Massive reductions - up to 50% off!

Massive reductions - up to 50% off!

It has been more than two weeks since my last podcast. I have two excuses. The first is that I have had another bout of flu– not badly, but enough to make it difficult to do anything like writing or recording a podcast. My second excuse is much more exciting. I have just finished a project on which I have been working for several months. The computer programme, or software, which runs the Listen to English website is called LoudBlog. I have been rewriting LoudBlog, to add some new features. I have called the new programme PodHawk. If you are really interested, you can read all about PodHawk at www. podhawk. com.

Every day for the past couple of weeks, I have looked through the newspaper for a nice, light- hearted story that I could use in a podcast. But there have been no nice, light- hearted stories, only serious, depressing stories about the recession and unemployment. But yesterday I found some inspiration. I was in a traffic jam, behind a bus. It was a number37 bus, going from Birmingham to Solihull, but that is not important. On the back of the bus was the slogan“ Up to every5 minutes Monday to Saturday”.

Now, “ up to every5 minutes Monday to Saturday” is not very good grammar. And if you look up each word in a dictionary, it still won’t make any sense. “ Up to” indicates a maximum. If you see road sign which says that you can park for“ up to an hour”, it means that you may park your car for an hour, but not for longer. I know however what the bus company is trying to say. It wants to tell us that, on Mondays to Saturdays, there are buses every5 minutes at some times of the day. At other times of the day, the buses run less often– maybe every10 minutes or every15 minutes. But the bus company wants to tell us only the good news– sometimes there is a bus every5 minutes. So– “ Up to every5 minutes Monday to Saturday”.

In recent years, the phrase“ up to” has become very common when people want to tell you only the good news and not the not- so- good news. For example, at this time of year, many of the shops in Britain have sales. They reduce their prices to try to persuade us to buy all the rubbish we refused to buy before Christmas. This year, there have been lots of sales, because of the recession. You will see signs in shop windows which say something like“ Massive reductions– up to50% off”. This means, “ We have cut some of our prices. Some of the price cuts are big– 50% – but most of them are much smaller– maybe10% – and some prices we have not cut at all.” It does sound so much better to say“ Up to50% off”, doesn’t it?

“ Up to” is also a a favourite phrase in advertisements when they only want to tell us the good news. A car advertisement might say, for example, that the car has“ up to25% more space” or has“ up to30% better mileage“. An advert for a household cleaner might say that it has“ up to45% more cleaning power”. What is“ cleaning power”? How can I measure it? “ Up to45% more cleaning power” really, really does not mean anything.

We have an expression in English, to“ take something with a pinch of salt.” It means, to be a bit sceptical, a bit doubtful, not to accept something“ at its face value”. So, for example, Kevin tells Joanne about the truly amazing, truly wonderful things which his football team did at the match last Saturday. Joanne knows that Kevin often exaggerates, and that she does not need to believe every detail of what he says. She takes Kevin’s story“ with a pinch of salt”.

So, when you see“ up to50% off” or“ up to45% more cleaning power” or even“ a bus up to every5 minutes”, you know that they are only telling you the good news, and that you should take what they say with a pinch of salt.