Mea Culpa: something wicked this way comes

This week we return to our campaign against lines starting “It comes…” and unfortunately, it’s not going well. Countless examples were published online in just a few hours, but the phrase, used as a sort of cue that “we’re about to talk about another part of the story now”, is lazy, repetitive, mostly unnecessary and no one actually says it. And that’s before images of a certain malevolent clown spring to mind.

Journalese creeps into our reporting, a US editor once said, “out of habit, sometimes from misguided training, and to sound urgent, authoritative and, well, journalistic. But it doesn’t do any of that.” So we’ll continue to bang the drum against reporters using this type of language because “that’s how it’s done”.

One example that would send a chill down the spine of our chief sub is: “It comes amid huge issues in supply chains in recent months, leaving some shop shelves empty… ” Regular readers of this column will know that “amid” is another word whose overuse we discourage (thankfully the sentence avoided an “ongoing”). What we should be doing is chipping away all those words that serve no purpose: I count four at the start of this sentence – we can assume the issues are huge, considering the disruption they’ve caused.

Tea-licious: An article about the culinary delights of Jerez recommended a restaurant with “a menu of inventive Moroccan and Mediterranean infusion dishes”. There’s no doubt that they serve a mean mint tea in Morocco, but what we meant was “fusion”. With the change, we can be sure there’s something of substance on guests’ plates at the Alboronia.

Fashion police: Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle has had enough of those scruffy, Zoom-era MPs, issuing new guidance as they returned to parliament. Jeans, chinos and trainers will no longer fly. But is it a crackdown? This bit of journalese has come to mean “any attempt to reinforce a set of rules”, but not all crackdowns are equal and it has lost most of its potency. The reporter might have got away with it if Sir Lindsay wasn’t “clamping down” on rowdiness just a couple of paragraphs later. The man clearly has high standards but he doesn’t rule with an iron fist. Credit must be given where it’s due, however: there wasn’t a “sartorial” in sight.

My fate is on your hands: Iain Boyd noticed that we talked about a “fated performance” by the artist, activist and French resistance fighter Josephine Baker, which would mean the concert was pre-ordained. And while readers’ views on free will may differ, I tend to think that Baker – who came from poverty to become an international jazz icon, stood up to the Nazis and is now the first black woman to be honoured in the French Panthéon – defied the stars. What we meant was “fêted”, a homophone of fated meaning “celebrated”.

Peak position: Homophones have also been causing trouble on our sports pages. “At the 2016 Copa Sao Paulo, one such player had peaked Liverpool’s interest,” we reported on Friday. It should have been “piqued”, meaning “to arouse interest or curiosity”. Thanks to Roger Thetford.