In the event that
I can dream all CTA announcements. Every day, at least twice a day, I hear them. Some bus drivers are obviously big fans of the announcements, others prefer to tell, or yell, it in their own voices. I really don’t have any complaints about the CTA, except for one particular announcement haunting my life:
“By opening a ChicagoCard Plus account your fares are protected in the event that your card is lost or stolen.”
The “in the event that” just really annoys me. There are three words too many! Won’t a simple “when” or “if” do?
Every time I hear this announcement, I am reminded of William Strunk’s brilliantly observed notion that: “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires no that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
I don’t even complain all that much about the nasty smell in the Red Line trains or the Broadway busses, but please, just say “when” or “if.”
Dutch native Marc van Bree is a well-rounded marketing communications professional with more than 7 years of experience strategically communicating—on and offline—in a rapidly changing media environment. 
