Mea Culpa: Oranges, aprons and mistakes that aren’t ‘wrong’

Some readers objected to my refusal to rule last week that “different to” and “bored of” are wrong – and that “different from” and “bored with” are correct. What do I make of “should of” instead of “should have”, one wanted to know. The answer is that this is different from (not different to) a convention about which preposition to use. It was a genuine mistake, a mishearing of “have” as “of”.

Although it originated as an error, I would hesitate to call it wrong. We don’t use it at The Independent, because many people do think it is incorrect and we don’t want to distract them. But people use language as they will, and usage eventually gains acceptance. No one says “apron” is wrong, although it started by what lexicographers call “wrong division”, as people misheard “a napron” (related to napkin) as “an apron”. A similar thing happened to “orange”, from Arabic naranj, although that change occurred in Old French, un orenge, before the word arrived here.

My argument is that it is easier to persuade writers that it is in their own interest to know that some readers regard something as wrong than that they should obey some arbitrary diktat – especially when, as with “different from”, this is merely a stylistic preference.

Round and round: Despite the name of this column, I come to defend our writers today, not to bury them under an avalanche of criticism. One reader wrote to question a comment article on Labour’s plan for a tax on companies that pay “excessive” salaries of more than £330,000. We said it may not raise as much as planned “because companies would probably find a way round it”. The reader asked if this should have been “a way around it”. He said: “While the ‘a’ from ‘around’ is commonly dropped in speech, isn’t it still necessary in written English?” My answer is no. Why add a syllable when the sentence sounds fine without it?

But I was surprised to learn from the Oxford Dictionary that “round” is “generally regarded as informal or non-standard” only in US English. Whatever anyone thinks of Labour’s policy, our reporting of it was fine.

Gimme shelter: Another phrase that provoked a reader was “a gimme”. Matthew Norman wrote about the Republican “wretches” in Congress on Tuesday, saying: “It’s a gimme they will abandon Trump the moment they see him as a mortal danger to their re-election.” Surely he meant “a given”, I was asked.

I had to explain that this is a slang term among younger people, and that Matthew was using it because he enjoys playing with language. He is good at it, and the phrase was striking enough for an editor to use that sentence for the sub-heading on the article. Strictly, a “give-me” makes no sense, but it is a blunt and fittingly American way of saying “a certainty”.

We should try not to offend readers, but sometimes we should introduce them to fresh and engaging usages.

Cannibal canteen: Finally, someone objected to this sentence in an article about the latest jobs figures: “The portion of people of working age in employment is the highest since comparable records began.” Shouldn’t that be “proportion”? Well, yes, it may be that it was a typing error, but actually it works. A portion is a part of a whole, a share. Indeed, proportion comes from Latin pro portione “in respect of (its or a person’s) share”. And portion is shorter.

The reader was not convinced by my defence. “Hm. I’d only expect a portion of people in a cannibal cafeteria.”