Mea culpa: trading places with Donald Trump

John Rentoul, our chief pedant, on last week’s Independent

Engineer Marc Isambard Brunel built the world’s first underwater tunnel, the Thames Tunnel, not his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Getty)

On Monday we reported the efforts of Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to dissuade Donald Trump from imposing tariffs on British exports to the US. We said that “she described the US president as ‘rightly’ concerned about countries that had a large trade deficit with the US but insisted the UK was not in that position”.

We got that the wrong way round, not for the first time. President Trump is bothered by countries that have a trade surplus with the US, because he believes that the only way they can be selling more goods to the US than they are buying is by government subsidy or other forms of cheating.

Relentless: In our report of comments made by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, we said that he believed the central issue in the war between Russia and Ukraine was the fate of the five regions claimed by Vladimir Putin and “whether Ukraine would relent control of them to Moscow”. Roger Thetford assumed that we meant “relinquish”. “Give up” would also have been fine. “Relent” is a different kind of verb (intransitive, if we are being technical). It also means “give up”, but you just relent, you do not relent something.

Strewth: A report of alpacas being shot said the owner “found the bodies of the animals strewn across her six-acre field”. As John Harrison wrote, the use of “strewn” suggests that the bodies had been deliberately scattered around the farm, whereas he assumes that they fell where they happened to be when shot. I think “all over her six-acre field” would have been better, although we could argue that we meant “as if strewn by a giant”. I had never really noticed before that the English language has lost “strew” as a verb, but kept the past participle.

Less money, fewer people: In a report about the company that leases cars to disability-benefit claimants, we said of changes to the welfare rules announced by Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary: “This will have an indirect impact on Motability, as many less people will have a benefit which qualifies them to claim it.”

Thanks to Paul Selden for reminding us of the difference between “less” of quantity and “fewer” of number.

Wood for the trees: Last weekend, we reported that people who are allergic to birch pollen “may have tough times ahead”. But we added, after “birch pollen”, “a type of tree pollen from birch trees”. Thanks to Mick O’Hare, who thought that Independent readers could work out where birch pollen came from, and that “tree pollen from … trees” was too many trees.

Annual error: Our “On this day” feature on Tuesday said that in 1843 the Thames Tunnel, “designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, opened to pedestrians between Rotherhithe and Wapping in London”. Thanks to John Armitage for pointing out that the tunnel, now used by the Windrush line, formerly the Overground and before that the East London line, was designed by Brunel’s father, Marc Isambard Brunel. Isambard worked on it, as an assistant engineer, and was nearly killed when it flooded, but he didn’t design it. This is the third successive year in which we have made this error.