Keep it clean

We want no dirt, just something pure and simple.

FEBRUARY is named for Februa, an ancient Roman festival of purification that was held on the night of the full moon. In honour of those times, take a look at some of today’s most popular pure and clean imagery.

Pure and simple

Unadulterated. Usually used in the sense of and nothing else or no more than.

This expression appeared in the early 1300s when pure and simple were synonyms that were used interchangeably.

Although the meaning of this phrase has been preserved for over 700 years, and pure still means unadulterated, the word simple is now usually used in the sense of uncomplicated.

In Scotland, simple is also used to mean stupid. If used in a fight the meaning is quite nasty, but when used in conversation it can refer to a person of low IQ and is meant to be kind – if not exactly politically correct.

The expression is also a popular name for soaps. Pure-n-simple, Pure & Simple and variations tend to refer to handmade soaps.

Example: I think it’s a bad idea, pure and simple.

Pure as the driven snow

Something you say about someone who is very moral.

Snow that’s been pushed into a big heap by the wind is blindingly white, a colour traditionally associated with innocence and purity in Britain.

Sources typically date this image as coming from the 1830s but it is somewhat older.

In 1762, Scots aristocrat and poet James Boswell’s sentimental poem The Snow Love Walk published in The Scots Magazine warbled, “Think of the driven snow, As pure, as gentle, was their love.”

A grimmer image came in 1800 when Reverend John Moir noted in his book of

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WRITING to the papers is not a hobby of mine. So, may I shoot three birds with one stone, please?

The most gentlest cut

In his response to a reader’s comment on his article some time ago, Dr Lim Chin Lam pointed out Shakespeare’s “This was the most unkindest cut of all” as an example of quirks in the English language which broke grammar rules.

In “Strange ways of adjectives” (Dec 23), Dr Lim told us that the Bard’s using of double superlatives was made under creative licence, to maintain the structure and cadence of his (the Bard’s) iambic pentameter.

I am only still a learner of English, but may I be so bold as to say that it seems Dr Lim has erred.

In his 55-page overview of Shakespeare, which write-up served as the preface to The Merchant Of Venice published by Signet, Sylvan Barnet of Tufts University informed us that grammar during the Bard’s time was different from that of the present.

Then, using double superlatives, sermons, One Thing Needful, that we must be “drenched in the waters of affliction, tossed on the angry billows of adversity” before we can be as pure as the driven snow.

Example: It would be lovely if world leaders were pure as the driven snow but it’s rather unlikely.

Cleanliness is next to godliness

A proverb that suggests cleanliness is vital. John Wesley, the Englishman who founded Methodism, first used this expression in 1778 in one of his sermons. However, Wesley didn’t coin the phrase; he translated it.

This expression appears in the writings of Phineas ben Yair, a sage and miracle worker whose thoughts are included in the Talmud, the foundation text of mainstream Judaism. Scholars think Phineas lived in Lydda, Lod, or Al-ludd, a city in Israel, around 150AD.

Today, the phrase is often used in the context of public health, especially when contact infections rage through a community.

Example: By her smudged face and hands you could tell she had never heard that cleanliness is next to godliness.

A clean bill of health

A declaration that someone is in good health or that a situation is not corrupt. double comparatives and double negatives was normal.

Furthermore, almost any part of speech could be used as any other part of speech; a noun could be used as a verb, a verb as a noun, and an adverb as an adjective.

Hence we find such usage as “he childed as I fathered”, “she hath made compare”, and “a seldom pleasure” in the Bard’s creations.

If the grammar then was different, the Bard also occasionally made up his own (playwrights, as do copywriters, have the creative licence to coin words).

The Oxford comma has nothing to do with snobbish writing

I share Dr Lim’s view of Mr Mount’s pronouncement on using the so-called Oxford comma (“Punctuation please”, Nov 25). How it can obfuscate and uglify prose is quite unfathomable.

I was taught that one of the instances when we use the Oxford comma is if we want to emphasise

In the 1300s, the word bill meant official statement or decree. Bills generally came with ornate signatures and embossed wax seals.

After the Black Death killed some 25% of European and Asian populations, quarantine laws became common. Sea travellers generally had to wait offshore for 30 to 40 days before being allowed entry.

