Prerequisite: Responsibility—
Here's The American Heritage Dictionary definition and usage of responsible.
Begin definition
Responsible:
1.
Liable to be required to give account, as of one's
actions or of the discharge of a duty or trust.
2.
Involving personal accountability or ability to act
without guidance or superior authority: a responsible
position within the company. 3. Being a source or
cause. 4. Able to make moral or rational decisions on
one's own and therefore answerable for one's behavior.
5. Able to be trusted or depended upon; reliable.
6.
Based on or characterized by good judgment or sound
thinking: responsible journalism. 7. Having the means
to pay debts or fulfill obligations. 8. Required to
render account; answerable: The cabinet is responsible
to the parliament. Usage: Some critics have maintained that
responsible should not be used to describe things,
since only persons can be held accountable. The
application to things is justifiable, however, when
responsible is used to mean "being the source or
cause of." In an earlier survey, a majority of
the Usage Panel accepted the sentence Faulty
construction was responsible for the crash. In recent
years, many people have objected to the use of the
phrase claim responsibility with reference to the
authors of terrorist acts, as in A small separatist
group claimed responsibility for the explosion, in
which 30 passengers were killed. It is true that the
phrase is not entirely felicitous, inasmuch as it does
not convey the speaker's conviction that the action is
deplorable. But alternatives such as admit or take the
blame cannot be recommended either, since they would
imply misleadingly that the instigators had themselves
acknowledged that the action was wrongful. End of
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