Mea Culpa: The dinosaur that missed the rainy season

Tyrannosaurus rex is the best-known dinosaur, which is probably why we used a picture of one (or a picture of what one might have looked like) to illustrate an article about how “volcanoes caused ancient climate change that allowed dinosaurs to dominate”. But, as Nigel Fox wrote to remind us, T rex didn’t turn up for another 150 million years or so.

The article also included a deadening “conditions”, as if it were a bad weather report: “These changes are known as the Late Triassic Carnian Pluvial Episode, and the intense rainfall conditions that arose are known as a ‘mega-monsoon’ climate.” I think “heavy rain known as a ‘mega-monsoon’ climate” would have been enough.

Nearly equal: In an article about the election in Iceland, we said that the prospect of a majority female parliament was reversed after a recount: “With female candidates winning a total of 30 seats, the Icelandic parliament continues to be dominated by men.” As there are 63 seats in the parliament, men are clearly a majority, but John Harrison thought that “dominated” was overstating it. We should have let the numbers speak for themselves.

A kind of workshop: One of our best writers, Mary Dejevsky, wrote a brilliant article about the nature of modern political communication, which included this, about the German election: “What was striking about the campaign, however, whether on the stump or in TV debates and roundtables – including the one where, agonisingly, the main candidates appear on election night – was the clarity and concrete nature of the discussion and the lack of a rarefied political code.” An interesting observation that would have lost nothing and gained a great deal by deleting “and roundtables”. The word – if it can be called that because it is really two words jammed together – is on the Banned List for a reason, which is that we don’t need it.

There is a more important reason, which is that, if we do use it, we may be encouraging other people to use “roundtable” as a verb. Let ministers roundtable if they want to, or hold roundtables with stakeholders, but we journalists should call them meetings with business people or whoever they are.

After, not in the middle of: It may be a false dawn, but there was only one “amid” on our front page on Saturday: “Chief executive of UK’s largest domestic abuse charity resigns amid racism allegations.” We were right in this case to avoid “because of”, as the reasons for the resignation were not given, but it would have been fine to have said “after”, which makes it clear that there might have been a connection. I am committing The Independent to a Zero Amid target to be achieved by the middle of next week.