Mea Culpa: Umming and ahhing

Will no one think of the Romans?” comes the plaintive cry, as once again the question of whether to pluralise a noun using an English or a Latin ending leaps to the fore. We published an article (one of a few) about women’s football last week, in which our contributor wrote: “For a start, the grounds the women’s teams play in simply don’t have the allure of their male counterparts’ stadia.”

There is no right or wrong in this dilemma. Our style is normally to use whichever plural form is the most common, and thus the most familiar to readers. In the literary canon, according to Google, “stadiums” caught up with “stadia” around the time I was born, spent 10 years or so neck and neck with it, and then roared into the lead, where it remains today. Apologies to those who prefer the “a”.

Peddle power: In a report about rather a lot of cocaine being found in a shipment of bananas, we quoted one of the investigators as having said: “Class-A drugs are pedalled by gangs involved in violence and exploitation in our communities.” We had spelt “peddlers” right earlier in the article, but somehow missed this error until kind reader John Schluter wrote to let us know about it, saying that he wasn’t sure of the feasibility of transporting such a quantity of contraband by bicycle. It’s been fixed.

Passive smoking: We conjured some inanimate objects to life last week when we wrote: “West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue said that 12 people have been evacuated from the surrounding area and that buildings either side of the restaurant have managed to be saved.”

The passive voice is not a complicated thing to understand. It simply means that we focus on the person or thing something happened to (in this case the buildings that were saved) rather than the person or thing that made it happen (whoever saved them). It is usual to use it in this context.

But we got in a muddle by adding an active part, giving the buildings credit for “managing” to be saved. However modest the emergency services might be about their efforts, it is hard to imagine the premises in question edging politely away from the fire or asking to be hosed down. Starting the clause with “firefighters have managed to save...” would have worked.

Less is more: In a thoughtful and interesting article about a forthcoming film, we said: “In point of fact, the cast is, actually, an admirably diverse one. Which is welcome.”

It is a good example of a sentence that, while absolutely fine, could have been improved by a ruthless editor. “In point of fact” could just have been “in fact”, and we didn’t need “actually” as well, because it means the same thing – indeed, it’s a word that can be cut without compunction from almost any context (unless it’s just a frivolous ramble); regardless, it could have done without the commas on either side of it. “In fact, the cast is an admirably diverse one” is all we needed to say.

Readers can lose their way in cluttered copy, and one of the great joys of editing is being able to throw open the metaphorical shutters and let in the light. To paraphrase George Orwell, “A scrupulous writer will ask himself: could I put it more simply?” Often, we can.

Look after the pennies: While our writers have been keen to express their joy, and that of the nation, at the success of the England women’s football team in last week’s Euros final, we have slipped up on our rules about non-gendered terminology. As it stands, we have used the word “chairman” in our copy 32 times in the past seven days, when our style, quite rightly, is “chair”. Similarly, we have used “spokesman” 38 times. Our style for that is supposed to be “spokesperson”.

It’s true that plenty of other newspapers are content to use the traditional terms, but if we are going to celebrate the achievements of women, it is important that we also make an effort to avoid the sort of words that preserve the bias in our language.

Amid summer, knights dream: We reported the other day on the plans of Lewis Hamilton, who we said was “focusing on off-track ventures amid the F1 summer break”. Thanks to Roger Thetford for spotting what might be the best random use of “amid” in a while.

Typo(s) of the week: There was a bit of a pile-up in the subheadline of an article we published last week about a US activist, which read: “Suspect sat in car outside home for hours over two days with rifle, ammunication, additional lisence plates in vehicle”.

It’s rare that we make a complete mess of these things, but we seem to have outdone ourselves here. Presumably, it should have said “ammunition” and “licence plates”, though the US spelling of licence in this context does have an “s” – just, well, not where we have put it. As for “ammunication”, perhaps there’s a gap in the lexicon for a cross between ammo and communication – like a bullet with someone’s name on it.