The sense of sight

Stop, look and listen before you use the verb to see.

In editing Geist, we discourage reports that abstract nouns or periods of time have seen things: “1999 saw rising panic about the coming of Y2K”; “It was a policy that saw decreased funding for libraries”; and so on. Not long ago a radio broadcaster presented news of “an accident that saw a truck plunge over a bridge.” The verb to see has a lot of interesting meanings—to observe, to meet, to deduce, to understand, even to escort—but the meaning implied in these examples (whatever that meaning may be) isn't one of them.