165 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
165 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
topics
|
|
about-us
|
|
style-book
|
|
simon-heffers-style-notes
|
|
7927930
|
|
-----
|
|
# Style notes 24: September 21 2009
|
|
|
|
10:05AM BST 21 Sep 2009
|
|
|
|
Dear Colleagues
|
|
|
|
Forgive the interruption to normal service: holidays will happen. Also, there
|
|
have been technical difficulties with sending round robins through the new
|
|
Googlemail system. I hope that this has now been rectified. Because of the
|
|
amount of material to deal with, there will be another note in the next few
|
|
days.
|
|
|
|
To begin with, perhaps the most important thing of all to note is that it
|
|
appears to have been so long since some of you read your style books that you
|
|
have forgotten what is in them. I urge a refresher course for the start of the
|
|
new academic year, not least for those who have to read the copy of others and
|
|
yet fail to spot the errors in them.
|
|
|
|
For some of us, basic grammar has taken a tumble: and this is awful, because
|
|
it is the correct use of grammar that makes us intelligible. We wrote about
|
|
the Tory who had "left his wife for a woman while she was fighting cancer".
|
|
Was it the wife or the mistress who was ill? We often fail to understand where
|
|
hyphens should be used, or colons: colons do not precede a capital letter
|
|
unless it is the initial of a proper name, even in heads. We should never
|
|
split an infinitive. Criteria and strata are plurals, not singulars. Data is a
|
|
plural word. Something is different from something else, not different to it
|
|
and certainly not, as in one especially revolting usage, different than
|
|
anything. Troops are a large number of soldiers. Their singular is soldier. A
|
|
troop is a group of soldiers, never an individual one. When we show our
|
|
ignorance of terms connected with the Armed Forces the readers spot it at once
|
|
and are annoyed. We must take special care in these matters. Anticipate does
|
|
not mean expect. Only the Americans appeal a decision; we appeal against one.
|
|
|
|
The failure to read copy properly before it goes online has led to a crop of
|
|
distressing homonyms being published, mainly on the web. However, the most
|
|
horrific of all - in a standfirst - appeared in the paper, where we wrote
|
|
about Henry VIII's years on "the thrown". I need not tell you what this does
|
|
to diminish our credibility as a quality newspaper. Also appearing in the last
|
|
few weeks have been repost and riposte, avery and aviary, threw and through,
|
|
hordes and hoards (with the unfortunate "hordeing"), led and lead and,
|
|
inevitably, it's and its. There was also a near miss when someone was
|
|
described as "renounced" when we in fact meant they were "renowned".
|
|
|
|
Nothing should go online unless it has been properly checked and read through
|
|
first. This would have allowed spared us many of these mistakes. We would also
|
|
have caught some especially embarrassing literals, such as "fiend" for
|
|
"friend", "gardner" for "gardener", and a story about a poor man suffering
|
|
from "prostrate cancer". One is also "perturbed" not "peturbed". "Expat", if
|
|
we must use such a word, is not hyphenated, not least since the word of which
|
|
it is a truncation isn't.
|
|
|
|
The line of fire is not the firing line. Offstage and off stage mean two
|
|
completely different things. Do not use the phrase "back to back" when you
|
|
mean "consecutive". Also please note that while some chief executives are also
|
|
chairmen, it is usually not the case, and the two terms are not to be used
|
|
interchangeably.
|
|
|
|
Finally, two more general points. First, it cannot be stressed enough that
|
|
news reporting is not an appropriate place to express opinions. News reporting
|
|
should therefore be light on adjectives, which should be used only when
|
|
required for factual description. Using them to pass a comment on someone or
|
|
something, other than in humorous stories, is not acceptable. By the same
|
|
token, be careful to avoid saying that statistics "show" something when,
|
|
actually, they only suggest it; attribute all comments as precisely as
|
|
possible, rather than vaguely to "experts" - the only exception is in lobby
|
|
reporting.
|
|
|
|
Second, there has been a tendency in some of our sports coverage to become
|
|
unduly tabloid in some of our headlines. Please avoid this. The readers don't
|
|
like it, and it doesn't enhance our reputation. They don't want to read that a
|
|
team has "crashed out" of a competition, or had any other tabloid sensation
|
|
happening to it, and nor should we. That is why loaded and cliched words like
|
|
"soar" are also on the banned list.
|
|
|
|
_With best wishes _
|
|
|
|
_Simon Heffer _
|
|
|
|
_Associate Editor _
|
|
|
|
_The Daily Telegraph _
|
|
|
|
[X][1] Share & bookmark
|
|
|
|
Delicious Facebook Google Messenger Reddit Twitter
|
|
|
|
Digg Fark LinkedIn Google Buzz StumbleUpon Y! Buzz
|
|
|
|
[What are these?][2]
|
|
|
|
* Share: [Share][1] [ ][3] [ ][4]
|
|
|
|
[Tweet][5]
|
|
|
|
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/simon-heffers-style-
|
|
notes/7927930/Style-notes-24-September-21-2009.html
|
|
|
|
Telegraph
|
|
|
|
## [Simon Heffer's Style Notes][6]
|
|
|
|
[X][1] Share & bookmark
|
|
|
|
Delicious Facebook Google Messenger Reddit Twitter
|
|
|
|
Digg Fark LinkedIn Google Buzz StumbleUpon Y! Buzz
|
|
|
|
[What are these?][2]
|
|
|
|
Share:
|
|
|
|
* [ ][1]
|
|
|
|
* [ ][3]
|
|
|
|
* [ ][4]
|
|
|
|
* [Tweet][5]
|
|
|
|
* Advertisement
|
|
|
|
![][7]
|
|
|
|
Advertisement
|
|
|
|
[EDITOR'S CHOICE »][8]
|
|
|
|
### [Gil Scott-Heron: 'A voice for Shakespeare'][9]
|
|
|
|
[![Gil Scott-Heron][10]][9]
|
|
|
|
Composer, musician, poet and author whose writing provided a vivid commentary
|
|
on the black American experience.
|
|
|
|
### [Beekeeping diary: the new colonies arrive][11]
|
|
|
|
### [Spectacular light show dazzles Sydney][12]
|
|
|
|
### [WS Gilbert: a knight for our times][13]
|
|
|
|
### [The Telegraph's Matt is Hay Festival star][14]
|
|
|
|
Advertisement
|
|
|
|
Classified Advertising
|
|
|
|
* [Services][15]
|
|
|
|
* [Property][16]
|
|
|
|
* [Motoring][17]
|
|
|
|
Loading
|
|
|
|
[Find your ideal job with Telegraph Jobs][18]
|
|
|
|
var puffs_8120657 = new Array();
|
|
|