#134

The Times, July 7, 2017

Yet another wrong verb. The past tense of ‘spring’ is ‘sprang’. ‘Sprung’ is the past participle and the passive, eg ‘the boat had sprung a leak’ or ‘he was sprung from jail’. See Post 130 for my handy chart of verbs.

‘Purrfect’ was already worn out in the 1950s. It is pathetic to see it now.

#133

The Times, July 6, 2017

The words ‘face to face’ (incidentally I would hyphenate the phrase when it is used as an adjective like this) are superfluous. We can assume they did not sit back to back or behind screens. Every word should be weighed.

#132

i newspaper, July 4, 2017

(69 words) You can’t say someone is a double Paralympic champion without saying what both sports are. The usual speedy check reveals that Cox won gold in cycling and 400m sprinting.

This is how I would do it:

Kadeena Cox, champion at last year’s Rio Paralympics in both sprinting and cycling, is considering concentrating on the latter to break into open competition with her Olympic counterparts. Cox, 26, from Leeds, said: ‘I’ve not cycled for that long and the times I’m doing are up there in terms of able-bodied stuff.’ She was the first Briton in 32 years to win gold in two sports at the same Paralympics. (70 words)

This identifies both sports at the beginning, places the quote next to the intro, to expand it, and moves the history to the end.

#131

i newspaper, July 3, 2017 – Page One

‘Anyone for tennis?’ is one of the corniest cliches there is, and I guess I have seen it several hundred times. You have got to do better than this lazy and boring offering. I would simply have put:

Murray fit for
Wimbledon

Reports: p12, 50-51

 

#130

Sunday Times, July 2, 2017

Regular readers will know that this should be ‘sank’, the past tense of ‘sink’. ‘Sunk’ is the past participle, which goes with forms of ‘have’, such as ‘he had sunk his teeth into the sandwich’ or ‘he has sunk his teeth into the sandwich’. ‘Sunk’ is also the passive voice, as in ‘the ship was sunk by a torpedo’. (The passive voice is when something is done to an object, as opposed to the active voice, when a subject does something.)

Since English refuses to stick to rules, I have drawn up a chart of some verbs which seem to cause confusion. I will add more if I think of them. Obviously some verbs, such as ‘swim’, do not have a passive voice, or at least I can’t think of such a sentence.

Present tense Past tense Past participle /
pluperfect /
passive
sink sank sunk
swim swam swum
shrink shrank shrunk
spin spun spun
swing swung swung
ring rang rung
sing sang sung
fling flung flung
string strung strung
sting stung stung
run ran run
drink drank drunk
wring wrung wrung
cling clung clung
stink stank stunk
bring brought brought
hang hung
(execution: hanged)		 hung
slink slunk slunk

#129

The Times, July 1, 2017

If, as a London-based writer, you feel the need to be mildly patronising about the North, at least get the spelling right. This should be ‘gradely’, to rhyme with ‘Madeley’, not ‘gradley’, which would rhyme with ‘badly’.

#128

i newspaper, July 1, 2017

I assume the writer of this letter to the editor knows how to spell his home town, so someone must have changed it from the correct Northwich to the incorrect Northwitch. This is unforgivable.

#127

The Times, June 30, 2017

‘Ape’ is not an alternative for ‘monkey’. Apes and monkeys are separate groups of animals with many differences. Calling a monkey an ape is as inaccurate as calling it a human. In fact this animal was a crested black macaque monkey in Indonesia. And what a missed opportunity to revisit the wonderful picture in question:

Incidentally, where is ‘Monmouthsire’? And do we need Mr Slater’s age twice? Honestly.

#126

i newspaper, June 29, 2017

It is beyond me how anyone could send this through without asking what the comparative figures are. It took me seconds to find that they are 27 and 144. Without them the story is meaningless.