Mistakes People Make With English, Item 1
I don’t really consider myself a prescriptivist, but I do belong to the “don’t talk like a jerk” school of linguistics. Generally I take the view that while some “incorrect” usages of English are fine in non-formal settings, e.g. “there’s” for “there are”, ending sentences in prepositions, or not using capitals when you’re on MSN… other usages will make you look like a big moron no matter when you say them!!
Case in point:
Begging the Question
“Beg the question” doesn’t mean “bring up the question”, “raise the question”, “prompt the question”, “demand the question” or “invite the question”.
Rather, “begging the question” (question here in the sense of “issue in point”) is actually a specific type of logical fallacy, often the same as a circular argument, defined in Fowler’s Modern English usage as “the fallacy of founding a conclusion on a basis that as much needs to be proved as the conclusion itself”. It’s usually when you take for granted what you’re trying to prove (that is, your conclusion is implicitly also one of your premises), e.g. “God must exist because the Bible says He does”, or “lying is wrong because people should tell the truth”, but may also be, more generally, when one of your explicit or implicit premises is at least as assumptive or controversial as your conclusion, e.g. “All murder is morally wrong, therefore abortion is morally wrong”.
Use the phrase in this sense!!! If you’re talking about raising a question, then for the good of us all just say “raising a question”. Maybe “beg for the question” kind of means the same as “demand the question”? At a stretch? But the examples I gave are certainly more elegant phrasings and as a bonus they don’t make you look like you don’t know anything about informal logic.
This public service announcement has been brought to you by the letters C and S, as in “Claire is Sick :(”.
Edit: Wikipedia list of common misconceptions is interesting!