Mea Culpa: State and estimate – under, over and out
Questions of style and language in last week’s Independent, invigilated by John Rentoul
We came a cropper on the “cannot be understated” trap again this week, in the introduction to an article about Tom Cruise: “Whatever you think of the Mission: Impossible daredevil’s acting range, his sway on the cinematic landscape can’t be understated.” We meant “can’t be overstated”. We get this wrong so often that all writers should be trained to avoid the formula like the plague. “Impossible to underestimate” and all similar phrases should go straight in the bin. Do not waste time trying to work out whether it is “under” or “over”: just rewrite.
Dangling Boris: We started a sentence in a news report with this: “Before announcing his resignation last week, ...”. Obviously we were talking about the prime minister, because he had featured a couple of paragraphs before, but the form of words still required us to spell it out, as the reader expects “he” or “Mr Johnson” to come next. Instead, we got “... some MPs had been awaiting the outcome of the committee’s probe, which has the power to recommend sanctions, before moving against the prime minister”. Easily fixed by changing the first part to “Before he announced his resignation last week, ...”. Also I think we prefer “inquiry” to “probe”, which sounds a bit medical.
Only one Mo Farion: In an analysis of whether Sir Mo Farah would have been put on a plane to Rwanda if he had been trafficked into the UK today, we concluded that this was a Question To Which The Answer Is No. We said: “The main criteria is ‘inadmissibility’ for consideration by Britain’s asylum system, but he did not apply for asylum.” Thanks to Richard Thomas for pointing out that the singular of criteria is criterion. It is Greek, and we still use the Greek endings. No doubt this will change eventually as language evolves, just as our style is referendums rather than the Latin plural referenda, but we haven’t reached that point yet.
Forbidden eye-roll: In an article about Sajid Javid, who was at that stage still in the Conservative leadership contest, one of our writers said: “Speeches about rising from being the son of a brown-skinned bus driver to the MP of a white, wealthy home county illicit far more than an eye-roll from me, as a fellow child of a brown-skinned bus driver.” That has been changed to “elicit” – the two words sound similar. “Elicit” is a verb that means “draw out”, whereas “illicit” is an adjective that means “forbidden”, or literally “not allowed”.
Get thee to a granary: We reported that Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, had been told by the president to “go back to parliament and see if he can still garner solid support”. I have nothing against the word, and I am all for variety in language, but I don’t see the point of “garner” instead of the more familiar “gather”. It was originally a noun meaning granary, apparently.
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