This one has been bugging me for a while now, but the topic came up again on the weekend and it has compelled me to post.

A year or so ago, Australia introduced a new series of "anti-terror" laws, one of which was the ability to hold a suspect for a defined length of time without charge - for questioning etc. There was a lot of controversy over the law, but it hadn't actually been tested until just recently when an Indian doctor in Queensland was held for questioning over the recent UK terror threat.

Here's my beef: The law is known as preventative detention.

What's wrong with that, you ask? Let's look at some other -ive words for a moment. If you're inventive, you're capable of invention. If something's restorative, it's capable of restoration. So if something is preventative ... is it capable of preventation? Of preventating something?

Unless I'm way off base, the word is preventive. I've heard media commentators use the correct term (preventive detention) a few times, but the official name is apparently the incorrect one.

This is similar to the whole "orientated" over "oriented" debacle (eg. describing software as "object orientated" when they mean "object oriented"). People seem to want to add that extra "ta" into the middle of words. It happens so much, it's almost like it's addictative!