The Words to be Used

The case for one member, one vote involvement in future leadership
elections is not just to provide democratic legitimacy but also as an incentive
to join.
The w riter here errs in trying to balance is not just to w ith but also as
instead of w ith but also to . But that grammatical lapse is not what we
happen to be interested in just now. W hat is one member, one vote
involvement? The w riter is trying to say: The case for using the onem ember, one-vote system in future leadership elections is not only that
it will be m ore democratically legitimate but also that it will encourage
people to join the party.
problem, solution, different
The w ord problem too readily springs to our lips these days. The cur
rent drift is towards increasingly indiscriminate use o f it. We need
not be over-fussy about this in conversation. W e know now that
w hen the waiter says No problem , he means that the cook will be
only too happy to do the steak exactly as requested, and w hen the
garage foreman says it, he means that he will deal immediately w ith the
punctured tyre or the broken exhaust pipe. Sometimes the w ord seems
to be superfluous.
A government research study in 1995: pinpointed insufficient iron as a
problem in the underfives.
The problem is the insufficiency o f iro n . Does the w ord problem
add anything here? Insufficiency cannot be present anywhere w ithout
representing a problem . All that is needed is: A government research
study in 1995: pinpointed a deficiency o f iron in the underfives.
There is a graver current misuse than that.
The problem that faced the police was the remote site.
At first sight, that is probably not a sentence that worries us. Even the
sentence The rem ote site made access difficult may seem acceptable.
Yet, strictly speaking, it is not the rem ote site but the remoteness o f the
site that makes access difficult. We see immediately that it w ould n ot be
right to say The extremely aged man made questioning difficult w hen
w hat w e mean is The extreme age of the m an made questioning difficult.
The tw o sentences differ sharply in meaning. Precision in that kind of
statement is the sign o f a logical mind.