Mea Culpa: Last rites for a misspelt passport ceremony

The headline on an interesting article about the UK citizenship test described it as “closer to a bad pub quiz than a right of passage”. This nearly makes sense, but we meant a “rite of passage”, in which rite means a ceremony, coming from the same Latin root as ritual. In other words, a ceremony marking the passing from one state to another, such as from childhood to adulthood or from the citizenship of one nation to another.

It is an antique phrase, worn smooth from overuse, and so you can see how the spelling of an unfamiliar word might default to that of a familiar one, especially as a “right of passage” could easily be the reward for passing the test. But in that case the headline would have to say something like “closer to a bad pub quiz than a test conferring a right of passage”. Time to read the last rites for that misspelling.

Pronoun palaver: We wrote about Dido Harding, the boss of NHS Test and Trace, saying: “She has provided useful cover for the health secretary; it was her, rather than him, who announced the decision not to proceed with the much-trumpeted mobile phone app trialled on the Isle of Wight.”

That should be “she” and “he”, as John Wilkin pointed out. I suspect our writer was thinking ahead, to “her decision”, even though we weren’t saying it was her decision, merely that she made the announcement.

Compris? We used the word “comprised” in an editorial last week. This is rarely a good idea, but it did provide Professor John Northover, one of our readers, with the chance to explain how to use three similar words. We said: “It requires a cabinet comprised of people capable of making the right choices...”

We should have said “consisting of” or “composed of”, or “comprising”. I don’t know why, but the convention is that “comprise” does not have “of” after it.

Of maps and landmarks: In our unrivalled cricket coverage we mentioned that James Anderson had taken 600 wickets, and said: “He is the first fast bowler to make it to the landmark, unchartered territory for any Englishman.” John Schluter wrote to say that we probably meant “uncharted”.

I was wary of issuing a definitive ruling, because the last time I did, someone found an old reference to “chartered territory” in the colonising of the Americas: the ownership of land granted by royal charter.

However, I think we meant “unmapped” rather than “lacking a charter”, which is, as Professor Paul Brians comments, “a word most people have little use for”.