A guest Log post by Bob Ladd opened my eyes to a language issue I had never noticed:
A few days ago I received an editorial decision letter from a journal, which included a request to deal with a few typos. I had begun a sentence with the phrase “In the interests of brevity,” and the editor wanted me to remove the final -s from the word “interests”. Since I know that the editor is not a native speaker of English, my first reaction was to ignore the request, but I thought I should back up my insistence that this was not a typo with some sort of evidence, so I searched for the phrases “in the interests of” and “in the interest of” on Google n-grams. To my surprise, I discovered that both versions of the expression occur, with a roughly 60:40 preference for the version with “interest”, and that this proportion has been roughly stable since the early 20th century. Since Google’s book corpus permits the user to distinguish British and American English, I could also see that the version with “interests” is more common in BrEng and the version with “interest” in AmEng, but that both versions occur in both varieties.
He ends up with this:
I have never seen this difference cited as an example of British/American variation, and nor do I know of any prescriptive grumbling about people using the wrong version. In fact, until I received the editorial review last week, I was completely unaware of the existence of this variation. The consistency in my own writing suggests that individual speakers may settle on one form or the other and use it exclusively, but that the choice is essentially random.
Since modern sociolinguistics has made clear that much variation is meaningful, this conclusion is vaguely troubling. Only one observation from Google n-grams suggests something other than randomness: there is a striking diachronic difference that suggests that the choice between the two versions may once have meant something. Over the two centuries of the Google Books corpus, AmEng consistently prefers the version with “interest” in a ratio of about 3:1, while in BrEng there was a marked shift in the second half of the 19th century: over the course of 50 years or so British usage swung from 3:1 in favour of “interest” (as in AmEng) to 3:1 in favour of “interests”. The new British preference for “interests” then remains consistent through the 20th century, and this is what averages out to the 60:40 proportion in 20th century English as a whole. Could there have been a social motivation for the change in British usage?
For what it’s worth, here’s what the OED (entry revised 2024) says:
P.3. in the interest(s) of: † (a) (In early use) in support of; acting or operating to the advantage of (a particular person, faction, cause, etc.) (obsolete); (b) out of concern or consideration for; for the sake of.
1653 A Declaration of the High and Mighty Muggulls of the Low-Countreys, concerning their joyning with, and aiding the King of Denmarks Navy in the Interest of the King of Scotts.
Mercurius Democritus No. 49. 3781716 The Women of our Island, who are the most eminent for Virtue and good Sense, are in the Interest of the present Government.
J. Addison, Freeholder No. 4. ⁋11771 The party in the interests of Lewis began to lose ground.
O. Goldsmith, History of England vol. I. 3471801 He did not choose to keep a clerk, who was not in his interests.
M. Edgeworth, Forester in Moral Tales vol. I. 1291858 ‘In the interest’ (to use a slang phrase just now coming into currency) of enlightened patriotism.
T. De Quincey, Selections Grave & Gay vol. IX. Preface 101884 In the interests of humanity there is no need to regret the change.
Manchester Examiner 27 May 5/11953 We shall define mainstream fiction as any fiction which is not fantasy or science fiction, an arbitrary distinction made in the interests of clarity.
R. Moore in R. Bretnor, Modern Science Fiction 951978 In the interest of time, I felt I should go ahead and notify the president..of my decision.
Associated Press (Nexis) 7 July2011 Surely, in the interests of domestic harmony, there should be an HRH HR department to take new members of the Firm through bowing and curtseying.
Daily Telegraph 27 July 21/2
The De Quincey quote about “a slang phrase just now coming into currency” is striking, and I am pleased to see the OED citing Modern Science Fiction.
As I said in my comment at the Log, if I had run across “In the interests of brevity” back when I was still a professional copyeditor I would have unhesitatingly changed it to “In the interest of brevity.” Now I know better, but I am left in a phraseological quagmire. What do you all think?
Say, given the concern that Trump is overstepping
and given the concerns that Trump is overstepping
affords no easy solution, grammatically nor constitutionally.
