It Goes Without Saying

— That unpleasing and un-English phrase, “ It goes without saying,” is rapidly invading not only the columns of our best magazines, but the pages, also, of many of our most highly appreciated books. Authors of quite good reputation, men and women, who pride themselves on the purity and grace of their style, and whose work is really able, think nothing, nowadays, of introducing a paragraph with the uncouth line. This offense against good English — this mortal sin, I feel tempted to call it—has grown to be the fashion within the last few years, and now one can hardly take up a newspaper or a magazine without being confronted by it.

Cela va sans dire, of course, we can all understand. In French it is not meaningless, nor is it inelegant. As the French use it, it has a widely different meaning from the English version. There is no genuine equivalent for it in any language out of France, where it originated. Dumas uses it with good effect in La Comtesse de Charny, and other writers have followed him. The literal translation, as we have it, is not effective, it grates on the ear, and there is nothing strong or helpful about it. To my mind, it rather tends to weaken the force of the text. Why not say at once, and be done with it, “ it is an evident fact,” “ it is a natural conclusion,” “it is a truism,” “nobody disputes it,” “it is admitted ” ? But what “ goes ” without saying ? Can anybody tell ?

Statistics could be produced to show how popular the objectionable phrase has become. In a single number of one of our most largely circulated magazines I have noticed it three times, and twice in one article. In the ordinary newspaper one meets it much more frequently, the editor in chief, the local reporter, the foreign correspondent, and the advertiser contributing the line in question constantly. It has taken such a hold that even the purely literary journals, on both sides of the Atlantic, do not scruple to disfigure their pages with it. That it ought to be expunged from the letterpress of at least our best writers certainly “ goes without saying.”