Month: October 2024

#595

i newspaper, October 31, 2024

I grew up in the hot metal era, when subs were subs. We were not expected to be typesetters, proof-readers and compositors all in one (for me and many others it was horrible to be responsible for so many skilled people being out of a job, notwithstanding the Spanish practices that existed).  One of the few advantages of ‘new tech’, as we called it (no doubt the term is something far more up to date now), is the spell-checker. It won’t pick up the difference between ‘their’ and ‘there’ (though I expect it soon will) but it would stop your publication looking ridiculous with ‘Rubgy’. Use it.

#594

 

Times, October 30, 2024

Quality control at the Times is now on a par with Mail Online, viz non-existent. How anyone above the age of 13 can write ‘snuck’ is beyond me, and presumably it was another young person who did not know that the James Bond film is called A View to a Kill, even though it must have been on telly a hundred times. Someone should be monitoring copy so that silly mistakes like this do not get into the paper.

#593

 

 

i newspaper, October 30, 2024

Dashes are used too frequently and often wrongly, as here.  They should be used only for a surprising twist to a sentence, such as ‘Jason Bugby is three months old – but he is already a member of Mensa’, or to enclose something which does not fit into the main subject matter of the sentence, such as ‘Despite spending so much time abroad – last year he was in England for only two months – Lord Freeman maintains a fully staffed house in Hertfordshire’.  In this case I would have put: ‘Patrick Fitzsimmons, owner of a north London pub, the Faltering Fullback . . .’ so that the reader does not need to wonder for a millisecond what on earth the Faltering Fullback is.  In most cases dashes can be replaced by commas or even deleted.

#592

i newspaper, October 29, 2024

An extraordinary number of writers are under the gross delusion that they are wordsmiths, and demonstrate this by using obscure words and mangled syntax.  Sports journalists are particularly afflicted, and this is the worst example I have seen in a long time. In all modesty, if I haven’t heard of a word it’s a good bet that most readers haven’t either, and they don’t like being made to feel ignorant. According to the Collins dictionary, ‘cantillating’ enjoyed a moment in the sun in 1768 but for the last 150 years or so its use has been negligible to nil. It means ‘chanting’, but it cannot be used in the way this writer has done – you could not say ‘the fans have been chanting ten Hag with the song . . .’ I would use ‘serenading’ or possibly ‘taunting’. The moral is that if you try to show off you can end up looking like an idiot.

#591

A former colleague has contacted me to say that in the legal world ‘strangle’ no longer means to choke someone to death. There’s a new law of ‘non-fatal strangulation’.

This really jars with me, and to my mind it is simply legitimising a wrong usage. As far as I am concerned ‘to strangle’ still means ‘to kill by compressing the windpipe’; therefore you cannot say ‘a woman was strangled until she passed out’. Nor can you say ‘a woman was strangled to death’. If you need it, use ‘throttle’, which means ‘to kill or injure by squeezing the throat’, or ‘choke’, which means to obstruct breathing but is not necessarily fatal.

#590

 

 

i newspaper, October 24, 2024

To be sure of my ground I looked up ‘hone in’ vs ‘home in’, and to my astonishment there are multiple sites which say they are interchangeable. That is rubbish. ‘Hone’ means to refine or sharpen, as with a knife or a skill. There is no expression to ‘hone in’. ‘Home in’ means to focus on or target, as in a heat-seeking ballistic missile.

#589

BBC News Online, October 24, 2024

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev9jgn20ypo

You really would think that someone taking money from the BBC would know the difference between ‘ordnance’ (munitions) and ‘ordinance’ (a decree or law).

I am also mystified by how Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team is abbreviated to EODI. In any case ‘team’ should not be capitalised.

 

#587

 

T

Times, October 15, 2024

More from the illustrious Times. ‘Discrete’ means separate or unconnected, as in ‘there are four discrete movements in the symphony; it is often used in a technical or mathematical context.  The word wanted here is ‘discreet’, meaning cautious or unobtrusive.  That is to leave aside the split infinitive, which could have been avoided by rephrasing thus: ‘to continue their discreet search’.