Bring and Take: The Ultimate Micro-nitpick

The first time I heard someone fuss over the difference between “bring” and “take,” I figured he was talking about a serious error people make in their speech and writing. It took me years to figure out that, really, they’re micro-nitpicking – zeroing in on the tiniest and most insignificant shades of two words with no reason other than a chance to say “gotcha.”

It’s not like they’re being helpful. I doubt anyone in the history of time has gotten drenched in a storm for not knowing whether to “bring” or “take” an umbrella.

Still, if you want to steer clear of the bring-vs.-take police, here’s some advice I’ve doled out before.

"Take" suggests movement away from the speaker. “Take this raincoat with you.” “Bring” suggests movement toward the speaker. “Bring me my raincoat.”

Of course, when the motion isn’t in relation to the speaker, this isn’t useful, as illustrated in the examples “My father used to bring/take bags of groceries to my mother” and “If we are going to the zoo, should we bring/take the camera?”

In my opinion, this proves that the stickler rule is almost as useful as no rule at all. People don’t really have problems using these words. A case-by-case sense on which one sounds better usually gets you better results than all the fussing and parsing in the world.

Tags: VERBS, WORD CHOICE

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2015 at 8:00 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.