Exercice du Style: Had better!
The following bit of pidgin appeared in an editorial in Tuesday’s Times:
The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, better urge his recalcitrants to get over it and start delivering that Washington Change they proclaim so loudly on the hustings.
There is, in English, an idiomatic expression, “to have better/best X,” meaning, “to have a possibly unacknowledged duty or responsibility,” where X is the verb describing the prescribed action.
You’d better get out of here!
He had best do his homework before dinner.
In vernacular speech, the auxiliary part of this expression is sometimes omitted.
I better get my ass in gear.
Pidgin is the minimal version of a language that can still be understood by others. It is pardonable in speakers in a language that is not their first. It is barbarous on the editorial page of The New York Times.
It will be tiresomely argued that everybody knows what the sentence means. This is not true. The New York Times is read by many foreigners — let’s at least hope that it is! — and while many of them doubtless have fluent reading comprehension of English, some undoubtedly do not. A struggling reader might well seize on “urge” as the verb in the sentence’s first clause. This makes some sense, but not very much, and such a reader could be forgiven for doubting his or her own comprehension.
It is also true that attentive readers of English will trip on the omission of “had.” There is no reason in the world for any reader to be obliged to pause over this sloppiness.
The only readers who won’t be inconvenienced by this solecism are the one’s who matter least: those who don’t read the Times.
English is endowed with loads of idiomatic expressions that mix verbs with other parts of speech. They must be used, if not sparingly, then with great care. And they must always be used properly and in full.