Mea Culpa: It comes as the so-called Norway option is put on the table
Sub-editor Zak Thomas on questions of style and usage in this week’s Independent
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Your support makes all the difference.John Rentoul is away this week but The Independent’s drive to weed out errors continues apace.
I begin with an update on our campaign to delete unnecessary uses of “so-called”. It often sounds pompous and could imply disapproval of a particular idea. I’m pleased to say I have noticed a significant drop in its usage since the campaign was started just two weeks before Article 50 was triggered in 2017. Make of that what you will.
However, there were a few needless usages this week. We had the “so-called Norway option” (our style on this Brexit proposal is Norway-plus), a “so-called Isis terrorist atrocity” (this implies we were referring to the atrocity rather than Isis) and “so-called indicative votes” (there’s no need to distance ourselves from this terminology for the Commons procedure as it is widely accepted).
Changing with the times: A lesser-known campaign, started by my colleague Ross McKinnon, has been gathering momentum on the subbing desk in recent months. “It comes as” seems to crop up a fair bit, as writers attempt to link two paragraphs together, but it’s often dispensable. As Ross says: “It’s massively overused and is a phrase no one would say in everyday language.”
Once again, it seems like a hardline approach is paying off. I could only find one example of “it comes as” on The Independent website this week and none in the Daily Edition. The offending sentence? “It comes as the prime minister and the Labour leader prepare to meet to try to thrash out a Brexit deal that could secure parliamentary approval.” That’s a mouthful.
Commons confusion: On Tuesday, we fumbled a sensitive story about Heidi Allen MP. Rather than writing “Heidi Allen has spoken about her decision to talk about having an abortion in the House of Commons last year”, we should have written “Heidi Allen said she received ‘overwhelming support’ when she revealed in the Commons that she had had an abortion”. Thank you to David Angus for alerting us to this error.
Our so-called chief political commentator/grammarian-in-chief will be back next week.
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