Do you "take" or "make" a decision?
By
Tim North
info@betterwritingskills.com
http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com
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A
friend e-mailed me recently and asked why some people
write (and say) "take a decision" instead
of "make a decision".
Being
a good friend, he researched his own answer before
I got around to replying. :-) His investigation suggested
that "take a decision" is primarily British
usage, whereas "make a decision" is more
common in the US.
A
'net denizen named "Trocco" provided the
following insightful comment:
I was also surprised at the number of times I've
read and heard "take a decision" in the
last couple of years. Most of the sources were British
(BBC, The Economist), but I've also noticed it creeping
a bit into American speech as well.
As
far as I know, there is not yet a "decision-taking
process". You can never be wrong with "decision-making
process".
Indeed.
"Taking a decision" still sounds very strange
to me. As an Australian, I usually favour British
usage (Did you spot the extra "u" back there?),
but in this case the US usage seems far more natural.
A
quick bit of Googling (Did I just invent a word?)
shows that, net wide, the "take" variant
is used only 6.6% of the time. On UK web sites, though,
this increases to 12%: almost double, but still a
minority usage.
And
"no", it seems I didn't just invent the
word "Googling". It's on around 165,000
web pages. Not even close, Tim!
You'll
find many more helpful tips like these in Tim North's
much applauded range of e-books. More information
is available on his web site, and all books come with
a money-back guarantee. http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com
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