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Plain English Guide: tautologies
2008-01-17 14:35:00
A regular Engine Room reader who has asked to remain anonymous has emailed me a local government 'Plain English Guide '. At 27 pages, it is perhaps a little long-winded but then again it is still shorter than the style guide and glossary of the magazine that I work for.I was particularly struck by its list of tautologies (or as the guide says, "words that mean the same thing"). It includes:free giftnew innovationpair of twinspast historyvast majoritybrief momentcircle roundjoin togetherrepeated againmutual co-operationwhether or nota dead corpseadded bonusrevert backfuture prospectsearly beginningsunite togetherNow, I'm not sure that quite all of these are actually tautologous. 'Vast majority', for example – it is possible for a political party to have a slim majority, so I don't have a problem with vast majority either. What do you reckon?And on another note, I remember a (former) member of the news desk here who was convinced it was incorrect to use the word 'whether' wit...

Derren Brown: tricks of the page
2008-01-16 16:23:00
I'm currently reading the surprisingly well written and interesting book Tricks of the Mind by British magician and mentalist Derren Brown . At one point in the book, Brown confesses he is:...never one to arrive at an acumen regarding a set of printed pages bound along one side, based purely upon my discernment of its sheathing, ho hoIgnoring for the moment the interesting use of the word 'acumen', my question to you is: what on earth is he talking about? I'll post the answer tomorrow, although I'll doubt you'll need it.
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Typo of the week: ethic minorities
2008-01-15 16:34:00
Yes, you did read that post title correctly: today is press day on our publication and we almost let through the clanger 'ethic minorities'. Not only that but it appeared twice in the same news story.Fortunately for the subs, one of our eagle-eyed proofreaders spotted the mistake."Do ethic minorities come from Ethics?" I asked him. Unusually, he not only got my joke but laughed at it."Never mind the missing 'n', we should just drop the 'e'," he then said. So of course I told him not to be ethicist.Words, eh?
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Word of the day: invacuation
2008-01-14 15:09:00
Here's an email from Gareth regarding a great work-related portmanteau he has encountered:Alarming signs have recently gone up in our office informing us of the procedures we need to follow in the event of an Invacuation.An Invacuation – presumably the unloved offspring of the words "evacuation"and, erm, "in" – apparently involves workers sheltering within their office building rather than being kicked out onto the streets to fend for themselves. In our state-of-the-art Canary Wharf tower, that basically means hiding in the stairwells until it's safe to come out again, and is designed principally as the process to be followed in the event of a terrorist attack. None of this, sadly, is clear from the signs, which seem to have led to general confusion.This raises two points. Firstly, I don't care what you've called your new emergency procedure: if someone attacks my workplace then I want to get as far away from there as possible, not huddle in a stairwell. Secondly, how safe c...
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Mariah Carey: not a diva
2008-01-11 10:20:00
Free London paper Metro included an interesting quote from singer Maria h Carey the other day:"I don't believe I'm truly nasty. I've never done one diva-ish thing in my life," she said. "The definition of a diva is a woman who sings well."Um, right. So a diva sings well, but Mariah has never done one diva-ish thing, so logic would suggest that Mariah has never sung well...(And I was going to link the same Metro article online but it appears to have been taken down. Wonder why?)Mariah: Sofa, so good
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Georgia is a hoe!
2008-01-09 15:17:00
I recently spotted a great piece of graffiti near my flat. It read:Georgia is a hoe!I was going to take a picture – by the time I went back, the final word had been erased. I'm presuming that Georgia herself did this, but whether it was because she is a stickler for spelling or because she took offence at being called a garden implement is beyond me...And I did consider making a joke around the phrase 'calling a spade a spade' – but decided not.

Just for fun
2008-01-08 17:13:00
Many of our blogs rely on the shortcoming of the writers in our care but JD and I are also blessed with some competent wordsmiths, one of whom takes delight in inserting phrases that might not be lucid, but make us smile. F'rinstance:"It must seek out a partner that can operate in a manner empathetic to the Swedish manufacturer's verticalised predilections.""You'd expect a truck manufacturer to capture visual harmony across its range but getting analogous driving characteristics is surely a step too far.""Anyone want raspberries with their bowl of cognitive dissonance?" Yes, I know... we should be stamping out this kind of playful language in a hard-nosed business magazine, but it's good to see a writer having fun.

