of last week was correct, under these conditions and in its context, to speak of “three alternative options”.
Isn’t the English language a damned annoying thing?
You can, as proved above, find directly opposed answers to a question yet declare them both to be correct!
Word of the week
Reductive (adjective)
Tending to present a subject or problem in a simplified form. EG: “I’d like to be reductive about language, but sometimes it curls round your brain and squeezes until only contradictions and complications remain.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
