ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

With 'mitigate' – is the it possibility which is to be mitigated, or the possible event? The possibility is discrete from the event if you see what I mean.

NB I fully expect to be shown to be wrong.

crosspost

Technically, it seems to mean the latter, but once you start thinking about the words on that technical of a level, you start wondering why the word "possibility" is used. "Possibility" is kind of strict -- things are possible or not -- as opposed to words like "likelihood" or "chances," which imply more of a spectrum of odds. So now, in addition to the original ambiguity, you can start thinking about whether the phrase is supposed to mean the former of those things (trying to make a possible event impossible) or the latter (trying to reduce the chances of the event). It depends on the type of event, I guess.

On the plus side, if you want your readers to start having complex thoughts about what words really mean, then yes, this phrase is a great one.

An ESL client for whom I'm doing some editing wrote:
"Jim hands the last sheet of paper to gloomy Jeff."
I changed this to:
"Jim hands the last sheet of paper to a gloomy Jeff."
Now aforementioned client wants to know why I put the "a" in before "gloomy". He's quite right to ask this, as he's trying to learn, but for the life of me I can't explain why I did it -- it just sounded more idiomatically correct to me. Is it GRAMMATICALLY correct and can anyone give me a sound rule to trot out to him (because I've looked in all the bleedin' resources I can think of -- online, Chicago, Copyeditors' Handbook -- but am not quite sure what to actually look for here) or is it wrong and I've lost my mind? Perhaps I should just admit defeat and tell him to recast as "to Jeff, who looks gloomy"... TIA for helping out and saving me reputation...

Nabisco, if you can give me a good explanation of the practical semantic difference between "trying to make a possible event impossible" and "trying to reduce the chances of the event", I will stop thinking that you get totally bonged out when you think about language.

I can't find a rule on the "a gloomy Jeff" construction but you could make an argument that "Gloomy Jeff" sounds like a proper name whereas "a gloomy Jeff" describes the current gloomy incarnation of this particular person named Jeff. That is totally me talking out of my ass, though.

the practical semantic difference between "trying to make a possible event impossible" and "trying to reduce the chances of the event"

... that's more just a random thought on top. Because yeah, I think there's a slight difference between how we talk about things being "possible" and the way we talk about them being "likely."

For instance, if a nuclear technician says "the possibility of a meltdown is unacceptable," then the solution might be to shut down the reactor entirely (because a meltdown is either possible or not).

Whereas if he says "the likelihood of a meltdown is unacceptable," then the solution is just to take steps to reduce the chances of a meltdown.

So I just mean there's a difference between possibility and probability -- one's more absolute, the other's more scaled -- and the connotations of "possibility" versus "likelihood" match up with that.

that's how it is; i don't like the way it looks. what would you do?

"23% of 13–15-year-olds"

September is just around the corner; grammar is in the air!

So the rich ones took buses into poorer neighborhoods just so they could try tobacco?

and yes it is countries.. the phrase appears so often that i wonder if it would be ok to say "(LMICs)" after the first ref and then just use that