If it ain’t broke, don’t prefix it

If it ain’t broke, don’t prefix it: "When that Paddy Power data-breach story broke this week, it was reassuring to hear how the bookmakers were “proactively contacting” the 650,000 customers affected. I don’t know what the alternative would have been - some kind of passive contact, presumably – but that sounds time-consuming, and probably a bit creepy for those on the receiving end. N o, all things considered, proactively contacting customers was the right approach.
Of course, some linguists might quibble with the unnecessary prefix, arguing that the old-fashioned word “active” does a more than adequate job on its own. And that if Paddy Power had confined itself to “actively contacting” people, they wouldn’t have noticed anything different.
In fact, I’m reminded of my own most recent involvement with the company – a €20 bet on Brazil’s Fred to win the World Cup Golden Boot – which only reinforced my respect for the un-prefixed term.Alas, even in a team of incompetents, Fred’s immobility and general uselessness at the tournament was of lighthouse-in-a-bog proportions. Far from expecting him to be proactive, I would have settled eventually for signs of a pulse."



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