Mea Culpa: Female or neuter? The first modern submarine

The latest edition of our style guide is silent on the gender of ships, but Richard Thomas pointed out that in any one piece of writing we ought to choose between “it” and “she”. A recent article about “the first modern submarine” opted for a wonderful jumble of both.

Prophet and prophecy: In an article about the spectre of inflation that is haunting some economists, we said it was “worth remembering that the sort of jeremiads who might point to what’s going on as the inflation genie jumping out of the bottle are the same sort of people who were happy to see unemployment surging past 3 million in the 1980s just so long as the lid on price rises was kept sufficiently tight”.

Thanks to Roger Thetford, who pointed out that this was a “praiseworthy attempt to use interesting language”, but that we had confused the lamentation with the lamenter. Jeremiah was the person, the gloomy prophet in the Old Testament; a jeremiad is a long, mournful list of complaints such as his.

Baptism by surf: Trying to hyphenate a non-hyphenated phrase can produce some awkward constructions. In a subheadline on an article about surfing, we referred to “a born again-type experience among the waves”. As John Harrison pointed out, that makes it look as if we are talking about an “again-type” experience. It would be better either as “a born-again type experience”, or without any hyphen – “a born again type experience”.

But then, having stared at it for possibly too long, it does occur that the “-type” format is pointless. The best solution might simply be: “A born-again experience.”

Variant of concern: In an editorial last week we said: “The news that a more infective variant is on the increase will likely be concerning.” Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for referring this sentence to the head’s study for a telling-off. First, “infective” is “dated”, according to the Oxford dictionary, and we used it only to avoid repeating “infectious” from the previous sentence. Then we have “likely” and “concerning”. In a later edition, the “likely” was changed to “probably”, which is the usual British English form.

Unfortunately, “concerning” was not changed to “worrying”, which is the non-jargon way of saying the same thing. And changing “likely” to “probably” didn’t deal with the problem that the element of doubt should not have been allowed into the sentence in the first place. This was an editorial in The Independent, not The Guardian. We do not do “on the one hand and on the other”; we say what we think. We think that the news that a more infectious variant is on the increase is worrying.

A bit previous: In a story about rape trials we wrote of “pre-recorded” evidence, including in the headline. Mick O’Hare wrote to say that he thought “recorded” would have sufficed. I had this debate some time ago with Daniel Finklestein of The Times, when he said that the Transport for London notice on minicabs, saying “Pre-booked only”, was unnecessary. Strictly, it is, but I thought “Booked only” would confuse people.

This is similar: “recorded” might be enough, but there is no harm in emphasising that something has been done in advance of a hearing, when to do otherwise might suggest that evidence is being recorded as it is given in court.