Mea Culpa: trust the science on radioactive gas

In a report of the closure of cells at Dartmoor prison because high levels of radon had been detected, we tried to explain what the gas is and why it is dangerous. We said: “It is thought to occur more often in areas with high concentrations of granite, such as Dartmoor.”

As Roger Thetford wrote to point out, “is thought to” implies that this is mere speculation, when the presence of radon in such areas is an established scientific fact that has been known for decades. There is even a government map of affected areas. We would have been fine just saying “It occurs more often…”

Blade in the water: A headline on Wednesday said: “Magnet fisherman pulls Viking weapon from river.” Two problems with this. One is that I do not think that magnet fishing is well known enough to appear without explanation, and the other, as John Harrison pointed out, is that this happened last year.

The “new news”, discovered on reading the article, is that researchers have now dated the sword to between AD850 and 975. So the headline should have been something like “Viking sword found in river confirmed as genuine”.

As for magnet fishing, the article says no more except that the landowner did not allow it but had agreed to take no legal action. A quick google confirmed that it is like metal detecting in rivers and that the people who do it are known as magnetfishers, magneteers or neodemons.

Surrounded by water: I promised myself to give “amid” a rest this week, but on Tuesday we had a headline on the front page: “London’s Paddington Station forced to shut down amid heavy flooding.” It was not shut down by something else in the middle of some heavy flooding. What would be wrong with saying “forced to shut down by heavy flooding”? Or just “by flooding”, as it was obviously heavy enough to shut down the station?

Irregular adverb: I cannot work out whether it matters but we often use “regularly” when we mean “often”. We said that Ben Gvir, one of the most right-wing ministers in the Israeli government, “regularly makes statements which will appeal to his ultra-nationalist support base” – as if he makes such statements on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while making more centrist statements on Mondays and Wednesdays.

And in an article responding to a reader who asked if it was safe to travel to Lviv in Ukraine, we said: “Many people of Ukrainian descent cross the frontier regularly.” Which they may do, but there are presumably also many people who cross it at irregular intervals; our point is merely that there are a lot of them.

Perhaps usage rules, and if people use a word often enough, or even regularly enough, to mean something, that is what it means. But then we will be stuck when we need a word to mean regularly.

Park on the run: Last weekend’s remarkable story about the stolen caravan being towed by a car allegedly driven by an 11-year-old had so many elements that, at one point, we jumbled them up. “Thieves allegedly ripped out high-security trackers before snatching the caravan from a holiday park near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, which was stopped while being towed by a black BMW on the M1.”

Only the most literal-minded reader would allow himself to be distracted by the mental image of a park being towed by a BMW, but we should not be asking readers to unravel our syntax as well as absorb the information being conveyed. We needed a second sentence: “The caravan was stopped…”

Secondary action: Sometimes my colleagues excel in writing headlines for “Pictures of the day” – and someone did on Friday, with “Lying picket?” This was above a Reuters photo captioned: “An Indian farmer rests during a protest in Delhi to press for the better crop prices promised to them in 2021.” Thanks to Henry Peacock for drawing it to my attention, and hats off to the sub-editor responsible.