Mea Culpa: the old-fashioned Silvio Berlusconi

In an assessment of the career of Silvio Berlusconi, who has died, we said that he was in power in Italy “before the refugee crisis became as acute as it did later, and thus Berlusconi’s brand of rightist authoritarianism lacked the sheer inhumanity of its contemporaries now”. That was a confusing use of “contemporaries”, because Forza Italia’s contemporaries were the people who were prominent in Italian or European politics at the same time (Latin con-tempus) as him, such as Tony Blair.

We meant his contemporary equivalents, people of similar politics who are around now, using contemporary to mean modern, “at the same time as us, now”. We changed it to say that his brand of rightist authoritarianism “lacked the sheer inhumanity of its present iteration”. All clear.

Dangerous witness: We had a rare case of double ambiguity in this sad story: “Ms Holland was hit by a police motorcyclist escorting the Duchess of Edinburgh along West Cromwell Road in southwest London. A witness said she was ‘thrown 40 feet across the road’ and, despite being rushed to hospital, died two weeks later.”

If the reader works back from the “she”, it first seems that it was the witness who was thrown across the road and died, then that it was the Duchess of Edinburgh (better known as Sophie Wessex), and only then does the right answer present itself: that it was the first-named Ms Holland who suffered that terrible fate.

Anthropomorphism watch: In the “world news in brief” section on Tuesday, we reported that Cyclone Bijaroy “is predicted to target India’s western state of Gujarat and Pakistan’s southern Sindh province”. Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for pointing out that we can give cyclones human names, but it is going too far to give them the capacity to target anywhere. “Hit” would have been better.

Only one of them: In a review of kitchen knives on Wednesday we referred to sets including a “pairing knife”. This should be a “paring knife”, from the verb “pare”, to trim by cutting or removing an outer layer. From Latin parare, prepare, make ready.

Anniversary algorithm: I wonder if our “On this day last year” feature is compiled by a computer programme that regurgitates the contents of a news database from the same date the previous year. On Wednesday we said that 14 June last year “marked five years since the Grenfell Tower disaster that claimed the lives of 72 people”. As Henry Peacock said, that means it was six years since the Grenfell disaster.

Later in the week, the feature described yellow lines on streets, introduced in 1958, as “notorious”, which was, as Mick O’Hare pointed out, an unexpected value judgement. People who are fined for parking on them may not like them, but most people accept that they benefit the rest of us.

Talking of notoriety, we wrote on our sports pages: “Yet what makes Ferrari’s current infamy in motorsport’s most famous competition more baffling is their display in motorsport’s most famous endurance race.” As Paul Edwards said, what Putin is doing in Ukraine is infamy – something well known for its wickedness. We meant “lack of success”.

Brief encounters: We commented on the 12-week run of the Duchess of Sussex’s podcasts: “Tennis star Serena Williams, singer Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton and actors Mindy Kaling and Constance Wu were among the guests throughout its brief season.” We meant “during” rather than “throughout”, as Paul Edwards also said – “throughout” would suggest that the guests appeared every week. As for “brief”, it lasted longer than Liz Truss’s government.