Re: On a daily basis

Don Aitken wrote:
On Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:19:29 +0000, Nick
<1-nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

lyricaljohnnny@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
I hear this misused daily.

As an accountant, I may calculate interest on a daily basis, but I
would probably do it once a year.
The general use of "on an x basis" to mean "every x" or "once an x" is a bugbear of mine.

I don't read aue "on a daily basis", I do it daily. But you try getting anyone who writes businessese to say that.

Its popularity seems to be a fairly recent development. Gowers,
writing in the 1940s, has a section on the misuse of "basis", but is
mild in his treatment of this usage; "You may well allow it to stand
if you have written of staff paid on a weekly basis or of a house let
on a monthly basis, but do not despise 'by the week' or 'by the month'
as somewhat less pompos alternatives". He follows this with a list of
examples "which would not escape so easily".

And Gowers is attacking a lesser sin. His examples are the ones our accountant would accept as a technical term: where the unit of measurement is that period of time, so the payments are based on the week or the month - so rent is not just payable every week, but also for one week at a time. Today's users of the term don't even mean that much.

I have a rather nice copy of the Complete Plain Words, ex libris HMG, and do wonder that they can afford to have let it go.

.

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