Lessons of the Day: Like (as) in Five Ws of Journalism

In writing about similes the other day I began with an illustration that many writers consider grossly ungrammatical: “It (a simile) can adorn a sentence like a jewel adorns a woman’s throat.”

As every purist knows, the like in that sentence should have been as .

I too consider this usage gauche, and usually avoid it. I assumed that my editor had changed it from as to like , for reasons known only to him. But I called up my floppy disc and there it was. I had done it.

As I foresaw, it aroused the readers who like to assume that I deliberately make errors only to provoke outrage. Not guilty.

The rule is simple: When followed by a subordinate clause with a verb, the proper word is as --a conjunction: “Winston’s taste good, as a cigarette should.”

When there is no verb the word is like : “He fought like a tiger.” (Grammarians tell me that in that case the like is a prepositional adverb. I wouldn’t know.)

Strangely, though he condemns it as substandard, the sainted H. W. Fowler, in “Modern English Usage,” notes that many noteworthy writers have used like for as , including Charles Darwin.

He quotes Darwin: “Unfortunately, few have observed like you have done.” Fowler adds that the Oxford English Dictionary also gives examples from Shakespeare, Southey, Newman, Morris and “other writers of standing.”

“Every illiterate person uses this construction daily,” Fowler observes. “It is the established way of putting the thing among all who have not been taught to avoid it. . . . But in good writing this particular like is very rare. . . . The reader who has no instinctive objection to the construction can now decide for himself whether he shall consent to use it in talk, in print, in both, or in neither; he knows that he will be able to defend himself if he is condemned for it, but also that, until he has done so he will be condemned.”

Fowler then cites several examples of the misuse of like from newspapers, thus supporting his contention that it is common among the vulgar.

In their “Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage,” Bergen and Cornelia Evans write that “There is no doubt that like is used as a conjunction in the United States today and that there is excellent literary tradition for this.”

When the “Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage” asked its panel of writers and grammarians whether they would accept like as a conjunction either in speech or in writing, 98% said no in writing, 79% said no in speech.

Since l dislike that usage and am embarrassed at having used it, I am shocked to find that I was quoted, as one of the Harper panel, as accepting it in both speech and writing--thus being part of 2% and 21% minorities.

“The question has already been decided,” I answered with pretentious certainty. “It is pervasive, not only in speech, but in writing by generally careful writers, especially journalists, who have been frightened into thinking that like is always wrong. (‘It flew as an arrow.’) Of course as , in its proper place (‘as a cigarette should’) sounds much better than like and I’m not giving it up.”

So there you are. I have already expressed myself, in a supposedly authoritative context, as condoning a construction that it now embarrasses me to find myself using.

Meanwhile, Al Hix of Hollywood writes to question my reference to the five Ws of journalism as who, what, when, where and why.

“Back in the mid-30s,” he says, “I was editor of the Venice High Oarsman. In the late ‘40s, on the GI bill, I was editor of the USC Humor magazine Wampus (with a little help from my friends Art Buchwald and David Wolper).”

Having established those impressive credentials, Hix observes: “If my recall mechanism is working properly today, I believe that in both high school and university we were taught that the five Ws were actually four Ws and an H; who, what, when, where and how. In fact, I think it was the late great Roy (Doc) French, dean of SC’s J school, who advised us that the why belonged in editorials.”

Certainly how is an essential part of any newspaper lead. However, so is why. It cannot be limited to the editorial pages. Here is a good newspaper lead:

“She stabbed him with a butcher knife last night in her apartment because she loved him.” Who? She. What? Stabbed him. How? With a butcher knife. When? Last night. Where? In her apartment. Why? Because she loved him.

Actually the rule should be five Ws and an H.

At least that’s the way it was when Hix was editor of the Oarsman and I was editor of the Belmont Sentinel.

Alas, today it’s a rule honored only in the breach.