Not long ago, a columnist who covers the Supreme Court was writing about a defamation case from Iowa. The case involved a Methodist church that had been torn by dissension. The dissension, said the writer, “appeared to center around” a woman.

Center “around”? Tom Foote of Olympia, Wash., objected: “‘Around’ is an imprecise word that evokes the perimeter of a circle. It’s not possible to have a central focus at the same time one is meandering around an issue. The phrase should be stricken from everyday parlance because people use it to indicate a narrowing of perception when in fact it muddies the prose and makes it flaccid.”

The same reaction came from Norma Higgins of Centralia, Wash. “You sent me screaming to Strunk and White when you confused ‘center on’ and ‘centered around.’ The dissension didn’t center around. It centered on!”

There is nothing seriously wrong with the idiomatic phrase “to center around.” In Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage the authors cite examples of “center on,” “center around,” “center upon” and “center about,” taken from such authors as John Updike, Garrison Keillor, James Thurber and George Orwell. Current American usage, the editors say, “favors ‘on’ and ‘around.”‘

Two of my icons, Theodore Bernstein, who taught journalism at Columbia University, and John Bremner, who taught journalism at the University of Kansas, both felt strongly about the issue. Bernstein said: “The verb ‘center’ means to be collected or gathered to a point. Therefore, one may use ‘center on, ‘center in’ or ‘center at,’ but should not use ‘center around.”‘ Bernstein suggested such alternatives as “revolve,” “rotate” or “cluster around.” Bremner remarked that “it is physically impossible to ‘center around,”‘ but he was agreeable to “circle around” when the context is dynamic, e.g., “The protesters continuously circled around the stadium.”

In the situation immediately at hand, involving one strongly opinionated woman in a small congregation in a small town, it still strikes me as right to say that the dissension “centered around” her. The phrase evokes weather maps of hurricanes – the storm centers around an eye.

Betty Johnson of Chicago asks about “consensus.” She quotes from a new book by Robert Bork, who discusses “an area of international law in which there is little or no consensus.” Should not that be “consensus of opinion”? Ah, no. But then again, maybe yes.

Several things may usefully be said about “consensus.” First off, the word is not “concensus,” though many writers evidently think so. Second, a true consensus requires a group of some sort; two persons cannot reach a consensus. Third, the group need not be unanimous. Fourth, although it is a serious redundancy to write of a “general consensus,” it is no more than a benign redundancy to write of a consensus “of opinion.”

In his Modern English Usage of 1926, Henry W. Fowler decreed flatly that “‘consensus’ means unanimity, or unanimous body of opinion or testimony.” His successor in title, R.W. Burchfield, tends to decree roundly. He says that “consensus” demands merely general agreement, and he says of “consensus of opinion” merely that it is “somewhat tautologous.” Eric Partridge stands with Fowler on one point: A consensus is “the collective unanimous opinion of a number of persons.” Partridge says “consensus of opinion” is “at the best, loose.”

The editors of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage give “consensus” more than two columns of discussion and citation. Their conclusions are neither flat nor round. They are mostly oval. Specifically, more or less, the editors say to a writer: “The decision for you is whether you want to use ‘consensus of opinion,’ and make your meaning perfectly clear while running the risk of being wrongly censured for redundancy, or use ‘consensus’ alone and risk less than full clarity, perhaps. … You are safe using ‘consensus’ alone, and most writers in fact do so.”

My own advice to writers is first to be clear. We can always get fancy later on.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.

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