Mea Culpa: Nowhere fast

We had an interesting subheadline last week on a comment piece about the difficulty of using an electric car for long journeys, in which we remarked that the writer was “getting frustrated that progress seems to be going backwards”. It was easy enough to understand the meaning – and the headline “Are EVs losing their spark?” was lovely – but it felt like a bit of a contradiction in terms.

“Progress” has a Latin origin and means literally “walk forwards”, though I suppose it could be used, as a verb, to indicate a change in direction rather than a reversal as such, for instance in an instruction issued by a driving instructor to “progress in a rearward manner [into the marked space/while avoiding nearby obstacles/until the vehicle is clear of vegetation]” (let’s just say some people are better editors than drivers). I still think it makes for an awkward phrase, though, and that we should have said something else instead – perhaps just that “progress seems to have stalled”.

Roaming numerals: In a report about measures being introduced in Venice to protect the city from overtourism, we wrote that it had “hosted almost 13 million tourists in 2019 and the numbers of visitors are expected to rise even further in the coming years”. That should have said “the number of visitors is”, but some of our writers have a strange habit of using the plural “numbers” almost euphemistically, as though a direct statement of the quantity or statistic in question might be a little too stark.

I don’t like to state the obvious, but we are a news outlet, and as such it is within our remit to report the news without attempting to make it sound less dramatic than it actually is (or more so, of course, but that has been covered in previous columns). So there is no need to soften our language.

Crimes and misdemeanours: We were remiss in allowing the publication of a piece that contained, well, numbers of errors, including some that resulted from our apparent complete inability to spell the word “shoplifters”. We had a jolly good try, with variations including “shoflifters” and “shoplifers”, and we did manage to nail it a couple of times, though I suspect that was more by luck than judgement. Our sub-editors may occasionally let a concealed item past security, but it is always better when they are able to cast an eye, and even a little magic, over the articles we describe as “premium content”. We shall be increasing patrols henceforth.

Things can only get worse: Paul Edwards kindly wrote to tell us off about our use of an intransitive verb as a transitive one in a report about Ofsted stopping its school inspections. “Ms Perry’s family ... claimed that the November 2022 Ofsted inspection of Caversham had significantly deteriorated the late headteacher’s health,” we wrote.

Our reader’s contention that “deteriorated” was the wrong word for the context was accepted, and it was duly changed to “affected”, but I note that “deteriorate” is regarded by Merriam-Webster, a North American dictionary, as a verb that is indeed able to be used transitively, and I can see that usage becoming more common here, too. Still, for the time being, and until the OED recognises it, we are probably best off sticking with standard British.

For want of a comma: “The National Crime Agency (NCA) is reported to be examining a £3m payment made to Michelle Mone’s bank account as part of its probe into the scandal surrounding PPE contracts” was the first line in an article about the Conservative peer’s alleged shenanigans during the pandemic. The way we put it suggested, as readers of this column will doubtless have noticed, that the alleged payment was made by the NCA itself in the course of its “probe” (no comment), which if true would be a concerning development.

A simple comma, inserted after “bank account”, would have prevented any potential misconstruction of the circumstances we were describing. This is often the case, and given the high availability of commas I think we should make more use of them, at least before the ones we have dutifully stockpiled go out of date.

Near miss of the week: A review of the best books due to be published this year almost went to press (yes, I know we don’t actually do that any more, but I like to pretend) containing the assertion that “Crystal Hefner married Playboy tycoon Hugh when he was 86 and 26.” We did anachronistic birth announcements last time, so I suppose it must be the turn of marriages that appear to have broken the space-time continuum. I shall look forward to reading next week’s column, if only to see who has managed to die twice.

A happy new year... and a happy old one, too, to those of us who might be progressing in the other direction.