Yay! They Didn’t Beg!

“Begging the question” is an expression misused often enough that I need to celebrate when someone doesn’t make the goof. Begging the question is a logical falacy of using the thing you want to prove as evidence of the proof. Do a search in the search box on the right for more info and some bad examples.

Here’s a correct usage:

The news prompts the question: Will Delaware be next?

The news prompts the question: Will Delaware be next?

The writer uses “prompts” instead of “begs.” Here’s a link to the article, though the article itself doesn’t have that headline: https://www.delawareonline.com/story/money/business/2023/03/16/sheetz-is-coming-to-elkton-approaching-delaware-and-wawa

Here’s a picture that goes with the headline:

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I have several times criticized misuse of the expression “beg the question” (look it up), so I like it when someone gets it right:

(I quoted the two sentences after it in case you were curious about the answer to the question itself.)

Remember: “begging the question” is making the fallacy of offering what you want to prove as evidence for its proof.

Okay, I like pictures. Here’s one from the article:

Perhaps the second-most common logical fallacy (after non sequitur) is “begging the question.” Well, maybe post hoc. Begging the question is when you use the thing you’re trying to prove as evidence for its truth. For example, someone asks whether you were speeding, and you reply, “Well, I didn’t get a ticket, did I?” Mostly people say “beg the question” because they heard the phrase in class when they weren’t paying attention, so that’s what they say when they mean “beg to ask a question.” They mean what the guy correctly says in the first panel:

When something stimulates you to ask a question, that’s okay; just don’t say you’re begging the question.

PS—a non sequitur is when two things happen together and you say that one thing is the cause of the other. And post hoc means “after this (therefore because of this.)” They are pretty similar.

“Begging the question” is one of my favorite solecisms to complain about, and I’ve mentioned it a couple times. One of my favorite comic strips, David Malki’s Wondermark just posted two (count ’em) strips on this very subject. Here they are. Strip 1 (actually, it’s strip number 1234, no lie.):

And here’s the other one:

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what’s going on.

I often show mistakes in writing and use them as starting points for how to do it correctly. Here are a few places where they did it right!

One of my favorite things to complain about is the expression “begs the question.” It’s a logical fallacy in which someone offers the conclusion as evidence for the conclusion! Usually people use the expression to mean something completely different: “begs us to ask the question.” Or in this case, “…raises the question.”

I recommend you follow the link. It’s the one for May 17. When you get there, click the British flag in the upper left corner. The essay is too long to include here. So if you think a topic is begging you to ask (or raise) a question, say that.

I recently mentioned the problem of people misusing “affect” and “effect.” Here’s an example of using “effect” as a verb, meaning “to cause,” correctly. (Most of the time “effect” is a noun, meaning “a result.”)

Finding out who they are, and where they come from, is a quest being taken up by a handful of vocal advocates slowly effecting a change. Deborah Halber reports.

It’s in an article on Digg about identifying bodies.

Another one I love to hate is the expression “the exception proves the rule.” I haven’t seen anyone getting this right; I’ll put it in a post when I do.