Bad news for pedestrians, maybe, but great news for pedants

The other day I was listening to the fading moments of the Radio 4 programme called You and Yours, which contained a fascinating item on cross-channel ferry traffic. What was fascinating about it was that, according to the woman reporter, it is more expensive on some car ferries to cross without a car than with. The particular ferry she was talking about charged something like pounds 100 for a car with driver and all the passengers, but a foot passenger with a bike or just a walking stick would have to pay nearly pounds 200. One man had tried to pay pounds 100 for himself and a Dinky car, but the firm said that a Dinky did not qualify as a car.

"This is bad news for pedants," concluded the woman gloomily.

This remark stopped me in my tracks. Why was it bad news for pedants? Was it bad news for mathematical sticklers whose statistical sense of money would be outraged? Was it bad news for pedants who insisted that a Dinky car was a car was a car ...?

Then the light dawned. By pedant she meant "foot passenger". She had got muddled up between "pedant" and "pedestrian". Like someone finishing a difficult crossword clue, I glowed with pride and pleasure at her mistake, and my solution of it ...

And since then I have been mulling over that pleasure and that smug glow, and have come to the sad conclusion that, like all pedants, I derive an immensely selfish pleasure from spotting the mistakes of others. People sometimes write to me to point out my trivial mistakes, sometimes of grammar, sometimes of fact, and they almost always express an emotion somewhere along the road between mild disappointment and horror. "I was somewhat upset to read that you thought Joyce Kilmer was a female poet. He was in fact an American soldier ..." "I am sorry to see you too splitting an infinitive ..." But although they say they are sorry or disappointed or upset or even horrified, they do not mean it. Far from being chagrined, they are delighted that they have a chance to correct me. It has given them a great deal of pleasure to write in. And why not? It's a simple game, and everyone enjoys it, even the victim, and we would not enjoy playing it half so much if we owned up to our enjoyment.

I mean, if I wrote to You and Yours about their woman reporter's little slip, I might say, "Dear You (and Yours), I was perturbed to hear you use the word `pedant' the other day as if it meant `foot passenger'. How can we maintain correct standards in English if even the BBC fails to" etc etc etc. But what I really mean is, "Dear You (and Yours), I was delighted to hear your reporter commit a howler the other day and it gives me great pleasure to write in and correct her. Please excuse my pedantic fervour, but ..."

I nearly wrote to the Radio Times the other day on a similar mission. They had a listing for the edition of Radio 4's Loose Ends which marked the 75th anniversary of the Beeb, saying that the programme would be presented by "Ned Sherbert". Considering that the only person who ever presents it is Ned Sherrin, I found this a little odd. Either he had been replaced by a man with a very similar name, which was unlikely, or someone had made an innocent mistake, which was unlikely, or some sub-editor or printer had made a silly joke, which was more likely, but still not very likely, or ...

Once you get to that link in the chain of reasoning it is time to shut up. Don't give in to temptation. I was tempted the other day to write to the news reporter on the BBC who was doing a piece on the opening of the Guggenheim gallery in Bilbao, and who said ... "Now this dower industrial town has gained a stunning new icon..." What I would have said was, "Dear BBC, I was horrified to hear the word `dour' pronounced as `dower' the other day," but some sixth sense made me look up `dour' in the dictionary and apparently the Scottish pronunciation rhyming with "fewer" which I am used to is not universal, and it can also be pronounced "dour". Mark you, I also wanted to protest against the massive overuse of the word "icon" which can now be used to refer to anything from a good footballer to, well, a new art gallery in Bilbao, and therefore means very little at all, but in the upshot I never wrote at all, and quite right too.

Anyway, just to show that pedantry is not entirely a wasted activity, there is one very clear lesson coming out of all this, and that is that if you want to make money, all you have to do is open depots at selected channel ports selling wrecked cars for a few quid each to pedestrians embarking on channel crossings and thus enable them to save a lot of money. Especially as they will have the pleasure of leaving the car on the boat at the other end.