Scottish Daily Mail

And the Bank chief ousted for declaring war on the grammar of his underlings

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THE World Bank’s chief economist has been stripped of responsibi­lities after declaring war on the word ‘and’.

Paul Romer lost control of the organisati­on’s research division only months after taking the job, following a crackdown on language used by underlings.

He threatened to block publicatio­n of the next World Developmen­t Report unless less than 2.6pc of the words in it were ‘and’. It triggered a backlash from staff, who are already said to have been irate at his insistence that they write shorter emails and reports.

It’s also said that Romer, 61, interrupte­d staff he felt were labouring their points in meetings. Control of the bank’s Developmen­t Economics Group has now been handed to another senior figure. Romer’s hatred of ‘and’ stems from staff’s efforts to shoehorn their favourite projects into reports.

In his view, it led to unnecessar­ily long lists of schemes backed by the bank so that no one felt left out.

‘Because of this type of pressure to say that our message is “this, and this, and this too, and that”, the word “and” has become the most frequently used word in bank prose,’ he said. ‘A World Developmen­t Report, like a knife, has to be narrow to penetrate deeply’.

The economist justified the 2.6pc figure by claiming it was the typical proportion of ‘ands’ in academic research.

At the bank, he said, usage had doubled to nearly 7pc since the organisati­on’s early years.

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