"for" or "of"

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 16, 2004, at 11:19 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "for" or "of"
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>> Could you please tell me which would be preferred and why?
>>
>> ³How do I reduce my risk for heart attack or stroke?²
>>
>> ³How do I reduce my risk of heart attack or stroke?²
>>
>>
>> ³...reduce your risk for a heart attack or stroke.²
>>
>> ³...reduce your risk of a heart attack or stroke.²
>
> I prefer "risk of" in these. Why? Just because that's the usual
> construction AFAIK. Use of "risk for" in this grammatical context is
> not
> rare, but it's a lot rarer if you get away from the medical area. For
> example Google gives about 100 hits for "a risk of bankruptcy" but
> only 1
> (with a Bulgarian topic!) for "a risk for bankruptcy". IMHO, there is
> no
> reason why "a risk of stroke" should be grammatically different from "a
> risk of bankruptcy". Other sources (on-line British National Corpus,
> on-line news archive) seem to agree, at a brief glance.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>

I agree with Doug.

-Wilson Gray