Mea Culpa: Minding our Ps and Qs

Prepositions and question marks, that is, writes Susanna Richards

‘Shall I compare thee with a summer’s day?’ would imply a rather different sentiment (Getty)

One of our writers, an MP, used what I thought was an unusual expression in an article for us last week. She wrote that the people she speaks to in the course of her work frequently have to “cover off” her views on the prime minister before getting down to business.

I say unusual, but it could just be that it doesn’t make it into our copy very often, and as such I had never heard of it. A brief gad about on the language forums revealed that it seemed to be a recent-ish phrase, and somewhat colloquial, and that it means, well, “reveal” – I suppose, in a literal sense, to remove the cover from something. We didn’t change it, and perhaps that means my colleagues are better acquainted with interesting modern jargon than I am, but I wonder how many of our readers knew what it meant. Consider this a public service announcement.

A damming indictment: Not just a generic mea culpa, this one, but properly my fault was a near miss in an article about farming, in which a source mentioned the prime minister’s comment that we need to “build back beaver”. I’m afraid I thought it was a mistake, given the well-known phrase is “build back better”, and that someone’s autocorrect had inserted a wild creature into our copy where no wild creature should be. On investigation, though, it appeared it was correct, and referred to the government’s commitment to restoring certain species to their natural habitats… as, duly, was this particular beaver to its rightful place in the article.

On the subject of damning indictments, we used that phrase in an opinion piece about the uncomfortable juxtaposition of Instagram “property porn” and the prevalence of housing insecurity. It is one of those terms that consists of two words each of which rarely appears without the other, and is thus frowned on a little, though there is nothing wrong with it as such. Worse, in my view, is the term “property porn” – or indeed anything porn, outside the discussion of pornography – which I think verges on inappropriate. It is difficult to think of an alternative, given it has become a ubiquitous usage, but we should try to avoid it where we can.

Practice makes perfect: We’ve been getting in a spin with our spelling, as reader Keith Bennett wrote to point out, providing an example he had noticed in an article about Kamila Valieva, in which we said: “…with the skater taking to the practise ice just minutes after the announcement was made”. Practise with an S is used for the verb, at least in British English, while a C is used for the noun. So it ought to have said “practice ice” – that is, ice used for practice. We’ll keep trying...

Comparing notes: “Much has been made of Biden’s presidential approval ratings in recent weeks, averaging under 41 per cent compared to nearly 54 per cent who disapprove,” we wrote last week. There is a rule about this, which is that, in general, we use “compare to” to indicate similarity, and “compare with” to emphasise a distinction. It’s not hugely important, but it is something readers notice, and as such it seems a good idea to try to remember it. This is easy once you notice that the longer preposition, “with”, creates more distance on the page between the two elements being compared.

In the same article, we managed to put a question mark where we really didn’t need one: “It has made an interesting choice for those running in the congressional elections: whether they flag Biden’s work or not?” Questions in copy can present a logistical problem for the editor: should we write it as a direct question – like this – or report it indirectly as one? I usually prefer the indirect format, in which we introduce the quandary with a word such as “whether”. We did so on this occasion, but still hedged our bets by adding a question mark. Less is more, as they say.

Hyphen-looting: In what could be seen as a further effort to deplete our stocks of punctuation, we have been at it again with the superfluous hyphens. One article talked about inflation rising to a “30-year-high”, which only needed one hyphen, and a headline on another stated: “Drilling for more gas and net zero targets do not go hand-in-hand”. Leaving aside the confusing syntax (and unorthodox use of the negative), “hand in hand” is an expression that is perfectly fine without hyphens. The only time we need them is when the phrase comes before a noun, which in this case is not very often.

On the other, er, hand, the phrase “net zero targets” might be considered by some readers to be a candidate for the addition of one; our style, however, is to go without, because the term “net zero” is so distinctive that there is rarely any ambiguity surrounding it. So we can put a few hyphens back in their drawer for the time being, and save them to use on something else. Waste not, want not.