Mea Culpa: an around and about way of making the rules

We put this headline on an article by Kevin Brennan, the Labour MP campaigning for a better deal for musicians: “It is time we brought the rules around music streaming up to date – so that more musicians can make a living.” Having rules “around” something is an odd phrase that has a distancing effect, as if the rules are about something else tangentially related to music streaming. We meant the rules governing music streaming, and specifically the share of revenue received by the artists. It was changed to the rules “on” music streaming.

Order of events: Kim Leadbeater, the Labour candidate for the Batley and Spen by-election, was described in at least one article as “the sister of murdered former MP Jo Cox”. This made it sound as if she had stopped being an MP before she was killed, so we deleted “former”.

Space-time continuum: In an editorial about the economic consequences of coronavirus, we declared ringingly that “whatever policies that are adopted have to be placed on a horizon far wider than anything attempted in British government before – decades rather than months or years”. Thanks to Bernard Theobald for pointing out a metaphor disappearing under the weight of its contradictions.

A horizon is usually wide, and I suppose it can become wider until, in the middle of the sea, it would be 360 degrees; but this horizon – on which policies had been placed, awkwardly enough – then changed into a measure of time. The wider the horizon became, the longer the time it represented. Time for a new metaphor, at this point.

Sharp shooters: Thanks to Iain Boyd for pointing out a charming confusion in an article about the fishing industry after Brexit, in which we said that in Newlyn, “such arguments cut little muster”. We mixed up two old-fashioned figures of speech that mean similar things. To cut the mustard means to be up to standard, while to pass muster means to pass a military inspection – a muster being a gathering of troops, including for that purpose.

No one is sure where the mustard phrase comes from, but it seems to be a 19th-century use of “mustard” to mean sharp, lively or just excellent – a bit like “wicked” today – and “cut” meaning show, as in “cutting a fine figure”. So we could have said that the government’s arguments “fail to cut the mustard” in Newlyn.

Three-part list: Our report of the government’s proposals for changing planning rules said: “Under this approach, all land would either be classified by councils as ‘protected’, ‘renewal’, or ‘growth’.” Thanks to Linda Beeley for pointing out that “either” implies that there are two options. We should have simply deleted “either”, as it was clear enough that the categories are mutually exclusive. And our style is to delete the Oxford comma, the final one in a list, so it would read: “... ‘protected’, ‘renewal’ or ‘growth’”.

Woah, not what it said: When we refer to a photo in an article, we should make sure that words and pictures match. A report of protests by the travel industry said: “One poster read: ‘Whoa – we’re going to Ibiza,’ with the destination crossed out and ‘lose our businesses’ added.” As Roger Thetford pointed out, in the photo of a woman holding the placard (not a poster) at the top of the article, it actually said “Woah”, not “Whoa”, with a comma, not a dash.