Pretentious Demonstratives

The demonstrative adjectives (and pronouns) are these, those, this, and that. You need them when you have to point something out explicitly. A lot of times, however, plain old the works fine. Using a big word (those is the most common culprit in this case) when a simpler one does the job is being a little bit pretentious, what I call a pretentiousism.

Here’s an example from the mission statement of a Federal agency (where, I admit, a bit of pretentiousness might be expected, and they might call it “being formal.”). But even the Feds might sound friendlier if they write more plainly. I’ll make the guilty word bold so you can see what I’m referring to:

The mission of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is to enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the United States and bring to the criminal and civil justice system of the United States, or any other competent jurisdiction, those organizations and principal members of organizations, involved in the growing, manufacture, or distribution of controlled substances appearing in or destined for illicit traffic in the United States; and to recommend and support non-enforcement programs aimed at reducing the availability of illicit controlled substances on the domestic and international markets.

Here’s the sentence trimmed way down:

The mission of the DEA is to bring justice to those organizations involved in illegal drugs.

Now get rid of “those” and replace it with “the”:

The mission of the DEA is to bring justice to the organizations involved in illegal drugs.

In fact, in this case, you can even get rid of the “the”:

The mission of the DEA is to bring justice to organizations involved in illegal drugs.

Here’s the rule of thumb: If you can use the instead of these, those, this, or that, do so.

(You might have noticed that I removed the comma after “organizations.” It shouldn’t be there. But that’s a lesson for another day.)