Mea Culpa: heavy animals trampling parts of north London

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

Trunk call: no sign of Norman Tebbit... but these elephants are doing some stampeding (Getty/iStock)

In an article about the changing electorate in outer London, we referred to Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency, Chingford and Woodford Green, as “once Lord Tebbit’s stamping ground”. I think I prefer “stamping ground” to the more predictable “stomping ground”.

Having consulted the Word Detective website, “stamping ground” was the original usage, first recorded in 1821, to refer to places where larger animals would gather and trample the vegetation. “Stomping ground”, an American variation, appeared in 1854. But as “stamp” rather than “stomp” is the usual British English, there is no reason we shouldn’t use it instead.

In parentheses: We used a lot of brackets in an article about the campaign to keep a medieval walrus-tusk ivory sculpture in the UK. As Roger Thetford pointed out, there were four pairs in this single sentence: “The available evidence suggests that the sculpture (prior to the Reformation, part of a spectacular series of scenes from Christ’s passion) was probably housed, for much of the Middle Ages, in one of the chantry chapels (or other locations) inside the parish church (now a cathedral) in the Yorkshire town of Wakefield, or perhaps even in one of Wakefield’s four independent chantry chapels (only one of which still exists).”

There is an epic quality to that attempt to try to include every possible qualification of the information given, but separate sentences would have been better. And if we had dispensed with the unnecessary “the available evidence suggests that” at the start, we could have conveyed the information rather more crisply.

Adding up: The phrase “a total of” can be useful if we are doing some addition, such as when we said a substitute had “played a total of just 44 minutes of international rugby”. Or when we reported that Ukrainians had shot down two Russian Su-34 jets and said: “That makes a total of 11 warplanes … that Ukraine claims to have downed since 17 February.”

But sometimes we seem to put it in as a way of trying to draw attention to a large number, for example in our report that, according to the Community Security Trust, “there was a total of 4,103 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2023”. A simple “there were 4,103 antisemitic incidents” would have done.

And in a report of the cost of the Rwanda deportation scheme, we said “it would represent a total of £1.92m per person sent to Rwanda”. Shocking, but it does not need the words “a total of”.

Obituary: Last weekend we said that Sir Keir Starmer had “spoken movingly of his late father’s death”. When Mick O’Hare pointed it out, we deleted the tautological “late”.

Ongoing campaign update: Our reliance on the word “amid” as a way of linking two parts of a sentence without having to work out what the link actually is continues to produce some awkward joins. Last weekend, for example, we reported that Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, said “the force is facing a ‘deeply concerning’ shortfall in officer numbers amid recruitment struggles”. I don’t think he would have phrased it like that, and if he did we should have translated it into normal English, which would be something like “as it struggles with recruitment”, or “because of difficulties in recruiting”.

On Tuesday, we said that Emmanuel Macron wanted to discuss with fellow European leaders “how to ramp up ammunition supplies to Ukraine amid what his advisers say is an escalation in Russian aggression over the past few weeks”. There an “in response to” does a more precise job.

On Thursday, we reported: “Just Eat has said it is set for a jump in profits amid ‘strong momentum’ in the UK and Ireland.” That could be a “thanks to”.

And on Friday we said: “Ocado could take legal action against grocery partner Marks & Spencer amid an ongoing row over payments between the businesses.” That could just be “in the row”. It is remarkable how often two of my bugbears, “amid” and “ongoing”, turn up together.