Published at superiorprose.com, August 2024:
One too-common mistake in journalism is the misuse of the verb refute.
For example, there’s this headline at a regional news website in my part of the world: “Neebing Minor Hockey refutes allegations from Lakehead Minor Hockey League.”
The problem here is that the Neebing organization did not refute the allegations. That is to say, it did not conclusively disprove them.
Rather, Neebing Minor Hockey disputed the allegations made by the Lakehead organization.
Neebing’s president, per the article, took issue with things said by Lakehead officials. That’s not the same as proving them wrong, which would be refuting.
Unless something is actually being disproven, journalists should use a different verb. Some suggestions are rebuke, dispute, rebut, deny, reject and counter.
Don’t wanna take my word for it? Well, the AP Stylebook agrees with me. “Refute connotes success in argument and almost always implies an editorial judgment,” it says.
The Oxford dictionary I have at home does seem to suggest refute could be used to mean simply “refuse or reject,” but I’m with the Associated Press in believing the word should not be used that way. If you mean to say reject, why use the less familiar refute? Your writing is no more concise with the latter, and you could be leading readers to wrongly believe something actually was proven false.
The New York Times is with me on this issue, too. Here’s its guidance, quoted in a 2018 Columbia Journalism Review column: “Rebut, a neutral word, means reply and take issue. Refute goes further, and often beyond what a writer intends: it means disprove, and successfully. Unless that is the intention, use rebut, dispute, deny or reject.”
The Canadian Press’s Caps and Spelling (23rd edition) unhelpfully lumps the two words together with this confusing entry: “refute, rebut (prove wrong; use with care).” The smart people at the news agency should know that rebut and refute are not synonyms.
Over at the Daily Writing Tips website you can find a succinct rundown on the nuances of deny, rebut and refute. To deny is to say “No, that’s not true.” To rebut is to provide reasons for saying the other person is wrong. To refute is to prove the other person wrong.
For clarity – and, as the Associated Press suggests, to avoid appearing to take sides – one should not use refute, rebut and deny interchangeably.
Write “refute” only when something has actually been proven wrong.