Lovestruck by an emu
2008-01-08 15:39:00
Free London paper thelondonpaper runs a regular column called 'Lovestruck', in which readers can write in with a short message declaring their interest in a stranger or near-stranger they've seen on a bus/met on the tube/drooled over while drunk.As you can imagine, many of the messages reek of desperation and yesterday's column contained a particularly fine example:To Alison, the long-legged emu-like girl I met in the Hampstead lido. You're gorgeous. Glass of wine? ANON.I really hope there is more of a story behind this one, because I think calling any girl 'emu-like' is likely to backfire. No wonder Anon didn't manage to get her number when he met her in the lido (although to be fair, not many people keep a pen and paper or even a mobile phone inside their trunks...)See Lovestruck online...What a tasty bird

Intent if not determined to
2008-01-07 16:42:00
Just came across this sentence in some copy I was subbing for an opinion piece. To put it in context, the writer had been talking about emissions controls across the EU.Up to 80% of the rest of the populated world not only couldn’t care less [about emissions levels], they are intent if not determined to massively increase uncontrolled pollutionUm, right. Firstly, I just don't believe this is true. Certain countries may not care a great deal about limiting pollution compared to, say, boosting the economy or increasing industrial output, but that's very different to being "determined to massively increase pollution". However I'll put that aside, seeing as it is taken from an opinion piece not a news story.Secondly, where does the figure of 'up to 80%' come from? I haven't quoted the relevant passage but the writer goes on to list China, Russia, India, South America, the Middle East, the US and Africa as some of the main culprits making up that 80%. And it leaves just 20% of th...

Short and sweet
2008-01-04 17:29:00
Some of the writers in our care delight in using long phrases for no clear reason; JD and I take equal delight in cutting them back. Here are some recent examples:An increase in overall vehicle length would enable significant volume carrying capacity to be achieved (= longer trucks have more room)Larger in size (= bigger)In a much shorter time frame (= sooner)... and here's a spelling mistale that brings a gloriously surreal image to mind: "The lights are controlled by the steering column storks."
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Substantive editing
2008-01-04 14:30:00
I recently found a nice little web page outlining the differences between copy editing, proofreading, and a third type of editing, 'substantive editing'. This third type of editing:looks at both the content and structure of a manuscript as a cohesive whole. Does the story or argument flow logically? Are there obvious gaps in a certain area? Too much information someplace else? Substantive editing can involve re-ordering large chunks of text, removing text, adding text, and even rewritingThis quite accurately describes a lot of the work that Apus and I do (in addition to our copy-editing duties). We are both sub editors (or subeditors, or sub-editors if you will), which is a job title that seems to be confined to this side of the Atlantic. Is it possible that the 'sub' in 'sub editor' stands for 'substantive'? Probably not, but it's a nice thought, and it might be of interest to our American copy-editor readership...
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Word of the day: globesity
2008-01-03 18:11:00
Recently I keep catching news stories about 'globesity', the growing problem of obesity across the globe (yes, the word is yet another portmanteau). Michael Quinlon's World Wide Word s has some good info about the origins of the term 'globesity' so I won't go into too much detail.However, I have noticed several commentators talk or write about the "globesity epidemic": here in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, for example. The World Wide Words page also quotes the Guardian doing the same.This leads me to ask: if globesity is, by its nature, global, shouldn't it always be a pandemic ("prevalent over a large part of the world" OED), not just an epidemic ("widespread in a community", OED)? And if yes, wouldn't a "globesity pandemic" be a tautology anyway?And now I'm off home for my dinner.
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Christmas message
2008-01-02 14:57:00
In lieu of a Christmas bonus the chairman of the company that employs JD and I has boosted staff morale with an inspirational e-mail including the news that:Each of our divisions has performed well and ahead of their respective marketsThe word "respective" is meaningless in this context, but what about a spot of verb agreement? He could have written "Each of our divisions has performed well and ahead of its market" or "All of our divisions have performed well and ahead of their markets".A minor point? Certainly – but we are a publishing house, after all.
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Fear is a great guard dog
2008-01-02 14:22:00
Back to work after the long Christmas break and one of the first pieces of copy I sub contains this phrase:Fear is a great guard dog but a very poor guideThis sounds like a proverb or a quotation, but if so it's a new one on me and Apus. It isn't listed in our reference books and Google fails to shed any light on it.Anyone else out there heard this one before – or has one of our writers been reading too many horoscopes? Which reminds me: happy new year...Not a great guard dog, unlike fear
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No FT style book... no comment
2008-01-02 01:14:00
Tucked into my Christmas stocking was a copy of the Financial Times Style Guide; whether Mrs Apus was commenting on my lack of style I have yet to ascertain. In any case, while flicking through it as an aid to the digestion of a rather fine rib of beef on Christmas afternoon I came across the following, under 'honorifics':Do not give awards such as VC... Queen's Counsel keep their QC.This alone was enough to put me off the entire 218-page guide.Why? Because the suffix VC stands for Victoria Cross, which is the UK's highest award for valour, to the extent that many heroes have been awarded their VCs posthumously. A Queen's Counsel is a senior barrister (lawyer) who is appointed on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor.Subs who run foul of the libel laws might have good reason to fear encountering a QC, but do the FT's subs really rate a VC below a QC?Whoever came up with that one should be ashamed of themselves.PSThe same style guide calls for the use of Mr/Mrs/Ms in news...
