Errors & Omissions: When left could be right, or wrong, the reader’s just lost

An ambiguity can occur in picture captions. It appeared again on Wednesday, when we reprinted a cast photograph from the 1960s television show The Frost Report.

The caption picked out two future Pythons: “Terry Jones, third from left on the back row, next to writing partner Michael Palin on his right”.

In the picture, Palin is indeed to the right of Jones, as observed by the viewer, but he is not “on his right” – which implies to the right from Jones’s point of view. Palin is standing next to Jones’s left shoulder, which is certainly not on his right.

This mess is easily cleared up. Don’t write “on his right”; prefer “to the right of him”. That keeps the caption consistent in describing everything from the point of view of the person looking at the photograph.

µ Another logical glitch came up in a sub-heading on Monday’s front-page story about the doctors’ strike: “Both sides accuse the other of putting patients’ lives at risk”. That should be either “Each side accuses the other” or “Both sides accuse each other”.

µ Here is the blurb that introduced a feature article on Wednesday. “Sir Simon Rattle wants a brand new, acoustically perfect concert hall for London. But Michael Church watched him perform at the Barbican and the sound was flawless.”

Watched? Listened, surely? The conductor of an orchestra does not personally produce any sound, but the audience at a concert is not there to watch.

µ Cliché of the week comes from a television review published on Tuesday, commenting on Tracey Ullman’s new sketch show: “Her ant-loving zookeeper character didn’t add much to the party, but the duds were few and far between.”

Actually there are two clichés here, and one of them is, I think, misquoted. Shouldn’t that be “bring much to the party”?

The other is the over-familiar “few and far between”. Just omit the words “and far between”; they add nothing to “few”.

Second prize goes to a book review published last Saturday: “Subverting expectations is the name of the game.” You could really subvert our expectations by not writing “the name of the game”.

µ A TV preview on Tuesday began thus: “Presumably filmed before last November’s terrible events…” Well, was it or wasn’t it? Readers want information, not confessions of ignorance. It only takes a phone call.

µ Here, alas, is a confession of ignorance.

A very familiar homophone error cropped up in a piece about David Bowie on Tuesday: “Following news of his death, critics poured over the lyrics from his swansong album … Blackstar.”

“Pour” means to emit in a stream. The word for studying something with great attention is “pore”. So, where do they come from and why do they sound the same? I don’t know, and neither does the Oxford Dictionary. It traces both back to Middle English, but beyond that the origin of “pour” is “obscure”, and that of “pore” is “unknown”