I READ in the courts pages the other day that a man had been charged with possession of a rifle seized at his home "during a pre-planned search operation".
There's a lot of this about lately. Time was, the authorities could get away with just planning a search. But pre-planning is all the rage now, and not just in law enforcement. In business, the professions - even in crime itself - it seems to have become a requisite for a successful career. You're nobody if you don't do it.
Pre-booking is another one. A few years ago, a consumer could still feel good about himself if he merely booked a family holiday, or a venue for the children's party, or a night at the theatre. Now, he often needs to pre-book it as well. In fact, if you don't have to pre-book a show these days, it's probably not worth seeing.
The prefix is suddenly ubiquitous, upping the ante everywhere you turn. I shudder to think what area of human activity will be next. No doubt the team behind Sex in the City will launch the concept of "pre-foreplay" soon, and that'll be even more pressure for some of us to cope with.
Of course, one has to ask whether the old-fashioned concepts of "planning" and "booking", which once seemed to do perfectly good jobs without embellishment, really gain anything from the addition of "pre". Or is this just more unnecessary verbal inflation from the same school of management guff that gave us "pro-active"?
All right, I can accept that, in very rare cases, the neologisms may be justifiable. Before a football match involving Manchester United, for example, a referee could - at least in theory - "pre-book" Wayne Rooney. It would save time later. (In fact, if I were the ref, I would do Cristiano Ronaldo in advance while I was at it, for diving.) Apart from that, however, there seems no excuse for the term. Booking is surely just booking, no matter how far it predates the exchange of money for goods or services. Yes, there is something called "history" and there is also "pre-history". But pre-history is the bit that is unrecorded. And if the theatre has no record of your "pre-booking", there wasn't much point in making it, was there?
As for "pre-planning", I agree that the term may have validity in the property development sector, as a composite preposition, eg: "Mr Dunlop made his political contribution when the shopping centre was at pre-planning stage". But there its grammatically legitimate use begins and ends. Whereas I also read recently about a leaked HSE document that proposed to limit "elective (pre-planned) surgeries".
We all accept that surgery is a complex thing. And it is certainly reassuring to know that those doing it are as well prepared as possible. But that there may be pre-planners as well as planners at work in the surgical departments of our hospitals will only encourage those critics who think the system is overstaffed.
MANAGEMENT consultants usually get the blame for these language crimes, as I say, and mostly they deserve it. But it may also be worth considering the role played by lawyers. Because for a profession that depends on linguistic precision, the law has created a whole sub-vocabulary in which practitioners may say the same thing twice, while implying that they have said two different things (and perhaps billing their clients accordingly).
Consider "aid and abet"; "fit and proper"; "null and void". These are just a few of the innumerable tautologies that the legal profession has given (and bequeathed) us, in which either of the two words would usually suffice.
Here are some other examples: Any and all; cancel and annul; cease and desist; covenant and agree; due and owing; each and every; force and effect; goods and chattels; have and hold; legal and valid; let or hindrance; peace and quiet; power and authority; repair and make good; residue and remainder; title and interest; sole and exclusive; successors and assigns; total and entire; true and correct; unless and until; will and testament.
Lawyers may protest that, historically, some of these paired terms really did mean separate things; and that variations persist even now. They risk repetition, therefore, to be sure to be sure. But they would say that, wouldn't they?
In the meantime, the language is littered with redundancies that only confuse people, and that in some cases even add to business overheads. Consider the cost of radio advertising, for example, in which every second counts. How much might finance companies save in a year if they just warned us that "terms" apply, and ignored the legal department's insistence that they have to mention "conditions" as well?
