The Penguin Guide to Plain English

The notion o f gardens in progress along a road is absurd. The difference

between good writers and bad is that good w riters think about w hat they
are saying, w ord by w ord, and image by image.
entering a minefield
We find similar liberties taken w ith the expression to enter a minefield.
A divorce court faced with assessing the potential pension of a healthy man
of 38, and then calculating how much of it his divorcing wife is entitled to,
is entering a minefield.
The phrase is used here w ith a proper sense o f its meaning. But one m ust
question w hether it is proper to speak o f a divorce court as entering a
minefield. Surely the phrase is one that should be used only o f a person
or perhaps a vehicle. The reader will not easily picture the assembled
personnel o f a court aboard a tank or even a bus. Nevertheless, the above
usage is far less unsatisfactory than the following:
Once you start organizing walking expeditions for other people, you find
that your bright idea can turn into a minefield of snarling legislative traps.
Here one is unhappy w ith the notion of the bright idea turning into a
minefield rather than leading one into a minefield. And w hat is buried
in this minefield? Not explosives seemingly, but traps w hich snarl.
Users o f motorways know all about the inconvenience of being snarled
u p . But the threat o f being locked into an entanglement simply does not
fit w ith the m inefield image o f being blow n up by hidden explosives.
flash in the pan
The old flintlock had a flashpan to hold the gunpow der. It was hit by a
ham m er w hen the trigger o f the gun was pulled. The act o f firing was a
failure if there was a flash in the pan but no other result. Hence the use
of this m etaphor to describe the promising first display o f seeming
brilliance by someone w ho in fact produced nothing afterwards to justify
the promise. We read in a piece on flat racing:
Will they prove to be champions this year? Or just a couple of flashes in a
notoriously volatile pan?
Again we see the need to have full understanding o f the imagery w e use.
The w ord volatile has come to mean changeable. Unless one accepts an