AMERICA.
It has a lot going for it. Skyscrapers, wide-open plains, the annual presidential turkey pardon. Good on you, America.
But there are some things America can keep. There are elements I would like to parcel up, stick a stamp on and use the great old, greatly beleaguered Royal Mail to post right back to Yankee shores and dump at the door of Rikers Island where they can lock it up and throw the key in the East River.
I like variation as much as the next man. I try to wear a new change of clothes at least every second day and occasionally I sit upstairs on the bus, instead of the third seat from the back on the aisle. I'm flexible, really.
You know what I also like? Uniformity. You know where you are, you know what you can rely on and you know there's mutual understanding.
So, America, please, keep your language. Keep it. Keep it on your side of the pond. I'm reaching out to ask you kindly to keep "reaching out" to yourselves.
Dialects are lovely, accents help define our place in the world. But there is no place in British usage for this ludicrous Americanism "reaching out".
I can accept the occasional extra "of", if I really must. Ofs where there is no place in the sentence for an "of". "Holding down the fort." Fine, it doesn't make the blindest bit of sense, but fine. You understand it, you Americans, but keep it among you if you must. Ditto "could care less".
"Reach out", if you are fortunate to have not yet spotted it, replaces "contact". "Gawker reached out to Walmart but the supermarket did not reply." "The New York Times reached out to the family but they declined to comment."
You, reporter, have not reached out to anyone. Reaching out is a physical gesture. It is what you do to a loved one, to an item, to someone who needs to be comforted or curtailed. Not when trying to hold a corporate behemoth to account. It is not what you do to a family trying to avoid the press. You contact them. Contact.
Horrors, but the BBC has started to use this vulgarity and, without vigilance, it is but a matter of time before it spreads. This is the linguistic equivalent of the grey squirrel. If it is allowed to breed it will decimate our population of common sense, more elegant red squirrel phrases.
The next time I read "reach out" in something British-made, I'm going to reach out and punch the culprit in the face.
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