Tag Archives: clarity

Concerning “Concerning”

When the doctor told me that something in my x-ray was “concerning,” I was alarmed.

My distress was not over my dislocated shoulder, which I somehow knew would heal just fine.

It was my reaction to his use of the word concerning as an adjective, which I had seldom if ever heard before, and which had something akin to a nails-on-chalkboard effect on my ears.

“You don’t use concerning that way,” I fumed silently as the doctor explained the shoulder’s ball-and-socket mechanics. To me, concerning was a perfectly useful preposition meaning “regarding” or “with respect to” or “on the subject of.” It was not a proper substitution for more familiar adjectives such as “alarming” or “disturbing” or “troubling.”

Not only did I soon learn that my position on concerning was mostly indefensible; I also began to hear it used as an adjective on a regular basis.

Searches have found the word used as an adjective in literature going back at least to the 1700s. It was not used commonly in American English until it began to take off in the late 1980s, but it is used commonly now, and it stands as yet another example of the fluidity of language over time. It also occupies a slightly different niche than some of its synonyms because it has a milder connotation (compare to alarming). Besides, several of those synonyms—distressing, disturbing, upsetting—are formed in the same way, so there is no justification for rejecting the similar usage of concerning.

Well, maybe one. It is a very specific case, but an important one if, like me, you strive above all for clarity, especially in writing. I always advocate recasting a sentence that is likely to confuse the reader momentarily, and that can happen with concerning precisely because of its common use as a preposition. For example, if we read “The police report was concerning,” we may initially think there is more coming, specifically, the subject of the report.

In that case, I would suggest changing concerning to troubling. I hate tripping up readers, which also is why I separate most multiple subject clauses with commas to keep the reader from momentarily mistaking the second subject for an object. (“The doctor fixed my shoulder and my brain learned to accept concerning as an adjective.”) But that’s a topic for another day.

Copyright 2017 Stephen Leon