Mind your language | 19 July 2008

Although I do not smoke, I find my sympathies drawn more and more to persecuted smokers. Outside Victoria station an aggressive notice says: ‘It is against the law to smoke in these premises including under this canopy.’ Never mind that the canopy, really a porte-cochère, is open to the elements, with a broken roof-pane that lets rain pelt the taxi queue, nor that the welcome Sir Nigel Gresley regularly enters the train shed smoking powerfully. What grates is to be bossed about in bad grammar.

Including is a participial adjective. In neither of the ways that it is used can it qualify an adverbial phrase such as ‘under this canopy’. It would be correct to say ‘under canopies, including this one’. It would be correct to say ‘including this canopy, there are eight roofs under which smoking is illegal’. The latter construction is described by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘a kind of active of the passive absolute clause’.