On Begging the Question

Being nothing if not a pedant, I was obviously gonna have a look at The Grauniad’s style guide [it’s the one we use at work, though i’d caution against looking there], which reminds me: the creeping acceptance of using the phrase ‘begging the question’ to mean ‘such and such raises the question…’ is something that never ceases to send me into an apopleptic grammatical rage.

Having been well versed in the black arts [erm, that would be philosophy, rather than html], all i can say is wrong, wrong, wrong.

And if you ever come round my house claiming that you’re begging questions, i’ll kick you in the teeth and leave you to the mercy of the vicious attack dogs that i keep in the yard…

Posted at 2am on 09/01/02 by Leon McDermott to the misc. category.
Permalink · Add to del.icio.us