More About: Book , Comment

Word of the day: fourgy
2007-12-21 15:00:00
We haven't had a word of the day for a while, so I thought I would remedy that with 'fourgy' – a portmanteau of 'four' and, um, 'orgy'. I'm sure you can work out what it means.I came across this word in Douglas Coupland's novel JPod (published 2006, and pictured right), but I doubt whether it has its origins here. IMDb lists the 2005 film Wicked Fourgy of Whorror, for example. I'm not sure I even want to know.Googling 'fourgy' also throws up the word 'twenty-fourgy', which isn't as exciting as you might imagine – it's actually an orgy of watching TV series 24. I can relate to that.On another note, this will probably be my last post before Christmas so season's greetings and all that. And now that I have been entrusted with Apus's bulging 'Black Museum' file I need never fear running out of blog material again...
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Life outside the engine room
2007-12-20 15:48:00
After more than 20 years in the engine room my escape plans are coming to fruition so within a few weeks JD will be labouring on with a new fellow stoker – though I hope to continue submitting noteworthy points from my seaside hideaway.One of the more precious artefacts I'll be leaving in JD's care is a thick file entitled the black museum, packed with some of the more noteworthy howlers produced by our charges over the past couple of decades. No doubt JD will trawl through them for your delectation, but while the file's on my desk, here are a few examples, picked at random:"it will in each case be a question of fact as in each case no two cases will be the same""a street lighting upright" (lamp post?)"fire or heat turns this chemical into a lethal gas which causes severe irritation to skin and eyes" (leaving an uncomfortable corpse?)"dangerously unsafe vehicles""underground motorway toll tunnels" "sloping rear ramps" "new and previously unseen problems""facilitates easy mounti...
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Headline: Mum left tot in car to booze
2007-12-20 14:35:00
Ambiguous headline of the day goes to today's Daily Mirror with:Mum left tot in car to boozeWhen I read this I initially thought the tot was left to booze (in the car), when in fact the mum went boozing while the tot was just left.Nice headline words too: 'tot' and 'booze'. When was the last time you saw the word 'tot' outside a tabloid?The Mirror's web version of the story
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Mr MacMaster and the sun lounger
2007-12-19 10:57:00
Surprised by a recent story in free London paper Metro. Here's the relevant bit:A businessman who was hit on the neck by a sun lounger blown off a pub roof was awarded £1million damages yesterday.Mr MacMaster was standing outside the Crown in Romford, Essex, when the accident happened on a windy day in October 2002. The neck injury was 'much more severe than one would expect' and left him in chronic pain, the High Court was told."Much more severe than one would expect"? He was hit on the neck by a sun lounger blown off a roof; there's not much more severe than 'instant death'.Incidentally, kudos to Metro for its punning headline: "Pub's ill wind costs it £1m". However the paper's online version of the story includes neither the pun nor the above quote...Drinking: hazardous to health
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Production desk Christmas: 2
2007-12-14 21:05:00
Well, having just finished a delightful day of confusion and extra work caused by our charges failing to do their jobs thoroughly (and this, mark you, on an annual product we publish over the Christmas holiday) I can only say that shooting would be too good for them.Christmas? Bah humbug, says I.
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A production desk Christmas
2007-12-14 17:06:00
The pre-Christmas period is one of the busiest and most stressful for us on our magazine. Not only do we have a bumper Christmas issue to prepare but we work on the two following issues at the same time (no one wants to come in between Christmas and New Year, after all).The production desk is a mess of layouts, proofs, plans and charts, and the smallest mistake can lead to much confusion. Earlier today there was a great example of the effect this can have on the best of us when I noticed that our production editor, who is normally a calm, reasonable person, was looking a little harassed."Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked him."Yes. Line up some journalists against a wall and shoot them for me," he replied, before stalking off.Glad to see we're all getting into the Christmas spirit...
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Independent: Pratchett blooper
2007-12-13 14:42:00
Bit of a blooper today in an Independent story on novelist Terry Pratchett. Here's the passage in question – the italics are The Independent's own.[Pratchett] has written a number of specifically children's books, including Truckers in 1989, which became the first of its kind to appear in British adult fiction bestseller lists.Two others, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents won the prestigious Carnegie medal for children's fiction in 2001.I'm not a particular Pratchett fan (unlike Apus) so hadn't heard of the books in question – but winning the Carnegie with two books in one year? That, the strange, unitalicised 'his', and the missing comma after 'Rodents' all rang my subbing alarm bells.You guessed it: Pratchett actually won the Carnegie with one novel, called The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. Someone – probably a sub – compounded the italicising error by adding 'Two others' to the start of the sentence. And not checking on Amazon.(At the ti...
