Mea Culpa: The massed ranks of Massey Fergusons came to town

One of our articles about the farmers’ demonstration in Whitehall on Tuesday said: “It was the day the countryside returned en mass to Westminster for the first time since the vast Countryside Alliance march 20 years ago.” Thanks to Julian Self for reminding us that the phrase “en masse” comes from French and has retained the “e” at the end even though it has been assimilated into English.

Pets and humans: The phrase “loved ones” seems useful, because it encompasses anyone that someone cares about, whether related or not, but it is more suited to the pages of a funeral director’s brochure than a news organisation. It also led us astray in the subheadline of an opinion article on Tuesday: “I know how Queen Camilla feels – losing my dog was harder than losing a loved one.” We have become so used to using “loved one” as a synonym for “person about whom someone cares” that we failed to notice that it could equally apply to a pet.

Americanism watch: In a headline on Monday we said: “Keir Starmer meets with Xi Jinping during the G20 summit...” Our style is “meet” without the “with”. The “with” form is American, and is becoming increasingly common in Britain. Until it becomes even more common, though, we should avoid it, not because it is “wrong” but because our writing seems more authoritative if we stick to formal British English.

NFL news: That said, American English is now an accepted part of our website, as we have a lot of US journalists writing for a predominantly US audience. But articles of interest to a British or worldwide audience ought still to be written in British English. Thanks to Paul Edwards, who spotted a report that was headlined: “Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes’s homes are burglarized as they played in front of Taylor Swift at Chiefs game.” American football is sufficiently popular in the UK, and Kelce, Mahomes and Swift sufficiently well known, that this should have been rendered as “burgled”.

Haste, speed: I have just caught up with this headline in our News in Brief section from last week: “Girl, 17, dies after being hit on foot by car on M5 – as motorway closed in both directions.” Thanks to David Alston who suggested that this had been written in haste. The girl was travelling “on foot”, but we managed to suggest that the car hit only her foot, while the lazy use of “as” implied that the motorway had been closed for a different reason. We meant: “Girl, 17, walking on M5 dies after being hit by car – motorway closed in both directions.”

Not so fast: In more traffic news, namely in World News in Brief last week, we reported a bus accident in Pakistan that was caused by “overspeeding”. Thanks to Richard Thomas for catching up with it. This may be a stray bit of Pakistani or Indian English, but anything that is “over” the speed limit is “speeding”, and we do not usually discriminate between degrees of driving too fast.

Happy milestone, sir: I am still working through the backlog of glitches. It was the King’s birthday on 14 November, and the day before we had an article with the headline: “King Charles to celebrate milestone birthday in very unique way as Camilla continues recovery.” Thanks to Paul Selden for reminding me that the Mea Culpa column had only just pointed out that things cannot be more or less unique.

As for “milestone”, he was 76, which is not a round number, so I don’t know what was so special about this birthday, and I admit that I have not gone back to try to find out.