Although the concept comes from medieval times, the British Quarantine Act of 1710 intended to guard the island nation against travellers importing diseases popularised the phrase.

By the 1800s, the expression was so popular that was applied to all “dirty” situations.

Example: The judge gave the bank a clean bill of health but we all know it was a coverup.

Clean as a whistle

Very clean. Without blemish. Spotless. The origin of this phrase is uncertain and hotly debated. Some say it comes from ancient times when whistle-makers first discovered that air must move smoothly over a blade before it makes a whistling sound. Whistle makers therefore had to ensure their pipes were “clean” of bumps or imperfections.

However, as the expression didn’t appear in print until 1878, it’s much more likely to have been inspired by the Golden Age of Rail when the items listed out by causing our readers to pause at that particular punctuation mark.

Unfortunately, I have no idea of Oxford’s rules on the using of the particular comma, but Mr Mount may be so incensed as to explode if he were told that Webster has provided no fewer than 20 examples of how the punctuation mark is applied correctly and another five of when it is misused and unnecessarily used.

The absence, instead, of the Oxford comma can slow down comprehension and make for ugliness. Witness the example immediately below.

“I had orange juice, coffee, toast, bacon and ham and eggs for breakfast.”

Of course, if we think it is enough as long as our readers can guess at what we are trying to say, then there are very many rules we can ignore; as for the, er, pesky Oxford comma, we can get the Dark Blues to throw it to the bottom of the Thames Tideway at their next boat race.

Rendition of numbers

17 March, 2011 20 tonnes Chapter VI or Chapter 6 3.12 A.M. or a.m. 45° or 45 degrees p. 22 8, Jalan Good Luck 23% or 23 per cent trains used steam whistles to signal their arrival and departure.

Example: Alex is messy by nature but his office is as clean as a whistle.

To make a clean breast (of something)

To confess. To reveal everything. This expression first appeared in Scots Magazine in October 1753 in Extracts Of The Trial Of James Stewart, who was said to have killed Colin Campbell of Glenure. The unnamed reporter uses it to describe the questioning of Mr Allan, a witness. As he doesn’t explain the term, it suggests it was well-known.

Certainly, clean breast meaning clear conscience appears in Daniel Waterland’s 1738 essay “The Christian Sacrifice”, explaining that Lactantius, advisor to the first Christian Emperor of Rome, replaced the old sacrifices of “blood, fumes and libations” with the modern devotions “a good mind, a clean breast, and an innocent life”.

No doubt the image is even older. The breast has been seen as the centre of emotion since ancient times, and the idea of a conscience being clean and unclean is equally old.

Example: Lucy made a clean breast of it as she couldn’t lie to Dan anymore.

A few of my fellow-learners have asked when to write numbers in figures and when to spell them out. I hope this will help.

1. Numbers that can be expressed in one or two words are spelled out. Those that have to be expressed in more than two words are written in the numeral form.

So, twelve, seventy-two, ten million but 208.

News-report writing, however, seems to have a different rule. In that genre, numbers from one to nine are spelled out. Those from 10 and above are written in the numeral form.

2. Use figures (numerals) to express dates, hours, street numbers, decimals, measures, percentages, and volume, chapter, and page numbers. Here are a few examples: 0·112 Vol. IX or Vol. 9 That 0·112 is a decimal, and so the dot mark is positioned onehalf of the height of the numerals above the base line.

3. Use figures to write down uneven sums of money.

“I paid $3.19 for my shirt” but “She paid thirty dollars for her blouse”.

This rule also does not apply in news-report writing.

4. Ordinal numbers are usually spelled out.

Twenty-first Century, the Fifth Column, the Second Commandment, First Avenue, etc.

5. We do not begin a sentence with a figure. If spelling out the numbers will be awkward, we recast our sentence.

Instead of “184 pupils were given free milk”, we write “Milk was given free to 184 pupils.”

Editors usually take the writers’ side. They will forgive us if we render numbers incorrectly. However, we must be consistent even if we do it wrongly.

What can alienate them from us is our inconsistency, because the defect suggests carelessness. – Kik Jitab