Mea Culpa: American influence on a great British institution

Questions of language and style in last week’s Independent, watched over by John Rentoul

The one and only Criterion Theatre in London’s West End... if there were others, we would have to rename them the Criteria Theatres (Getty)

We used an Americanism in a headline on our report of Samir Shah’s appearance at the culture select committee, where the BBC chair-designate was lightly mauled: “Gary Lineker tweets mocking Tory MPs likely broke social media guidelines, says new BBC chair.”

In British English we tend to say “probably” rather than “likely”, but we might have been better to report what Shah actually said, which is that one of Lineker’s tweets “does on the face of it seem to breach those particular guidelines”. So we could have said that a Gary Lineker tweet, singular, “mocking Tory MPs seemed to break social media guidelines, says new BBC chair”.

Fessing up: Another Americanism cropped up in the headline, “Jimmy Tarbuck admits to hit-and-run crash days after sister’s funeral,” the “to” is a feature of American English. In British English, we just admit things.