Mea Culpa: Capital gains

Susanna Richards on geographical and other anomalies in last week’s Independent

Welcome to the new first city of France, Maryvonne Caillibotte (Getty/iStock)

We caused some confusion last week in a report about a wolf attack in France. It began by saying that the victim had “stepped out for a jog in an area restricted to pedestrians”, which read as though only pedestrians were allowed to use it. Access to the area was restricted to cars (and presumably wolves), it turned out, though I can see that’s a tricky thing to convey. Perhaps “out of bounds to pedestrians” would have been clearer.

We went on to note that the incident had taken place “in Yvelines, about 25 miles (or 40km) west of the French capital, Maryvonne Caillibotte, the chief prosecutor in Versailles said” – a line that I had to read twice, because it appeared for a moment that we had appointed a new first city for our European neighbour, and the capital of France was now Maryvonne Caillibotte. Which is rather a beautiful name, for a city or indeed a person, but that’s beside the point. We could have avoided the ambiguity by writing “... according to the chief prosecutor in Versailles, Maryvonne Caillibotte.”

Owe dear: There was an outstanding malapropism in a report about the controversial Tory campaign ad that featured images of our favourite despotic leaders looking cheerful at the prospect of a Labour government. We quoted Lord Carlile, who had apparently told us: “It’s shameful and demeaning nonsense. The Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves for stooping to those debts. It demeans the reputation of politics.” As the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed, that ought to have said “depths”, and it was duly amended.

Indefinite sentence: We were in danger of sending our poor readers off to sleep in an article about how much water to drink. “Generally, humans die after a few days without fluid intake,” said a researcher at UCL, according to our author. “But in extreme heat where fluids and electrolytes [essential minerals, like sodium, calcium, and potassium, that are vital to many key functions in the body such as balancing blood pressure, regulating nerve and muscle function, and hydrating the body] losses are greater, death from dehydration comes a lot sooner,” they continued, leading me to wonder how long it might take a human to die from too much information.

The location of the parenthesis was the problem: by placing the explanation immediately after the word “electrolytes”, we made it difficult to understand the rest of the sentence; it felt a bit like coming up for air after a prolonged underwater swim and finding you are miles from where you went in. The thing is, the explanation was interesting, and probably necessary, so it wasn’t wrong to provide it. But it should have been given elsewhere in the article rather than inserted into a quote.

Bespoke Tayloring: We did something bad in a report about Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, joining in with her performance last weekend after he had “cheered her on from the VIP tent during her two previous concerts”. We said: “However, after performing ‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ from The Tortured Poets Department album on Sunday, the NFL star made his way to the stage, where he posed as one of Swift’s backup dancers.”

Hold on. Did Kelce sing the song about the smallest man? I don’t think he did, even if he would have, could have, or should have. That is known as a dangling participle, the participle in question being “performing”. How did it end? It was changed, dear reader, the moment I knew. No body, no crime. [Ed: Please stop. Me: Tolerate it.]*

Not our forte: We had an interesting query from a reader about a mistake in an item in the Politics in Brief section of the Daily Edition, where we wrote that Alex Salmond had said that “whilst the Greens look forward to potential deals with the Labour Party and the SNP soft-peddle on independence, Alba are looking forward to making an impact for independence in this general election”. Of course, that should have been spelt “soft-pedal” – as Roger Thetford kindly wrote to point out, with a passing remark about journalists and bicycles.

Which was all very well – and indeed, we have previously noted the same spelling error in a context that did involve a form of transport. But this was slightly different. The term “soft-pedal” relates not to a vehicle of any kind, but rather to the piano – which, as many of our readers will know, is sometimes equipped with a device, operated by the left foot, that moves the hammers that strike the strings to a different position within the instrument, resulting in a quieter sound... and thus giving rise to the metaphor. Still, the spelling is the same for both sorts of pedal, and we still got it wrong. So a point to Mr Thetford, and a lesson in idiomatic language for the rest of us.

Own goal: Gary Lineker’s damning comments following England’s draw with Denmark continued to have an impact, leading to another bit of ambiguity in a report about the team captain’s reaction to them. “Harry Kane has hit back at Gary Lineker by telling him to remember he did not win anything with England before calling the current team’s performances ‘s***’,” we wrote. It wasn’t clear from this sentence whether it was Lineker who had used the expletive or Kane himself.

“Blimey Harry, that’s harsh,” said one of my colleagues, before making a deft adjustment. There is as much fancy footwork involved in this job as in any other, it seems.

*Apologies to the uninitiated; I couldn’t resist a little song-title game. Thanks to my esteemed colleague Eric Garcia for the inspiration (look what you made me do)