‘TO INCLUDE’ DOESN’T
BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Clarity and meaning are elusive values in the language of DOD, much less the two together. The reasons for this are probably numerous, including the intent to leave something open to interpretation. (Image by Getty Image/seksan Mongkhonkhamsao)
IT GOES BACK A WRONG TIME When and how people in DOD started saying this is anyone’s guess. A finan- cial management expert I interviewed a few years ago theorized that it might have come from contract language, used precisely because to include does not mean including. Tat weasel-wording, the expert said, can give the government an out. Tat makes some sense.
“Te government shall provide to the contractor a variety of items, to include payment, reporting and other stuff.”
That sentence is weaselly. The phrase “provide to include” is effectively mean- ingless. Te real question, for my purposes, was to try to find out how long this has been going on. My father worked at the Pentagon in Air Force logistics back in the Vietnam era, and I never heard him say it. (If he had, my mother would have corrected him mercilessly.)
As many readers are aware, Army AL&T magazine, under different names and in slightly different forms, has been
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published by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology and its prede- cessor organizations since 1960. So, what better resource than Army AL&T’s own archives to see how long this strangeness has been going on?
A REALLY WRONG TIME So I went online to look in the Army AL&T archives, which contain the entire history of this publication.
However, looking through the archive might be problematic—editors should have changed it, except in quotes.
Not surprisingly, a search turned up vastly more correct uses of to include than incorrect. In the article, “Prevention of Deterioration Center Serves All National Defense Agencies,” by Dr. C.J. Wessel and Dr. W.M. Bejuki, the authors wrote: “Te materials and equipment encompassed in the scope of the Center work may be said to include all those utilized by the Armed Forces, exclusive of foods and drugs” [sic]. (Te Prevention of Deterioration Center
looked at the deterioration of military materiel.)
Say whatever else you want about that sentence, which appeared in the July 1961 issue of Army Research and Development Newsmagazine, a predecessor of Army AL&T, but it uses the infinitive correctly.
In April of that same year, another arti- cle, this one only two paragraphs long, “Army Shows Rapid Growth In Basic Research Grants,” also uses the infinitive correctly. “In less than 11 full months of operation since the basic research grants program was inaugurated by the Chief of Research and Development, it has expanded to include work in 126 univer- sities and colleges funded at $5,317,276,” the unnamed author wrote.
In both of those examples, the infinitive to include helps out the verb that precedes it by clarifying what the author wants to make known. In the first example, the verb formation is “may be said”: Te “work may be said to include” all of the equip- ment that the armed forces use. In the
Army AL&T Magazine
Summer 2020
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