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To float a balloon for something
2007-12-12 18:00:00
Has anyone come across the expression 'to float a balloon for' something? It appeared in some copy recently and was a new one on me.Judging by the context, it seems to mean something similar to 'to fly a kite for' something, ie express support (not to be confused with 'go fly a kite', a euphemism for 'go away'). But 'fly a kite for' isn't an expression I would personally use either, and I don't think it is that common.Googling just gets lots of pages about literal balloons and kites, rather than metaphorical ones. And there's nothing relevant in my Concise OED or limited reference library – time to invest in some new books perhaps?
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It's not a flange, it's a congress!
2007-12-11 20:35:00
Spotted (not by me, I confess) in an Amazon book review:In this marvelous book Smuts draws from years of painstaking field research in which she followed around a flange of chacma baboons in the Mateti Game Park in Zimbabwe. Her findings inspired the plot of When Harry Met Sally.Fair enough, and if the film link's true a nice bit of trivia. But here's another bit of trivia: the collective noun for baboons is a congress. A flange of baboons was invented by scriptwriters on the seminal British TV comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News for a classic sketch, 'Gerald the Gorilla' (yes, really). A fine case of fiction trying to become fact?Gerald would have approved.PSIsn't the net wondrous – I googled Not The Nine o'Clock News and found a youtube video on the Gerald sketch. Enjoy!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mpb Mm0433I
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A brief cry of anguish: cost-negative
2007-12-11 12:15:00
JD just called me over to share a chortle at a suit's quote: "This policy will be cost-negative." It's a direct quote so he (and I) left well alone. But I had a brief fantasy of beaming in to grab the source of the quote by the ears to ask him: "WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY 'THIS POLICY WILL SAVE MONEY', YOU POMPOUS TWIT?"I feel better now.
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Pair of footwear
2007-12-10 15:33:00
I was doing some Christmas shopping yesterday when I noticed a sign in a shoe shop promising a "free gift with every pair of footwear".I know what this means, but 'footwear' isn't a countable noun, so a pair of footwear – no way. What would be a good alternative?'Free gift with every pair of shoes' – but the shop might also sell boots.'Free gift with every purchase' – but the shop might sell accessories (such as shoe polish) which don't come with a gift.'Free gift with all footwear'. I think this could be a winner. After all, no one is going to buy a single shoe – are they? Or would someone buying a pair of shoes (for example) try to claim a pair of gifts?On another note, I am no longer an itinerant sub so will soon be able to dig out my digital camera and start posting photos of offending signs such as this one. In the meantime here is a generic photo of a 'pair of footwear':
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Hey bro, is this the 17th century?
2007-12-07 17:35:00
Thirty years ago as a young motorcyclist with more hair and less avoirdupois than is currently the case, I followed the fashion of calling close male friends bro; a term we copied from American magazines and films. It sounded horribly dated for some years but now a new generation of youngsters seems to have adopted it.We thought it was up to the minute; so no doubt do they. In fact I'm indebted to a colleague with a passion for social history who has found the term being used as far back the early 17th century.I bet they thought they were being cool too.
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Racer mag and Europeans
2007-12-07 17:26:00
On our publication, Apus and I make sure our writers don't use phrases such as 'the UK and Europe' – after all, the UK is part of Europe. Instead, we prefer them to use 'the UK and mainland Europe' or similar.Flicking through Racer , which is a UK magazine devoted to the world of remote control cars, I was amused to see that a certain event on the Continent was described as accessible both to Brits and "mainstream Europeans "...
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Quotes: there's nothing like...
2007-12-06 17:34:00
Today's copy contained a rather unfortunate quote from a health inspector:“There’s nothing like going on to a site and seeing a dead body and then going on to their family and telling them they won’t be coming home.”Is it me, or does the wording make the inspector sound like he really enjoys telling people a family member has died? "There's nothing like a nice cup of tea and a biscuit." "There's nothing like going on to a site..."
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On the trail of a caravan
2007-12-05 20:39:00
It's hardly news that we Brits continually adopt American usage but last night the reporter in a TV crime documentary took it to new levels by telling us that a fugitive from justice "ran into a trailer park and hid under a caravan".Maybe this was an attempt at (in)elegant variation - condemned in the first (1926) edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage as a weakness of "second-rate writers" and "young writers". But would it really have been so offensive to the ear had the reporter said the fugitive "ran into a caravan park and hid under a caravan"?In any case, as he was speaking on a British programme, the reporter might have considered that while a "trailer" is a large and generally static caravan in the US, it has a different meaning on this side of the pond. UK eyebrows would elevate sharply at the suggestion that the athletic suspect "ran into a caravan park and hid under a trailer".The contrasting status of a trailer park and a caravan park is a matter for sociologists and ...
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