Mea Culpa: Might may not always be right (but it is here)

We muddled our “may” and “might” a few times last week. The headline on our report of the home secretary’s interview said: “Priti Patel admits own parents may not have been allowed into UK under her new immigration laws.”

That suggests that we do not know if they were allowed into the UK – until we get to the end and realise the question is about whether they would have been allowed in under the new rules their daughter is now proposing. That “may” should be “might”.

Indeed, we used “may” correctly in the report itself, in which we said: “Ms Patel later suggested that her family may have been dealt with under arrangements for those fleeing mistreatment abroad, rather than those for migrant workers, as they had faced persecution in Uganda.” In that case, we were saying that we do not know whether her parents arrived as refugees or not.

We did it again in an interesting article about homelessness, in which the author, who has been homeless, said she had lost several friends to drug and alcohol abuse: “Mental health support may have helped them deal with the trauma that led to their addiction.” That implies that they had received mental health support, but that we do not know if it helped. We meant that they had not had support, but if they had, it “might” have helped.

Balloon debate: This was a surprising headline in the News in Brief column of the Daily Edition recently: “Daughter of renowned explorer claims hot air balloon record.” Gordon Whitehead rightly pointed out that this manages to be both sexist and irrelevant. Would we have said “Son of renowned explorer” if the sex had been different? Possibly, but even so, Independent readers are probably more interested in the hot air balloon record than in the father of the person setting it.

Who’s her? In a comment article on the Labour leadership election, one of our writers praised Lisa Nandy: “It is only Nandy that appears to have any grip on reality. It’s only her that knows, for example, that the way to keep the United Kingdom is to actually take the fight to the SNP.” I do not know much about formal grammar, so I do not know how to describe the problem, but I know that this should be “she” rather than “her”, and the way I check it is to rephrase: “Only she knows the way to keep the United Kingdom.”

Also, I don’t think “that” is wrong, but “who” feels better when talking about a person. So I think it should be: “It’s only she who knows.”

Crumbling claims: In an entertaining court report about a judge who was cross with a spa for making spurious health claims about its apple crumble, we said “neither Champneys or the county council attended court”. Thanks to Nigel Fox for pointing out that this is not the usual formula. “Either … or” is fine, but “neither” is followed by “nor”.