Impacts

Although both my parents had to learn English as teen-aged immigrants, they were fastidious in the use of the language. They would not let me get away with using the word "never" if there had ever been a single instance to the contrary. (They are the reason I did not begin that last sentence with the words "They would never.") They made me conscious of linguistic nuance and precision, though they did not succeed in making me a grammar maven or a tight-assed usage freak.

I would rather appeal to logic and ease of understanding than to logic and grammar rules. I do not hesitate to end a sentence with a preposition, and I often begin a sentence (even a paragraph, like the next one) with a coordinating conjunction.  I know the rules, but I'd rather be understood than conventionally correct.

But one thing that infuriates me is the weakening of the language. About twenty years ago, when I first heard the word "impact" used as a verb (along with the neologisms "impact on" and "impactly"), I was opposed to the change of usage mainly because the word had always implied some dramatic effect. I thought it was ridiculous to speak of the impact of a feather falling into your nose as you slept, but not to refer to the impact of a bomb dropping.

Later I saw that the usage of the noun was changing as well. It was taking over as an all-purpose term from such words as effect, implication, consequence, ramification, and repercussion -- all of which had their own uses.

I am not opposed to language change per se, but I am unhappy with the mindless appropriation of a powerful word and with the weakening of nuance through the use of an all-purpose term. Such terms make thinking fuzzy; eventually they make thinking unnecessary. If everything becomes an impact, there is no way to know if the effect is to deteriorate or to strengthen or to develop or to kill. As a result, I have changed the word to something more precise every time I have encountered it.

I have worked with government writers long enough to understand the function, even the value, of weasel terms in the hands of a skilled propagandist. But the English language has enough of them already. The last thing we need is another. weakening of nuance,