adjectives

H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage is a joy to read. I'm talking about the second edition, so maybe it's Sir Ernest Gowers who is so great, but I understand he updated the original sparingly. I don't have the first edition, so I'm not sure. The third edition is OK as a usage manual, but it does not deserve Fowler's name on it; he has mostly been removed.

I recently read the entry adjectives misused.

He starts with the OED definition: He sums up the OED definition of an adjective:

"Adjectives, then, ought to be good friends of the noun. In fact, it has been well said, they have become its enemies. They are often used not to 'describe the thing more fully and definitely' but rather to give it some vague and needless intensification or limitation;as if their user thought that the noun by itself was either not impressive enough or too stark, or perhaps even that it was a pity to be content with one word where they might have two."

He gives examples: considerable skill, proper care, effective means, active consideration, undue alarm--all from a single quote. The worst are those adjectives that add nothing: grateful thanks, usual habits, true facts, unexpected surprise. Many of these are still all too common, nearly 90 years after he wrote the book. "The only hope for a noun thus debilitated is for the combination to be ... killed by ridicule."

Who couldn't love Fowler?

Determine

Determine is one of those terms that can have very different, almost opposite meanings.

I can determine what happened, or I can determine what happens. In the first case, I discover; in the second, I enact or cause.

I am a technical writer by trade and I'm working on the documentation for a new sorter. Sorters receive boxes or other containers from a conveyor in a warehouse and then divert them to other conveyors to go where they need to go.

I came across this sentence in a document I'm working on: "...this photoeye determines the position of the package in relation to the slats and which slat shoes to divert."

This sentence seems to use a single instance of determine both ways. I don't know if this sentence originated from another technical writer, from an engineer, or if it was something I even wrote unwittingly years ago when documenting a predecessor to the current sorter.

I was inclined to change this, and I probably should for the sake of clarity. But I'm fascinated, so for now I'm leaving it.