By Graham Hill * “Spark” the brand manager’s one syllable “Telecom” recently wrote to me about its broad band charges. The letter’s heading read ‘Industry price charges will impact New Zealanders.’ Then it was said: “But these changes impact the whole industry…” Then in the District Court Rules 2014 Part 4 Subpart 6, dealing with certain capacities, the heading reads “Impact of certain capacities.” The words ‘effect’ and ‘result’ ‘consequence’ or even ‘incidence’ have clarity, nuance and precision. It is astonishing to see the loose use of the word “impact” in a regulatory instrument.
Our media’s use of the word impact, impacted and impacting abounds and grates.
Going on a quest for more details on the misuse of impact brings one to Fowler who described impact as a media ‘vogue’ word. He thought when he wrote, in 1926, that ‘the metaphor was not quite dead for it to be an incongruity.’ The metaphor has long since died.
A further quest takes one to the University of Lake Superior’s banned list of words which is an annual compilation.
“Impact” was sentenced to the list in 1990 but it seems to have taken some 26 years to seep across the Pacific. The entry reads:
Impact – (The most nominations) – “The effect of a sledge hammer has on a brick wall, or a car on a utility pole. Those who use it otherwise probably don’t know the difference between ‘effect’ and ‘affect.’” (Ed.: Too many times we’re subjected to a radio or television news reader saying something like: “We’ll soon know how we’re to be impacted by the rising costs of groceries.” Perhaps the impact of a good slap in the head would curtail such irritating misuse of language.)
The 2016 list is now out at http://www.lssu.edu/banished/.
I remain waiting and despairing for Spark’s impaction and the end of the known literate world.
- H W Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern Usage 2nd ed revised by Sir Ernest Gowers OUP 1968
Author Bio: *Graham Hill is a Blenheim lawyer
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