Subbing Clinic

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.

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.

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

 

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

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’.

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.

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.

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.

i newspaper, June 28, 2017

So what level of drug-fuelled violence and fighting is acceptable? This is silly. You have to think about the words in front of you, not just shovel them through.

i newspaper, June 28, 2017

‘Forego’ means ‘to go in front of’, as in ‘the foregoing paragraph’. The word needed here is ‘forgo’, meaning ‘to do without’.

You don’t need to append ‘this year’ to 4 July. No one would suppose it means next year rather than next week.

‘So as not to disturb’ is clumsy. ‘To avoid disturbing’ is better.

This is an odd sentence: ‘This spring, an eaglet appeared in the nest’. Is the i newspaper suggesting it arrived by magic, or that someone placed it there? What is wrong with ‘This spring they hatched a chick’? (I think chick is more appropriate than eaglet for a hatchling.)