Mea Culpa: We should keep this phrase outside British English

John Rentoul’s regular round-up of our errors and omissions

What an ‘experience’ for this visitor viewing Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (AFP)

We reported last week that “healthcare workers outside of the NHS” are finding it harder to be tested for coronavirus. This was not the only time we used “outside of” rather than simply “outside”. Steven Fogel pointed out that we also said in our review of Gangs of London that “nobody outside of the UK can understand what anyone is saying”.

I was surprised to find, when I checked the database, that we used “outside of” 21 times last week. None of those was what I would regard as the conventional usage, which would be “the outside of the house was painted green”. In every case, the “of” could have been deleted.

It is an American usage increasingly common in British English, and, given that I hadn’t noticed it until it was drawn to my attention, I suspect it will soon be accepted here. As ever, though, I think The Independent should lag discreetly behind the leading edge of change because linguistic conservatism lends greater authority to our writing.

Chinese whispers: In an editorial on Tuesday, we wrote: “The Chinese strongly refute such allegations, and the arrogant and scapegoating mentality behind them.” Thanks to John Wilkin for pointing out that “refute” usually means “disprove”, and that we meant that the Chinese government denied the allegations without actually offering proof.

In fact, the difference in meaning between refute and deny is arbitrary: refute comes from the Latin refutare, meaning repel or rebut. But it has a particular meaning in English to which we should stick.

Headofficed: Nigel Fox wrote to say that he found the use of “headquartered” as a verb “disagreeable”. We said that Quotient, a company that makes antibody tests for coronavirus, is “headquartered in Switzerland”, although the tests themselves are made in the UK. I agree that “based in Switzerland” would be better.

Toast the waffle: “Experience” is one of those waffle-words used to pad out sentences that might otherwise seem too plain. But plain is good. In what would normally have been a travel feature, but is now a non-travel feature about the delights offered by Amsterdam remotely, we said the Rijksmuseum had launched a “new interactive experience” which allows you to see Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and Vermeer’s The Milkmaid. I think it is an “interactive exhibition”.

Then there is the virtual boat tour, which provides “the true touring experience” by giving us information points to click on. As this is not actually what it is like to go on a tour, we probably needed a phrase such as “as much like the real thing as possible”.

Still, at least we didn’t use the phrase “lived experience”, which discriminates against zombies.

Second first: It is a small point, but should Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer for England, not be called the deputy medical officer?