148 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
148 lines
4.4 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
topics
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about-us
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style-book
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simon-heffers-style-notes
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4176390
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-----
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# Style notes 7: Nov 14 2008
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3:28PM GMT 14 Nov 2008
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Dear Colleagues
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One of the joys of writing is the excitement of knowing the right order into
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which to put not merely words, but clauses. We must all have been delighted to
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read that "wisps of hair from Charles Darwin's beard are to go on public
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display 200 years after he was born in a National History Museum Exhibition".
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One bemused reader wrote in asking whether the museum had a midwifery
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department, and he was probably not alone in his curiosity.
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We are continuing to make bizarre spelling errors that can be prevented merely
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by simple concentration in some cases, and limited reliance on the
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spellchecker. Who is "Simin" Cowell? Who are the "Toires"? (Answer: Her
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Majesty's Loyal Opposition.) Can one really commit an act of "stealing
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oneself". What is "definately"? How do you "persude" somebody else to do
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something, such as spell properly? Also, the correct spelling of "straightened
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circumstances" is actually "straitened circumstances", though few are willing
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to admit this.
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Grammar remains problematical. "Myself" is a reflexive pronoun. We had a
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headline that read: "Gus Poyet: Tottenham were right to sack myself and Juande
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Ramos". Only Poyet could sack himself, and he didn't. It is interesting that
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Poyet did not use this illiteracy: we did. We noted the other day that someone
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"drunk himself to death". He probably was a drunk, but that is another matter
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altogether. Similarly, "the vessel sunk", when it sank. Talking of vessels:
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they, or people metaphorically, do not "hove into view". They heave into view.
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No-one ever hoves. He, she or it heaves. Hove is the past participle, and a
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town on the Sussex coast.
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There has been the odd difficulty with facts. A nine-year old boy wrote in to
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remind us that Greenwich is on the zero degree line of longitude, not
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latitude. Some of you may want to bear in mind for next November that there is
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no such day as Remembrance Day. There is Armistice Day (November 11) and
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Remembrance Sunday (the Sunday nearest 11 November). Not all of South America
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is tropical, though some of our writers assume it is. Ryanair is an Irish, and
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not a British, airline.
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With some apparent "facts" the application of common sense can help. It is
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hard to imagine there being 11,000,000 migrant workers in Manchester: there
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are in fact 11,000. However radical some Scandinavian monarchies are, there is
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no-one called Prince Mary of Denmark.
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We are becoming again a little too fond of the hackneyed phrase, with the odd
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"furious row" turning up in our pages recently, and even "erupting". The
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readers always prefer freshly minted terms of expression. In a similar vein,
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can we please restrict the use of the verb "vow" to religious or spiritual
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contexts? Politicians do not vow to create jobs. They promise, assert or even
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just say it. And while on politics, the word "policymaker" is a nasty
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Americanism. If we must say it, we hyphenate it.
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Finally, a reminder that a "disinterested" person is not one who has no
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interest in a subject; that is an uninterested person. A disinterested person
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is completely neutral in the matter.
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With best wishes
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Simon Heffer
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Associate Editor
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The Daily Telegraph
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notes/4176390/Style-notes-7-Nov-14-2008.html
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Telegraph
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## [Simon Heffer's Style Notes][6]
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[What are these?][2]
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Share:
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* [ ][1]
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* [ ][3]
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* [ ][4]
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* [Tweet][5]
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[EDITOR'S CHOICE »][8]
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Composer, musician, poet and author whose writing provided a vivid commentary
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