Mea Culpa: who tried to blow up those pipelines?

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent, reviewed by John Rentoul

If it’s at the front of an elephant, it’s a trunk. If it’s at the rear of a Ford Corsair, it’s a boot. Simple (Getty)

We seemed determined to assign responsibility for explosions damaging Baltic Sea gas pipelines to the wrong countries in a report last week. We said the attack was “being investigated as an act of sabotage by Germany, Sweden and Denmark”. We meant it was being investigated by those countries, as a suspected act of sabotage by another country.

Later in the report, we referred to “a letter sent to the UN three days after the attack by Danish and Swedish investigators”; we changed it to say the letter was “sent to the UN by Danish and Swedish investigators three days after the attack”.

The rest of the article made clear that the Russian government was the prime suspect, but we should not have made the reader work so hard.