Mea Culpa: strictly speaking, there have been a few regrets

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

Sorry seems to be the hardest word: ‘Strictly’ stars Zara McDermott and Graziano Di Prima (BBC)

Bad things have been happening in the preparations for Strictly Come Dancing, which, if you think about it, is an odd name, grammatically, for a TV programme. Some of the things are so bad that the people involved have been speaking in code. We reported on Monday that Graziano Di Prima, one of the professional dancers, said: “I deeply regret the events that led to my departure from Strictly.”

Our headline on this news story read: “Strictly pro Graziano Di Prima dropped by BBC after ‘deeply regretful’ event.” The word we wanted was “regrettable”. That means it was possible to regret the event or events, whereas “regretful” means that the event itself was full of regret.

We confused the reader by putting “regretful” in quotation marks, but those were not the precise words that Di Prima used. It might have been better to say “...after events ‘I deeply regret’”.

Not nervous: In a report of the women’s final at Wimbledon last weekend, we said that Barbora Krejcikova, who won in three sets, “looked completely unnerved amidst the biggest stage of her tennis career”. Thanks to Roger Thetford for pointing out that we meant “nerveless”.

It is odd that two words that both mean “no nerves” can have opposite meanings, but one is associated with “loss of nerve”, meaning “going to pieces”, while the other means “showing no sign of nerves”, meaning “not seeming nervous”.

Then there is “amidst”, which may be a cunning attempt to avoid my disapproval of “amid”, but it won’t work. There is no difference in meaning. “At” would have been so much better.

Who is her? In a report of “English tears flowing” after last weekend’s other sporting highlight, the Euros final, we quoted a 24-year-old fan and said: “Her and her three mates had managed…” Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for reminding us that this should have said: “She and her three mates…”

Pedantry situation: In our news story about the findings of the first volume of Heather Hallett’s report on the handling of coronavirus, we said: “Government plans prepared prior to the outbreak of Covid described widespread deaths as ‘inevitable’ in a pandemic situation.” The thing about plans is that they are drawn up before they are needed, so we could have said “Government plans made before the outbreak of Covid”. That would also have dispensed with the ugly and bureaucratic phrase “prior to”.

Then we have “widespread”, which I think means “a large number of” rather than that they would occur in all parts of the country, which is obvious. And finally “a pandemic situation”, which is a longer way of saying “a pandemic”.

Going on about it again: The one thing worse than a “situation” is an “ongoing situation”, which is how a local councillor described the riot in Leeds: “There is an ongoing situation currently in Harehills.” We were quoting her words, so we couldn’t change them, but we could have avoided our own description of Britain’s support for Ukraine as “ongoing”, and indeed the war in Ukraine itself. The campaign against “ongoing” continues.

Preferency: We briefly had this headline on a comment article last week: “Joe Biden’s competency is the ghost at the feast at the Nato summit.” It was changed to “competence”. According to Google Ngram, “competency” was preferred until the 1920s, but “competence” has been more common since. This is a mere stylistic preference, just as I prefer “normality” to “normalcy”, but it sounds more formal and therefore more authoritative.