Mea Culpa: only on a holiday from reality

In an editorial about the Boris Johnson fan club, we wrote: “They want the grassroots members only to choose the leader – not MPs.” It usually doesn’t matter if we misplace “only” in sentences, and sometimes it sounds more natural to detach the “only” from the thing to which it refers, but as Linda Beeley pointed out, here it changes the meaning, suggesting that Conservative members should have no other role but to choose the leader – and that they shouldn’t choose MPs.

These people may be on a holiday from reality, as Michael Gove put it, but that is not what they propose. What some Boris enthusiasts actually think is that only members, and not MPs, should elect the party leader.

Drugs stash: We misspelt “cachet” in an article about Prince Harry’s youthful drug taking, saying: “Like many of those holding senior political positions who have confessed to past drug use, safe in the knowledge that they won’t be prosecuted, they may, if anything, think it will add something to their public cache.” That would have been the right pronunciation if it had been written “caché”, although the wrong word, as it is a French adjective meaning hidden. As it was, our policy of leaving out accents (I mean, our policy of elegant, clutter-free writing) meant that it looked as if we were talking about adding something to a store. Thanks to Gavin Turner for drawing it to my attention.

Four Tops news: On a couple of occasions over the past week, we wrote that The Independent had “reached out” to an organisation for a comment on a news story. Our style is to say “contacted”, but as we employ more and more US journalists, some Americanisms are bound to make it into our copy.

Condole with: In a picture caption we said that President Macky Sall of Senegal “offered his condolences” to the families of the victims who died after a bus crash. Absolutely nothing wrong with it; it is conventional British English: I noticed it only because I had just read a headline in the Nigerian Daily Post: “Former UK PM Blair condoles with African Development Bank President on mother’s death.” That “condole with” form used to be a standard usage but has become rare, except in some parts of the former British empire. Perhaps we should revive it?

Stuck in the middle: It is time for a software designer to revive Mr Clippy, Microsoft’s annoying digital assistant. As soon as anyone types the word “amid”, he should pop up, saying, “I see you are trying to type ‘amid’; can I help you find the word you really need?” For example, we wrote: “Liz Truss allies have warned Mr Sunak not to scrap her plan to boost free childcare, amid reports that No 10 has quietly shelved reforms.” At this point Mr Clippy should appear, with a speech bubble saying: “Do you mean ‘after’?”

Just to prove that my campaign against “amid” is not wholly negative, though, here is an example of when we used the word fittingly last weekend: “Despite the pall, Ukrainians have found ways to preserve affairs of the heart amid the clatter of war.” Enough to bring tears to the eyes.