166 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
166 lines
5.7 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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7928075
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-----
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# Style notes 30: May 28 2010
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11:49AM BST 28 May 2010
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Dear Colleagues
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Please forgive the interruption in normal service: I blame the general
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election.
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The new political arrangements have given rise to some style questions. It is
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quite in order to refer to the new government as the Coalition, with a capital
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C. The form Lib Dem/Conservative is to be preferred to Lib Dem-Conservative in
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describing the nature of the arrangement.
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We have made rather a rash of factual errors, some of them bordering on the
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obtuse. We made theological history by arguing that Christ fed the 5,000 with
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three loaves: in fact He took five (and two fishes: Mark, Chapter 6, verse
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38). We attributed an action to Shakespeare in 1513 when he was not born until
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1564. We said Bach was born in 1865; it was 1685. We described Istanbul as the
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capital of Turkey; it is Ankara. We had Benazir Bhutto ending her exile in
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2008; she was assassinated in 2007. We talked of Queen Victoria's trip to
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India, a place she never visited: she never went further abroad than the near
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continent. We cause grave offence to our Polish friends by referring to
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Auschwitz as "a Polish concentration camp"; it was a Nazi concentration camp
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established by the Germans on Polish soil. A head of state is not inevitably
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the same as a head of government. Her Majesty the Queen is our Head of State
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and David Cameron is her head of government; Presidents Sarkozy and Obama are
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both. Radiographer is not a term interchangeable with radiologist; the former
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is a technician and the latter a qualified doctor.
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The style book has a long entry on the prefixes for- and fore-, as in forgo
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and forego, and I commend it to any of you planning to use either of these
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words. It also has an entry on the phrase "due to", which we seem increasingly
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incapable of using correctly. Can you please also take care over the
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differences between dependent and dependant, and practise and practice?
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We have had a couple of distressing tautologies; "a male youth" appeared in a
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court case, and an item was the "most cheapest". May I also remind you that a
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hike is something people go on with rucksacks and stout boots? A steep rise in
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taxes, interest rates or anything else is simply a steep rise. It is equally
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tabloid to use the verb "dubbed" when we mean "described as"; our readers
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don't speak tabloid and it is a courtesy to them for us not to write in it.
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Anyone using the words there, their or they're is implored to ensure that he
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or she is deploying the correct one. Benefited requires only one "t".
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One of our journalists aged dramatically overnight when writing the sentence:
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"Although now 80, I hear that she….", making himself the subject of the
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sentence in which he actually meant to describe an octogenarian. He should
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have written "I hear that she, although 80….." We wrote a piece laughing at
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Birmingham city council for spelling "its own name wrong". Fortunately, the
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council does not seem to have retaliated by laughing at us for not knowing
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when to use the adverb "wrongly" instead of the adjective "wrong". Two-thirds
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is a plural - it is "two thirds of people are", not "is".
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We have had an epidemic of homophones, the most tiresome of which has been
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"lead" for "led" and "uproute" for "uproot". The elementary precaution of
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reading back your work should eliminate such mistakes. This would also, I
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hope, have prevented our writing "stains" when we meant to write "statins".
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We also receive many complaints from readers who have read news stories in
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which the time and place of an event's having happened are not given. This
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should be basic journalism: please be sure that your story contains the
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fundamental facts that a reader will want to know.
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Finally, a reminder about trade names. We received recently a letter from the
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Formica Corporation of Cincinnati, Ohio, rebuking us about using its name,
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twice, to describe generically laminate tops. Such transgressions tend to
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alert intellectual property lawyers. We must take care to avoid this and use a
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general term to describe a like product. When we do use trade names, and they
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should be avoided as much as possible, we always capitalise the first letter.
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Difficulty can arise when words in regular use are not obviously trade names;
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eg Biro (ballpoint pen), Dictaphone (dictating machine), Hoover (vacuum
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cleaner), Tannoy (loudspeaker). Page 133 of the style book highlights some
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more of these as does the website [http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm][1]
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_Yours ever _
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_Simon Heffer _
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_Associate Editor _
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_The Daily Telegraph_
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[X][2] Share & bookmark
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[What are these?][3]
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* Share: [Share][2] [ ][4] [ ][5]
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[Tweet][6]
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/simon-heffers-style-
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notes/7928075/Style-notes-30-May-28-2010.html
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Telegraph
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## [Simon Heffer's Style Notes][7]
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[X][2] Share & bookmark
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[What are these?][3]
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Share:
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* [ ][2]
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* [ ][4]
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* [ ][5]
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* [Tweet][6]
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* Advertisement
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![][8]
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Advertisement
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[EDITOR'S CHOICE »][9]
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### [Gil Scott-Heron: 'A voice for Shakespeare'][10]
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[![Gil Scott-Heron][11]][10]
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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][12]
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### [Spectacular light show dazzles Sydney][13]
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### [WS Gilbert: a knight for our times][14]
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### [The Telegraph's Matt is Hay Festival star][15]
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