184 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
Executable File
184 lines
6.9 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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7928079
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-----
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# Style notes 31: August 2 2010
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11:50AM BST 02 Aug 2010
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Dear Colleagues
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We must make sure we stick to the rules on how to describe people, because to
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stray from consistency causes confusion. The suspect in the Wikileaks case is
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an American soldier called Private Brad Manning. He is also known as
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Specialist Brad Manning. We should stick to the familiar, and refer to him at
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all times (until he is convicted of anything) as Pte Manning. We have started
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to call him Mr Manning; which, as he is not a civilian, is just plain wrong.
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The only exception is with officers (usually of the rank of Lt-General or
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above) who have also been knighted; in which case they should be called (for
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example) General Sir David Richards at first mention, and then may be either
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Gen Richards or Sir David. Many of our readers are or have been in the
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services and have great attention to detail on matters of rank. Since they
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know at once when we get it wrong, we need to have that attention to detail
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too.
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If you find yourself using a word of whose meaning you are unsure, do look it
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up in the dictionary. When we get a word wrong it is embarrassing. It demeans
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us as professional writers and shakes our readers' confidence in us. In recent
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weeks we have confused endocrinology - the study of the body's endocrine
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system - with dendrochronology, which is the study of dating trees. More
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embarrassing still, we accused the eminent broadcaster Sir David Attenborough
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of being a naturist - someone who chooses not to wear clothes - when in fact
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he is a naturalist; and during a story about a coach crash in Paris the
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nationality of the driver changed from Austrian to Australian. Homogenous and
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homogeneous are not interchangeable and their respective meanings should be
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studied in the dictionary. Like embodied and embedded, which we also confused,
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effecting and affecting and eligibility and legibility, these pairs of words
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almost come under the heading of homophones, as do prostate and prostrate. We
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must take more care and ensure we are using the right word.
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Homophones remain abundant and show up the writer and the newspaper or
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website. We are quality media, and quality media do not make mistakes such as
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these: "the luck of the drawer", "through the kitchen sink", "through up"
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"dragging their heals" and "slammed on the breaks", all of which are cliches
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that might not be worthy of a piece of elegant writing even if spelt
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correctly. We have also confused Briton and Britain, hanger and hangar, hordes
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and hoards, peeled and pealed, lightening and lightning, stationery and
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stationary, principal and principle, peninsula and peninsular, licence and
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license and, in something of a pile-up, born, borne and bourn. If you are
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unsure of the meanings of any of these words, look them up before proceeding
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further.
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Many of these mistakes are caused by carelessness and not properly reading
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back what one has written. We have had an increasing number of literals in
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recent weeks, both online and in the paper, which suggests the problem is
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getting worse rather than better. Heads of department have a particular
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responsibility to ensure that their staff perform to the best professional
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standards in this respect. We managed to perpetrate one of the worst literals
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of all recently - pubic for public- which may seem a laughing matter, but is
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not.
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Some Americanisms keep slipping in, usually when we are given agency copy to
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re-write and do an inadequate job on it. There is no such verb as "impacted",
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and other American-style usages of nouns as verbs should be avoided (authored,
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gifted etc). Maneuver is not spelt that way in Britain. We do not have
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lawmakers: we might just about have legislators, but better still we have
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parliament. People do not live in their hometown; they live in their home
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town, or even better the place where they were born.
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Sometimes we do not properly think of the sense of what we are writing. There
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is a marked difference between the meanings of convince and persuade that is
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not recognised by some of you. If you are unsure of the distinction, look the
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words up. We wrote that "too many bomb disposal experts" had died in
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Afghanistan, which prompted an angry reader to ask what an acceptable number
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of dead experts would have been. We wrote of "an extraordinary killing spree"
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and were asked, in similar fashion, what would have constituted an ordinary
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one. We wrote about someone's youngest child being her first, which was
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obviously not the case. Be careful too of the distinction between renting a
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property and letting it. And readers also asked us how there could, as we
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reported, be an 18-month long investigation into a crime that was committed
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only 14 months ago. We need to ensure that our facts, like our arithmetic, add
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up.
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There have also been some grammatical difficulties. The style book (which, in
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case you have lost your copy, is also online) specifies the distinction
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between "compared with" and "compared to", and it may be worth examining. One
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of our writers began a sentence with the phrase "us single ladies" which
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suggests we need to brush up on our pronouns. We should always write one in
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four is, not one in four are, since one is inevitably singular. Bacteria is
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plural. Put adverbs in a sentence where they make the most logical sense, if
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you have to use them at all. This will never be by splitting the infinitive,
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but to write "to go speedily to town" will always be preferable to "to go to
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town speedily", or any other such variant. It is different from, not different
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to. Under age, like under way, should be written as two words.
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Finally, may I mention some factual matters? Ottawa is the capital of Canada.
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Air Chief Marshal is spelt thus; and Mark Antony thus.
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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/7928079/Style-notes-31-August-2-2010.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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![][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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### [The Telegraph's Matt is Hay Festival star][14]
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