Not sure of the relevance…
(Not that relevance is a prerequisite, of course. It just struck me as an odd comment.)
I was just struck perhaps irrelevantly by this statement of St. Paul’s: Τοσαῦτα, εἰ τύχοι, γένη φωνῶν ἐστὶν ἐν κόσμῳ καὶ οὐδὲν αὐτῶν ἄφωνον. (in ESV: “There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning”) This for me resonated with Ladd’s point that we presume variation is meaningful; YMMV.
I think De Quincey’s “slang” characterization may refer to sense (b), which it’s the first citation for.
I’d use “in the interests of” only when talking about more than one interest. I think.
On a possibly related subject, “in regards to” is increasing in proportion to “in regard to”. I feel that I hear the plural at least as often as the singular, but the plural is still much less common in books. Ngram result with percentage and with absolute numbers.
(i suspect “in regards to” was started by “as regards”.)
Try some other construction if author and editor cannot agree:
for the sake of brevity ~ for brevity’s sake.
Non-native me immediately reacted to “in the interests of clarity”, and I thought Bob Ladd’s reflections on being corrected should take a completely different direction – maybe to how he as a native speaker might mix up phrases he perfectly well knows to keep apart because motoric memory works faster than the conscious production of written words.
So what made me think that? To me, “In the interests of” would seem to mean “on behalf of, for the benefit of” not some abstract good like “clarity” but an actual person (or company, or nation) – i.e. interests being actually defined benefits rather than philosophical abstractions
Nineteenth-century British public men stood for election “in the [Liberal/Conservative] interest”, not “interests”.
Some people always say/write “on the grounds [of/that]”; other have singular “ground” unless multiple reasons follow.
[ETA] I think I have “on the grounds that” but “on grounds of”.
Jerry Friedman:
On a possibly related subject, “in regards to” is increasing in proportion to “in regard to”.
Related it is. And compare “these advancements”, which is subtly gaining ground on “these advances” – as I noted here a little while ago in respect of academic English that I edit (ngrams).
I also agree about confusion with “as regards”. More generally I detect (of course) a slow drift toward less “natural” forms, or sometimes more “marked” forms: complication by pluralising, addition of suffixes and such, redundant extra words, or substitution with an alternative that sounds more elevated or abstract to demonstrate sophistication: vicious cycle rather than vicious circle; double-edged sword rather than two-edged sword; individuals rather than persons; unbeknownst rather than unbeknown.
Akin to “for you and I”, diagnosable as a common hypercorrection.
I was completely unaware of the plural form until just now. I suppose I’ve probably come across it before, but my brain probably automatically “corrected” it without me ever noticing.
[BrEng] I think I usually go with the plural/certainly wouldn’t correct an author to the singular. OTOH I doubt I’d even notice if they preferred singular.
WRT brevity, I could make up some justification I have many readers, whose interests are diverse: all would be served by my brevity.
Yikes, I made a comment here that awaits moderation, and I fear I left it rough-hewn and ungrammatical. The horror! In any case I now add this to its end:
…
Compare also, of course, “between you and I” – which we normally take as a hypercorrection, whatever it was in the letter from Antonio to Bassanio: “[A]ll debts are clear’d between you and I, if I might but see you at my death.”
I didn’t know the plural form either.
It’s quite extraordinary that there are two competing forms of which most people not only use only one but are only aware of that one! Hard to have a peevers’ war when nobody knows about the enemy…
complication by pluralising, addition of suffixes and such, redundant extra words, or substitution with an alternative that sounds more elevated or abstract to demonstrate sophistication: vicious cycle rather than vicious circle; double-edged sword rather than two-edged sword; individuals rather than persons; unbeknownst rather than unbeknown.
a key part of the current flavor of Plastikwörter!
