Recently I was writing a tweet and typed “on account of.” Something about it seemed wrong to me, but I couldn’t say what. I rewrote my tweet, determined to look into the troubling phrase when I had a moment.
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines on account of as “for the sake of, by reason of,” and The Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms lists its meaning as “because of something,” as do other dictionaries. I was reaching for the latter meaning in my tweet, and the idiom dictionary gives the phrase some credence as a set phrase.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (MWDEU) states that on account of has been in use since 1792 and is considered casual speech. “Most [usage commentators] give it at least grudging acceptance, if only because they regard it as the lesser of two evils.” (The greater of the two evils is using on account of to mean because, which is considered nonstandard English). MWDEU notes that on account of appears in print, but not as frequently as because of, which this Ngram backs up:
Interestingly, The New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors suggests using on account of instead of due to. I don’t think anyone’s listening, though. Due to and because of are both more common in books between 1800 and 2008, with because of only recently becoming more popular than due to:
I’m not sure on account of is fitting for more formal copy. A search for the term in the Corpus of Contemporary American English returns 997 results, most of them from fiction:
In the kind of town where I grew up, few distinctions were made on account of money unless you were outright redheaded trash. —Roxanna Slade, 2011 (fiction)
However, a sizable chunk of the results came from academic writing:
Thus within the pale of Christendom, miracles become a central feature of the process of canonization. Believers, moreover, accept doctrines that are beyond reason not on account of miracles, but on account of authority. —Church History, September 2006
That last example just strikes a wrong chord for me, though. But then, I hesitated putting the phrase in a casual tweet.
On account of is acceptable English and is especially at home in casual writing or speech. You might even use it in more formal situations, such as academic writing. In my editing, I’ll let it stand when it fits the text. In my writing, though, I’ll pet my peeve and leave it out.
What do you think: would you use on account of in your writing?
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I don’t think I use it, but it’s not from conscious avoidance. And I definitely don’t use it to introduce clauses, on account of it sounds weird.
I always try to keep my writing condensed, so I avoid the wordy “on account of” (or worse, “due to the fact that”). To me, it just sounds like a child’s phrase, something Dennis the Menace would say: “I came home early on account of Mister Wilson trying to hit me in the head with a hammer.”
For my degree in the sciences (biology/chemistry), Freshman Composition was my only exposure to advanced writing–and it wasn’t a good experience. Part of my coursework toward my M.S. was a required class in Scientific and Technical Writing–and although the professor clearly ignored all the advice in the CBE Style Manual (our textbook), we should have learned to eliminate wordy and awkward usage. But to get the good grades, we had to please the prof–so we wrote with academic gobbledegook. A brief job as a staff writer at a daily newspaper knocked much of that academic bafflegab out of me–and then when I landed a job as a staff technical writer at a military base I was handed a style manual. That’s when I learned how to eliminate wordy and awkward jargonese–the folks using the radar units and missile launchers I was documenting needed clear and concise writing and not the engineering specifications. It was while working with government management that I found the excessive bureaucratic gobbledegook. The other writers and I would amuse ourselves by assembling pages of incomprensible stuff …. such as “Due to the fact that on account of because …. something won’t happen.” We’d also see another one of my pet peeves — “utilization” and “utilize” when what is meant is “use” or “usage” (if you really *must* have multiple syllables).
You’ve got a great post here… and I agree. It’s probably best to avoid using “on account of” in most writing. To my ears, it sounds archaic at best.
The master of “on account of” is Dave Barry. Here’s a quick find:
“When I was a youth attending St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Armonk, N.Y., every man, woman and child was issued a potted hyacinth on Easter Sunday. Then we’d sing a hymn with a lot of “alleluias” in it, and every time we got to an “alleluia” we’d all raise our potted hyacinths over our heads in a gesture of Major Religious Significance. I’m serious. You’d have this sea of potted hyacinths lunging up and down in semi-unison and occasionally crashing to the floor on account of it was hard to simultaneously hoist your hyacinth and hold your hymnal. It was during these services that I began to entertain serious doubts about organized religion.”
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Will Rogers, too:
“On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.”
Used judiciously, it conveys a certain folksiness, I guess.
Thanks for sharing those quotes, Mike. I think on account of does convey folksiness when used judiciously, and it works in your examples. It still rubs me the wrong way, though. I wouldn’t consciously use it in my writing, but I would consider its usefulness in my editing.
I’m editing a dissertation and the writer uses this expression. It “feels” wrong to me in a formal paper, but since it is not wrong in academic writing (what a way to back into a decision!), I’ll leave it alone. It just feels too idiomatic for me. I would not use it myself.
You could flag it and let your writer know that while correct, it may be too casual to the dissertation reviewers.