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TITLE:         Do you "take" or "make" a decision?

AUTHOR:        Tim North

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Do you "take" or "make" a decision?
by
Tim North, http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com


A friend e-mailed me recently and asked why some people write
(and say) "take a decision" instead of "make a decision". 

Being a good friend, he researched his own answer before I got
around to replying. :-)  His investigation suggested that "take a
decision" is primarily British usage, whereas "make a decision"
is more common in the US.

A 'net denizen named "Trocco" provided the following insightful
comment:

    I was also surprised at the number of times I've read and
    heard "take a decision" in the last couple of years. Most
    of the sources were British (BBC, The Economist), but I've
    also noticed it creeping a bit into American speech as well.

    As far as I know, there is not yet a "decision-taking
    process". You can never be wrong with "decision-making
    process".

Recent feedback from a reader named "Cip" adds this helpful
information:

    In Spanish you "take" a decision, you never "make" one.
    Perhaps the rationale behind it is that you do not
    create/generate choices; the choices are there, available to
    you. 
    ...
    You will hear many Spanish speaking people in the US say 
    "I need to take a decision" due to their native language
    influence.

Interesting. "Taking a decision" still sounds a little strange to
me, but Cip's explanation is eminently reasonable.

A quick bit of Googling shows that, net wide, the "take" variant
is used only 6.6% of the time. On UK web sites, though, this
increases to 12%: almost double, but still a minority usage.


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