Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

Kevin <parogon@gmail.com> wrote in news:00f2c248-3cac-4019-ba80-
bb857d96cd06@j14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com:

I would use 'goes on stream' for the plant and 'comes on stream' for the
product of the plant. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because the plant is some
distance away, but whatever it produces comes to me (potentially). The
lights in this house come on, but the lights in that house over there go
on.

Peter

Don't think about it.  Just use whatever comes out of your mouth.
Since these people are the only ones you know using this phrase, yo'll
end up using it like they do.   There is no really no difference in
the two except the way people use it.

When a plant FIRST BEGINS operation, it "goes on-stream". And you
heard, not saw, people say that.

I agree with others that "go" and "come" differ at most only subtly.

There's no consistent distinction. Either can be used, though
some people may make subtle distinctions between them,
or hear such distinctions, whether the original users did or not.

The discussion on this thread, and on many other threads on a.e.u
and a.u.e, can serve as an example of a prominent fallacy about
English and language use in general, what Arnold Zwicky calls
the One Right Way (ORW) theory, with two parts (to quote Arnold):

"(1) There is One Right Way to use an expression;
     a form should have only one meaning.

"(2) There is One Right Way to express a meaning;
     a meaning should be expressed by only one form.
     No true synonyms."

This is of course nonsense.  No language (certainly not
English) has *ever* worked like that. For a list of the
many posts addressing individual cases of ORW, see
http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/one-right-way/

There are of course many other fallacies, like Avoid Needless
Words (ANW) and Include All Necessary Words (IANW), which
always hang up on what counts as Needless or Necessary.
You can find out about them from Arnold's blog, too.
Check the "For reference" category there:
http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/category/for-reference/

I forbear to deal with them here, however.
Life is short, though silliness goes on forever.

-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue
 Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps,
 experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.
                                      -- Hippocrates