I don’t believe there is any difference between “draw a distinction from” and “draw a distinction between”, but I would like to verify it. I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
“Obama promised to draw a sharp distinction from McCain and the Republicans in the fall campaign”.
“Ewanick said GM marketing would portray the Volt “as a real car,” attempting to draw a sharp distinction from pure electric vehicles like the Leaf, which lack a backup source of power once the battery is spent. “People don’t want to be stranded on the way home from work,” he said.”
If X draws a sharp distinction from Y, then X is distinguishing itself or something of its own from Y. If X draws a sharp distinction between Y and Z, then X is distinguishing Y from Z. So in the first example, Obama is saying that he’s different from both McCain and the Republicans. In the second example, Ewanick is saying that the Volt is different from the Leaf because the Volt has a backup source of power, which the Leaf lacks. It’s the same idea, just slightly different syntax.
“Draw a distinction from…” is bad English, on a par with “different than …”. Some people may use it occasionally (though I can’t say I have come across it very much), and, maybe, if more and more people start using it, it will eventually come to be considered acceptable, but it makes me wince, and induces brief puzzlement about what is actually meant. I would certainly hope that any alert and competent editor would insist that it be corrected either to an expression wherein a distinction is drawn between X and Y, or one where X is distinguished from Y. Presumably the use of “draw a distinction from…” arises from the mixing up of those two acceptable constructions.
Someone who does not understand the difference between the study of a language and the use and teaching of a language, will, no doubt, shortly be along to tell us that if anyone ever uses a construction it is ipso facto correct.
Agreed, and I suspect the error comes from confusion with the adjective form of the word, as in “distinct from”.
It may be arguably correct to use “from” in constructs like “agnosticism is a significant distinction from atheisim”, but one always draws or makes a distinction between, among, or with things. “From” in such a context conveys the confusingly jumbled sense of having inferred a distinction, as opposed to asserting one.
No, that is even worse. A thing, like agnosticism, can’t be a distinction. “Agnosticism is significantly distinct from atheism,” or “Agnosticism maybe significantly distinguished from atheism,” are OK.
You may be right, and I did hedge on it a bit, but I’m not sure it’s quite so clear-cut as that. “Departure” is not a “thing”, either, and a sentence like “his thesis is a departure” is nonsense – yet one could perfectly well say “his thesis is a significant departure from conventional thinking”. That pretty much seems to parallel “agnosticism is a significant distinction from atheism”. It’s the comparative phrase that has become the referenced object, no? Still, something like “agnosticism makes a significant distinction with atheism” would probably be better.
In any case, the usage examples in the OP are wrong.
And I assume your “agnosticism maybe significantly distinguished …” was supposed to be “agnosticism may be significantly distinguished …”. That’s OK, it counters my “atheisim” typo!
That would be a ridiculous assertion, indeed. Now, if anyone ever uses a construction and the meaning they intended is the meaning interpreted and acted on by the recipient, that would be a valid construction, but not necessarily a register-appropriate construction.
Well the examples in the OP are not very difficult to interpret, and I doubt whether anyone would be likely to misunderstand the intended meaning, but I cannot think of a “register” in which they would be “valid”, unless it is the carelessly ungrammatical register.
That’s an interesting use of the word “valid”. Register can run the gamut from the most formal English to the most obscure colloquialisms and whimsical micro-dialects of small groups. Taking this to its logical conclusion, there are situations in which I might make myself quite clearly understood by means of assorted grunts and gestures, thus fully meeting your definition of “a valid [language] construction, but not necessarily a register-appropriate construction” while pretty much imitating an orangutang. What does that tell us that is useful about the rules of English? If we’re going to address questions about the formalized and agreed-upon rules of language, we have to assume a context in which we care about rules in the first place.
