Mea Culpa: ring the musical gong, someone

We wrote this on Tuesday about Nicole Scherzinger, star of the new Sunset Boulevard, at the Olivier Awards: “She won the Best Actress in a musical gong at the Royal Albert Hall as the reinterpretation of the 1950 black comedy of the same name also picked up Best Director and Best Musical Revival.”

Mick O’Hare said he had to read it three times before he realised that it wasn’t about a “musical gong”, but a best “actress-in-a-musical” gong. And that it was not an award only for people who had appeared at the Royal Albert Hall.

It would have helped if we had had “Musical” with a capital “M”, but really the whole thing should have been rewritten. That is the trouble with using slang words such as “gong” for “award”. Apparently the word for a metal disc that you bang to make a noise came to be used to refer to a military medal, or award, because they look alike. But it is easy to forget that it has another meaning, and that putting it next to the word “musical” might cause problems.

R is for Resort to Google: We referred in two separate articles on Friday to “R rated” films. Stephen Hall told me that, “having resorted to Google, I am now aware of the meaning of this rating, which would be helpful should I be in the US and planning a trip to the cinema with someone under the age of 17”.

We should have made that clear in the articles themselves. We have a lot of US readers but should remember that we are a British website.

Falling at fences: Our reporting of last weekend’s Grand National included a subheadline: “Dramatic race saw Corach Rambler unseated at first fence.” As Roger Thetford said, if the jockey was carrying the horse, no wonder he couldn’t jump the fence. It is the rider who is unseated, so something like “Dramatic race as Corach Rambler unseats rider at first fence” would have been better.

Later, we described the end of the race thus: “Townend timed his final move superbly, sweeping I Am Maximus past Delta Work before reining in Minella Indo in front of the cheering, sold-out grandstand.” Usually, I have to remind writers that “free rein” is a horse-riding term and does not refer to the “reign” of a monarch, but here it is a horse-riding term in an article about a horse race, being used as a metaphor about the wrong horse.

Paul Townend, riding I Am Maximus, was not pulling on the reins of Minella Indo. We needed “overtaking” or “overhauling” instead.

Proceeds of crime: We were tripped up on Monday when we quoted Patricia Highsmith’s journal about dreaming of murder: “Thus, the subconscious always proceeds the consciousness, or reality, as in dreams.” As Paul Edwards wrote to remind us, “no doubt she was a weirdo, but she was a literate weirdo”. She would have written “precedes”, meaning “comes before”, rather than “proceeds”, meaning “advances”.

Earthquake in Brussels: We commented on the police raid on the National Conservatives’ conference in Belgium on Wednesday: “Their cheeky idea of meeting in the epicentre of the Euro-federalism they despise went a bit wrong when the mayor of Brussels, Emir Kir, decreed the event a public order risk.” Iain Brodie pleaded with me to stop “epicentre” being used to mean “the very heart of”. I fear that my powers are limited, but I can repeat that in geology the term refers to the point on the Earth’s surface directly above the focus of an earthquake.

Don’t be coy: Further to my point about euphemisms last week – The Independent’s style is to write “died” rather than “passed away” – we had another in “Home news in brief” on Friday. Thanks to Nigel Fox for pointing out that the item about the Sainsbury’s worker who was sacked used the phrase “let go”.