176 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
176 lines
6.2 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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4176454
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-----
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# Style notes 11: Dec 18 2008
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3:36PM GMT 18 Dec 2008
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Dear Colleagues
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One of the most important features of a quality newspaper should be headlines
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that accurately reflect what is in the story under them. Our splash headline
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on Monday read: "Barclays chief says property prices will fall 30pc". The
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problem was that he said nothing of the sort. We use the future tense to
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communicate that something is going to happen: it hasn't happened yet. What Mr
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Varley said (according to our story) was that prices had already fallen by 15
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per cent and "we've got another 10 to 15 per cent to fall between now and the
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end of next year". Our readers are miserable enough about the decline in their
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asset values without our misrepresenting it to them as about to be even worse
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than predicted.
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Also, the present tense was used in describing what Mr Varley said. He was not
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speaking in real time to our readers any more than anyone we report in our
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pages does. This is a tabloid device, and is why the style book specifies the
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use of reported speech in news stories. Please adhere to this in news reports
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at all times. It is a fundamental of serious newspaper reporting.
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There seems to be confusion about the hyphenation of ages. In nouns it is a 17
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month-old or a 34 year-old. In adjectives it is the 17-month-old baby and the
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34-year-old man. Could I also remind you that where we are representing
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profanities we don't need to give a hint of what the word is: leave that up to
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the reader to decide in keeping with his or her level of incipient coarseness.
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So the most offensive word in the English language is ----. We had it in a
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blog as c---t, making it an offensive five-letter word, presumably "count".
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Could we also please bear in mind that the past participles "brought" and
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"bought" mean two different things (you wouldn't, after all, get much of a
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result with a bring and bring sale)? Also, a spendthrift is not parsimonious;
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he is profligate. If you don't know what a word means it is generally a good
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idea not to use it until you have found out. Also, the passive voice of the
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verb "to beat" is "beaten": the headline last Sunday that said why "board
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games can't be beat" was not even semi-literate.
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Some of us are writing so carelessly that we miss words out. Please don't. One
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story about abandoned pets had horrors including "as many 131,400 dogs were"
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and "worried that people losing their dogs don't where to turn"; we could have
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a little Christmas competition to fill in the blanks, I suppose. As if to
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compensate for these omissions, the writer then included a word twice: "said
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Clarissa Baldwin, the charity's chief executive, said." Senses of humour about
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this sloppiness are starting to wear thin.
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There have been some factual difficulties in recent days. Several readers in
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Lowestoft were outraged to be told they lived in Norfolk. We are getting
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increasingly bad at allocating towns and villages to their correct counties.
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The readers really mind. If you don't know, look it up. We also claimed that
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William Blake's most famous poems are _Jerusalem_ and _Daffodils_. The poem
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now vulgarly named _Daffodils_ was called "I wandered lonely as a cloud" when
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Wordsworth wrote it, and his view ought to be taken seriously. Blake, who was
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a different man altogether, also wrote such trifles as _Songs of Experience_
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(including _The Tyger_) and _Songs of Innocence_, which perhaps we should have
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pretended we knew. Finally, St Andrews is not part of the Russell Group of
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universities.
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The Madoff scandal has caused some readers to inform us that a Ponzi scheme
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and a pyramid selling scheme are not the same thing. The former relies on a
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"hub" to which investors are attracted by supposedly remunerative financial
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instruments; the latter relies on investors recruiting others underneath them.
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The need for the latter to grow exponentially is what makes it likely to fail
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more quickly than a Ponzi scheme. In this and other contexts the word "scam"
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is unutterably tabloid and, like most slang, should be avoided in a quality
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newspaper.
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Some of our literals this week would be amusing were they not so undermining
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of our reputation for quality. Apparently, "the Pound is now broadly week
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against a basket of currencies". Something "belconged" to somebody, which was
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quite astonishing. Best of all, the man who "through" shoes at President Bush
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has appeared in court.
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Could we think a little more about punctuation, especially about the
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promiscuous use of dashes where commas do just as well? Could we also go easy
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on our use of acronyms, which tend to jar with the readers? If we talk about
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the Council of Mortgage Lenders they can just as easily thereafter be "the
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council" as "the CMA". Another tabloidism with which we are becoming too cosy
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is the verb "to fuel". It has a legitimate use in contexts concerned with
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energy. It is now hackneyed to use it in contexts such as "fuelling hatred",
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"drink-fuelled" and so on.
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And I think we have had enough crackdowns for the time being.
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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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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/simon-heffers-style-
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notes/4176454/Style-notes-11-Dec-18-2008.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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* Advertisement
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![][7]
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[EDITOR'S CHOICE »][8]
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### [Gil Scott-Heron: 'A voice for Shakespeare'][9]
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[![Gil Scott-Heron][10]][9]
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Composer, musician, poet and author whose writing provided a vivid commentary
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on the black American experience.
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### [Beekeeping diary: the new colonies arrive][11]
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### [Spectacular light show dazzles Sydney][12]
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### [WS Gilbert: a knight for our times][13]
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