Facilities?

Yesterday I went over to Barnes and Nobles after work. While I was just browsing, I chanced to come up on William Strunk Jr. and EB White's - The Elements of Style. The book is now in its 4th edition and is orginially pretty old work (1918). It was originally written by Professor William Strunk Jr. EB White was his student and has now added to this classic. The beauty of this book is that it lays down few simple rules, easy to commit to memory, which can make one's writing a pleasure to read. There is a chapter which describes frequently misued words and phrases and there was something I found funny. In the US the term for jail is "correctional facility" which I had always found an attrociously wrong use of the word facility. Well, I was happy to see that Professor Strunk noted that too! He was not happy about jails and hospitals among some other institutions being termed as "facilities".

BTW, the original book is now available online at http://www.bartleby.com/141/.
Disclaimer : I have not read the book entirely so don't blame the book or me for my sloppy blog writing!