Mea Culpa: Going on about ongoing again

Questions of the usage of the English language in last week’s Independent, reviewed by John Rentoul

‘Ongoing once... ongoing twice... sold, to the lady with the penchant for unnecessary words!’ (Getty/iStock)

I have shut up about “ongoing” for a while, as I have ongone about it, but it is time to pick up the metaphorical red pen again.

We reported that the King typically rides a horse for Trooping the Colour but that this year, “because of his ongoing cancer treatment”, he will inspect the soldiers from a carriage instead.

We do not need “ongoing”; in this case it is apparent that the cancer treatment is still happening, because that is why he has made the change.

Then, in one of our reports of the Duke of Westminster’s wedding last weekend, we said that Prince Harry refused an invitation “amid the ongoing feud with his brother”. An “amid” and an “ongoing”! The feud is current, so we didn’t need “ongoing”, and if the feud was the reason Harry turned down the invitation we should have said “because of”. (We also called the invitations “RSVPs”, which I have not come across before; an RSVP usually refers to the reply.)

Finally, we had this in our “home news in brief” section: “South West Water has been at the centre of a water contamination crisis in Devon, which is still ongoing nearly a month after it was first detected.” I would say “which is continuing”, but I would also rewrite “at the centre of”, which looks suspiciously like another way of saying “amid”.

I can understand that we may not want to say that South West Water has been “responsible for” water contamination, if we are not sure that the company is at fault, but we could have said that the company “has been hit by” or “has been in trouble over”.

Go without: In the same report, which was about the row over the salary of the boss of South West Water, we said that she “had foregone an annual bonus…” Thanks to Richard Hanson-James for reminding us that this should have been “forgone”, because the “for-” prefix means “without”, whereas “fore-” means “in front of”. It might just be easier to say that she had “given up her annual bonus”.

Doubled up: Last week we said that the testimony of Michael Cohen, “the former lawyer and devoted fixer who became an embittered enemy of Trump, played an instrumental part in the bringing of guilty verdicts in New York against the former president”.

He “was instrumental in”, or “played a part in”, but he did not have to be both.

Not likely: Just because something is marked as “US News” does not mean it can be in American English. We had this headline on a story on Thursday: “Lost plane wreckage likely from 1971 disappearance found.” I think “probably” instead of “likely” would have fitted the space, but if it didn’t, we should rewrite it in British English anyway. “Plane wreckage found in lake is probably from 1971 crash” would have done.

Makers of law: Talking of Americanisms, we sometimes find the word “lawmaker” in US agency reports, even occasionally referring to British members of parliament. The word “lawmaker” is used in the US to refer to senators and members of the House of Representatives together, but in Britain and most other countries, we should use “MP” because it is more familiar.

In a report on Monday of Emmanuel Macron calling an early election in France, for example, we said the decision followed “voting to elect the European Union’s regional lawmakers”. This is an unorthodox way to refer to the European parliament elections. They are elected by member states, not regions, and we usually call them MEPs.