Mea Culpa: Nicola Sturgeon and the headline test of her survival

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

Hands up if you know the difference between refute and reject (PA)

I knew that Nicola Sturgeon was going to survive the campaign to force her out of office waged by her predecessor and mentor Alex Salmond, because the rather breathless coverage always failed the “headline test”. The headlines never said what she was supposed to have done wrong; they were always about process – whether she had lied to the Scottish parliament or broken the ministerial code. They were never about what she was supposed to have lied about or how she had broken the code. My rule is that if the story is not in the headline, there isn’t a story.

Anyway, so it proved when she responded at length to Salmond’s allegations. At this point we failed a different kind of headline test. Our report of the eight hours of proceedings was headlined: “Sturgeon refutes ‘absurd’ claims of plot against Salmond during botched investigation.” We should know that “refute” is one of those words that will set off the pedants. For many people it means “disprove”, although etymologically it is no different from “rebut” or “reject” – it comes from the Latin refutare, meaning repel or rebut.

But Sturgeon did not disprove Salmond’s claims: that would have required the full panoply of legal proceedings, with evidence and cross-examination. She rejected his claims. We should have said that instead.

Ramp-clamp yo-yo: We had a lovely headline last week: “Police ramp up clampdown on protesters in Myanmar.” Are the police going up or down? Are they driving a vehicle up a ramp, or are they in a workshop turning the screw on a clamp? Sadly, the reader never found out.

Pile down: Another headline was also going up and down, only the up was a “hike” and the down was a phrase that brings me out in a rash. “Public backing tax hike on business to pay down debt.” There is nothing wrong with a “tax hike”, but what, asked Mick O’Hare, is the point of the word “down”? None. You can pay off debt, or reduce it, or just pay it, but you never need to pay it down.

The only phrase worse than “pay down” is a “debt pile”. At least we didn’t have that in the article, which referred instead to a “debt mountain”. I think that is fine, because it is a simple and graphic way of drawing attention to the scale of the post-coronavirus national debt.

Doing it again: We used an agency story in our “news in brief” that said: “BBC Three is expected to start rebroadcasting next year subject to Ofcom approval.” As Roger Thetford pointed out, we should have rewritten it to say “restart broadcasting”.

US English curbed: One of the Americanisms that seems to distract British readers most is the US spelling of kerb as curb. Philip Nalpanis wrote to point it out in one of our articles about Tiger Woods’s car crash, in which we said he “crashed into the curb”. A later article went the full US English, saying: “His car crossed the median, hit a curb and rolled several times before coming to rest in brush.” In British English that would be: “His car crossed the central reservation, hit a kerb and rolled several times before coming to rest in bushes.” Not bad for one sentence.

Anyway, in British English the “curb” spelling is reserved for the verb, although it is actually the same word: a kerb holds in or marks the edge of (“curbs”) the pavement. Or sidewalk.