Mea Culpa: Labouring the point

Everyone seems to have been pointing at things during the past week. I’m not sure why, or whether it’s just that I have suddenly begun to notice it, but it almost feels like one of those scenes in a nature programme when a million little creatures hatch from their eggs all at the same time and start to make their way towards the sea.

“England’s head coach has highlighted the importance of having options in the set-piece in anticipation of the Springboks’ aerial assault, pointing to Itoje replacing Simmonds at blindside flanker and Dave Ribbans starting at lock,” we wrote in what I eventually deduced was a report about rugby, though it didn’t say so until the seventh paragraph, so it wasn’t an easy task for someone with a tenuous grasp of sporting terms.

Aside from that, we have had people pointing at such intangible goods as studies on climate policy, reforms of employment law in Gulf countries, and “Mr Hunt’s comments” on tax legislation. Recently we had the Department for Business, Energy etc pointing to the difficult economic conditions after the pandemic as though they were some sort of objet d’art. There has been so much pointing that it’s a wonder anyone knows where to look.

I’m sure there used to be a way to express these things without metaphorically flinging our arms around. We went through a phase in which people were said to be “citing”, which wasn’t much better than pointing, so rather than go back to that, perhaps we should have them “referring to” things instead, before they take someone’s eye out.

Mind matters: We seem to have an aversion – as does much of the media, it appears – to talking about mental illness. Not as a subject, of course: our coverage of it is nothing less than comprehensive; even enthusiastic. But the question of what to call it seems to cause us some difficulty. Last week, in a report about the growing cohort of people claiming disability benefits, we wrote: “The OBR said that the increase in the number and length of claims could be driven by mental health issues and long Covid.”

It is fine to use the term “mental health” in the proper context, and even the word “issues” has its place, but this sounded euphemistic, as though we were afraid to say “mental illness”. Indeed, recently we went as far as to write about “mental-health-related illnesses”, which was an extraordinarily convoluted way of avoiding it. If we are not averse to discussing the topic itself, then neither should we demur in our language.

Wild guess: It’s clear that not all of us have been paying sufficient heed to the edicts of this column, whose author last week held forth on the inadvisability of ever using words that end in “estimate” given their propensity to cause trouble. “For those suffering the brunt of the extreme weather and rising sea levels caused by a heating planet, the breakthrough on the contentious issue of loss and damage cannot be underestimated,” we wrote in an article about the climate summit in Egypt.

It was an easy repair, involving the phrase “should not” instead of “cannot”. Also, we meant that the significance of the breakthrough should not be underestimated, so that bit was changed as well. Just tweaks and niggles, and it was an excellent report, which made it well worth polishing.

Summing up: An article about a shooting at a nightclub in Colorado quoted the words of a witness who had stated on Twitter: “I only saw the after math”. Reader John Schluter alerted us to the error, saying that it looked as though someone’s (possibly American) spellchecker had got a bit carried away.

In fact, it has been our policy for some time to try to avoid altering tweets or other social media posts we use in our articles, in order not to detract from the immediacy of public reaction to an event. However, we do at times permit unobtrusive corrections to be made, and on this occasion it would have done no harm. It might also have helped if we had gotten the headline right, as it referred to the club as LTGB+ rather than LGBT+.

Eyes on the prize: A note from loyal contributor Mick O’Hare pointed out (not “pointed to”, which is different) a mistake we had made in a rather moving article about the founding father of the World Cup, Jules Rimet. We said that his name “bestows the trophy that famous footballers will lift in Doha on 18 December”. “They won’t,” said Mick, explaining that the Jules Rimet trophy was given to Brazil in 1970, and that the current one is called, “rather boringly”, the Fifa World Cup trophy. We probably should have known that.

Our use of the word “bestows” was also a little curious, but given the beauty of the sentiment I’m prepared to let that pass.

Headline of the week: “Sunak registered with private GP practice that offers same-day visitations”. It conjures an image of ghostly apparitions dispensing (possibly unreliable) medical advice. We meant “visits”, of course. Thanks to Linda Beeley.

Until next time, keep up the good work.