Mea Culpa: what do you get when you cross British with American English?

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

Labour former education secretary Alan Johnson (PA)

In our “Pictures of the Day” on Tuesday, we had a lovely photo from the air of what the caption said was “a railroad crossing … in the middle of a flooded meadow in Nidderau, Germany, after days of rain”. Thanks to Sue Alexander for pointing out that the usual term in British English for such a thing is a level crossing.

Presumably we took the caption directly from Associated Press, the agency that provided the photo. It uses American English, but we should have translated it. Anyway, having looked up the picture, I can add that the photographer was Boris Roessler, of DPA, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, which syndicates material through AP. All credit to him.

Might have been: Another photo caption referred to Alan Johnson, one of the best prime ministers we never had, as “ex-Labour education secretary”. Johnson is as attached to the Labour Party as he ever was – indeed, more so than during the Jeremy Corbyn interlude, when he became semi-detached – so the “ex-Labour” part is misleading.