Yes. See also “reported incidences of” rather than “reported incidents of”. Further googling confirms that incidents was usually meant. A kind of double pluralising, as if the form were incidentses? (Compare “the thing is is that X”, and the like.) More likely simply that incidence has been heard and adopted, but not understood. Heh: “many reported incidences”. Examples like this, from that search: “In Vietnam there are many reported incidences of food poisoning caused by microbial infections, chemical contamination and natural toxins.” The search elicits this from Google: “Did you mean: ‘many reported incidents’ “
Then I’m wondering why they’re acting as proofreader.. I suppose because journals expect editors/reviewers to be gatekeepers of last resort.
Adding myself to the list of people who didn’t even know that the plural form exists.
Native BrEng speaker here. My automatic usage is the plural, as a way of saying “for the sake of”. I’m wondering whether it came in to distinguish “interest” (as in “skin in the game”) from “interest” (as in “curiosity about”)? It feels right, though clearly not for AmEng speakers. Ditto “reasons” and “reason”, perhaps: “I have my reasons”, makes sense, idiomatically, whereas “I have my reason” does not.
And what about “for the purposes of X” vs. “for the purpose of X”? These are different to my ear, but is the singular preferred in AmEng here, too?
Not sure of the relevance…
AFAICT the relevance is that the phrase “given the concern(s) that Trump is overstepping” parses very differently depending on whether the word is “concern” or “concerns”. I guess the latter can also parse as the former, but not vice versa, I think.
(Slightly reminiscent of my own pet example: “Please stop calling people you disagree with Nazis” / “Please stop telling people you disagree with Nazis”, one of which was an actual Reddit post title and the other was my misreading of it that was only two letters off. I think the example in this thread is much more interesting, though.)
By the way, “In the interest of brevity” is self-defeating. “For brevity” is briefer. The longer version would make a good beginning for what Safire called a fumblerule: “In the interest of brevity, try not to use excessively verbose expressions consisting of pleonasms and other unnecessarily redundant phraseology.”
AFAICT the relevance is that the phrase “given the concern(s) that Trump is overstepping” parses very differently depending on whether the word is “concern” or “concerns”. I guess the latter can also parse as the former, but not vice versa, I think.
But, but, there are zillions of words where the plural/singular difference makes a semantic difference! I just don’t see the point in bringing up one of them, when the whole point of the post is that for this particular word it doesn’t, and the two are used interchangeably.
Adding myself to the list of people who didn’t even know that the plural form exists.
Ditto.
@AntC
It strikes me as a shockingly irrelevant remark, although I suppose we might intuit there’s an omitted “who never learned English (or copy-editing) sufficiently well.”
In the U.S. there are plenty of folks who are not “native” English speakers but who immigrated to the U.S. as children and as adults have full native-level fluency. Typically mentioning that someone is not a native speaker (outside a discussion of their childhood) would come with an implicature that the particular someone has not mastered English as an L2 to native-like fluency, because otherwise it would likely be irrelevant.
Right. There are no proofreaders; any proofreading not done by the reviewers, the editor or the authors themselves is just not done. Typos are routinely published.
Interest(s) and forms of concern(s) are associated by OED and other dictionaries, as, in part, quoted in the initial post.
Maybe my comment was rash, irrelevant, and odd. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Oh, no problem — irrelevant is fine around here! I was just wondering what you had in mind.
I was aware of “in the interests of” but I’m not sure if I’d use it or not.
On a possibly related subject, “in regards to” is increasing in proportion to “in regard to”. I feel that I hear the plural at least as often as the singular, but the plural is still much less common in books
Bate your breath no longer. In the COCA spoken section, “in regards to” outnumbers “in regard to” 280 to 243, and in the blog section 1284 to 503. In the other sections and overall, “in regard to” wins, but the margin has been decreasing in the years covered (1990-2019).
Boringly, “interest” and “interests” both seem fine to me. I’m not at all sure of what I’d say myself now, Because Heisenberg. “Interests”, probably.
I use the singular, but I was aware of both and wouldn’t bat an eyelid at either.
See now Mark Liberman’s follow-up post, responding to a comment “I would gamble that t is mistakenly inserted in in’eres[s], which is ambiguous to plural”: