Mea Culpa: g’day to the Antipodean songstress of the Oceania island

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

Do you come from the land down under?: Kylie Minogue is her country’s highest-selling female chanteuse of all time (Getty)

One of the delights of journalese, that peculiar language specific to news reporting, is the “evasm”: the “elegant variation at second mention”. Journalists go to a lot of trouble to avoid repeating themselves, with sometimes unfortunate results. The example that springs to mind is when Kylie Minogue is referred to, the second time she appears in an article, as “the Antipodean songstress”.

We tried to match that high form of the art in our “World news in brief”, when we reported that Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, had launched an inquiry into how his predecessor Scott Morrison secretly assigned himself several ministerial posts during the pandemic.

The second paragraph began: “This comes after the Oceania island’s solicitor general Stephen Donaghue said while the appointments concerning Mr Morrison were legal, they ‘fundamentally undermined’ a responsible administration.” Thanks to Mick O’Hare for spotting “the Oceania island” as a synonym for “Australia”.