Mea Culpa: Finding Jane Austen’s other novel, Sense and Responsibility

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

Kate Winslet and Greg Wise in ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (Rex)

Mary Dejevsky, one of our brilliant columnists, seemed to come over a bit Jane Austen in her article about the flaws of the NHS. “Insurance-based systems can be more responsible to new demands or threats,” she wrote. I thought that perhaps this was a bit like Marianne in Sense and Sensibility saying: “I am not sensible of having done anything wrong.” 

But no, I think it was just a typing error, and Mary meant “responsive”. Shame, really. 

Fairest of them all: That article was “puffed”, as we say, on the front page, in one of those short headlines under a photo of the author across the top, known as the skyline. The “puff” said: “Mary Dejevsky: Is free healthcare really more fair?” To which the answer is, naturally: “No, it’s ‘fairer’.”

Out of condition: We had “conditions” in a picture caption on the front page last weekend, under a photo of a deer, “as gales and freezing conditions hit much of the UK”. It is such a deadening word that it should not be allowed in our pages at all, and certainly not on our front page, our showcase to the world. “Gales and ice”; “freezing gales”; even “sub-zero temperatures” would have been better than the dullness of “conditions”. 

Amidships: Our use of “amid” is getting out of hand. It is not a real word, used by people in real life. It is a journalistic code word, to be used in extreme emergencies, such as when we have no space at all, or when we want to avoid being sued by implying that A has caused B (in which case saying that B occurred “amid” A might keep us out of jail, although I would make sure the lawyer sees it first). 

Last week, for example, we reported that “NHS hospitals are defying official rules to give nurses and doctors masks with greater protection amid fears over the spread of coronavirus within wards”. That would be “because of” in normal English. The same applies to this, on our business pages: “BT added that mobile revenues for the period were also impacted by reduced roaming, amid a sharp decline in travel.”

Elsewhere we said: “Britain is prepared to do ‘whatever is required’ to support its fishermen post-Brexit, Michael Gove said amid calls to board EU vessels if export barriers remain.” That could have been “in response to”. And we reported: “The housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, will address the Commons today amid increasing pressure from his own party’s MPs over his department’s response.” There, “as he comes under” would have been better. 

Holy law: A lawyer friend of mine says that whenever he sees the phrase “enshrine in law” he suspects that the writer doesn’t know what they are talking about. I fear that may have been the case in an agency report we reproduced about protests that have spread in Poland since the government unveiled plans to further tighten already restrictive abortion laws last October. The report said that demonstrations erupted again last month “after the court’s justification for the original ruling was enshrined into law”. We didn’t say which court, or which ruling, and why the justification for the ruling had changed the law, or if it had been confirmed by parliament. We should have found out or deleted it.