Mea Culpa: Boris Johnson speaking British English with his EU friends

John Rentoul on questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

The PM regularly speaks to EU leaders, but perhaps not with them (Getty)

We briefly had this headline on our front page last week: “Boris Johnson to speak with European leaders amid vaccine export row.” I will pass over the “amid” because I dealt with that last week (I think “in” would be better here), but the “speak with” was quickly changed to “speak to”, which is our usual style.

“Speak with” is increasingly common in the UK, copying US usage, but it is always better, I think, to prefer older usages, because old-fashioned language seems more authoritative. It may be only a trick, but The Independent is authoritative and aspires to maintain its reputation as such, so we should use it. The evolution of language is inevitable and often a joy, but we should avoid being at the abrasive leading edge of change.

Split in two: In what Andrew Kitching praised as an excellent article on the rise of the Spanish far right, we said: “Ms Medina’s rise to infamy comes as Spain has been riven apart by weeks of violent protests over the jailing of radical left-wing rapper Pablo Hasél.” We didn’t need “apart”, because “riven” can do the work on its own, as Andrew pointed out.

When to get out: We made a military plane crash sound even more serious than it was with the headline: “Two pilots eject after Royal Navy aircraft crashes in Cornwall.” If they ejected after they crashed, they would have been unlikely to survive, although the report itself made it clear that they ejected before the plane hit the ground.

The end of the UK: In a report on the prospects for the Hartlepool by-election, we considered the possible effect of the Northern Independence Party standing a candidate. We said the party “calls for a full-blown cessation from London and the south”. That was changed to “secession”, which means to break away from a union of countries or organisations, whereas “cessation”, which sounds almost the same, means an ending. Thanks to Roger Thetford for spotting that one.

Read more:

• Mea Culpa: Europe locks down amid ongoing scenes
• Mea Culpa: mishearings and broken silences

Brand new bag: Roger Thetford also noticed this, in a “News in Brief” item about the discovery of a new species of shrimp: “Pregnant females carry a sack of bright green eggs.” The usual term in biology is “sac”, which comes from the same root (Latin saccus, sack or bag), but has a slightly different meaning.

Side-affect: In a report about the timing of the public inquiry into the government’s handling of coronavirus, we quoted Professor Neil Ferguson, the scientific adviser, as saying that too long a delay would mean that “people’s concerns will have moved on and it’s less likely to actually affect real change”. John Armitage wrote to point out that what Prof Ferguson presumably said was “effect real change”, in the sense of “bring about real change”. To “effect” something is an active verb, which would be the purpose of an inquiry, rather than simply hoping it will “affect” things.