Mea Culpa: turn those gas lights off, please

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

Even this well-known backpedaller would get nowhere fast if he tried it while in the saddle (AFP/Getty)

I thought I had put gaslight as a verb on the Banned List, but we nevertheless published an article headlined: “I refuse to be gaslighted by Boris Johnson into believing Covid doesn’t exist.” It is a needlessly dramatic turn of phrase, referring to that film in which the husband tries to make his wife think she is going mad by turning the gas lights up and down.

No one thinks our writer is likely to be persuaded that Covid doesn’t exist; and indeed the debate is not whether it exists or not but how intrusive the response to it should be. Gaslighting has become a tiresome cliche of rhetorical excess, so why not cut it out and say what we mean instead?

Also, I think “gaslighted” reads oddly where I would expect “gaslit”, but as it is on the Banned List, it doesn’t matter because we shall never see it again.