Mea Culpa: shut the door on ‘amid’

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

An article about the Premier League featured the word ‘amid’ played badly out of position (Getty)

In an article about Premier League ticket prices – they are too high, apparently – we said that the Football Supporters’ Association had “noted the drastic swing from how fans were spoken about amid the closed doors of the pandemic and the European Super League to these rises now”.

That is a remarkable use of the word “amid”, when the normal English would be “behind the closed doors”, as Roger Thetford pointed out. Presumably we were trying to add the effect of the pandemic to the failed plans for a European Super League as one big mess, in the middle of which fans were briefly spoken about respectfully.

Perhaps we could have just said “behind closed doors and by the proponents of the European Super League”.

A bit steep: Two more “amids” featured on our sports pages, in an article about the Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb, Britain’s oldest motorsports event, which we described as “a splash of contemporary panache, amid a sporting oddity steeped in stature”. The race is a sporting oddity, not something that takes place “amid” a sporting oddity; and how can something be steeped in stature?

We compounded the offence with an introduction to the article that read: “Amid the F1 summer shutdown, a host of motorsport venues in the UK look to capitalise on free weekends.” What is wrong with the normal English word “during”?

Off the charts: In an article about the reliability of Lucy Letby’s conviction, we quoted Ravi Jayaram, the doctor who sounded the alarm about unexplained baby deaths, saying that he had been in “unchartered territory”. Thanks to Paul Edwards for pointing out that what he had probably said was “uncharted territory” – meaning territory that had not been mapped. Even if he had said “unchartered”, we should have discreetly changed it so that it made sense.

Fire damage: In our report of the fire in Somerset House in central London, we said that it “broke out in the west wing, which is mainly comprised of offices”. The word “comprise” is usually used the other way round: the offices comprise the west wing. What we meant was “which consists mainly of offices”, which is what someone had changed it to by the time I got to it.

Death’s door: An unfortunate slip in a picture caption in our subscription edition said: “Farrow & Ball has been asked to rename its popular beige colour, christened after a diseased fish, for fear of upsetting vegans.” The colour in question is “Dead Salmon”, and we meant “deceased fish”. Sorry about that. Thanks to Richard Parry for alerting the authorities.

Multiplication: I know this is only a stylistic preference, but part of my campaign for reporting in normal English is my preference for the normal English “several” instead of the judicial and police-speak “multiple”. In the past week we referred to a drug that “contains multiple cannabinoids”; we said an escape from Wandsworth prison had led to “multiple reviews and action”; we reported that a UN special rapporteur had visited Afghanistan “on multiple occasions since his appointment in 2022”; and we noted that a whistleblower had written to the Department of Health and Social Care “multiple times to raise their concerns”.

In each case, I think “several” would have been more natural and therefore easier for the reader.