Mea Culpa: Round we go again

Susanna Richards takes a trip through last week’s errors and omissions

A Southwest 737 flying in what looks to me like a straight line (Getty)

Obviously here at The Independent we do not rest, but at Christmas there may be slightly fewer of us not resting than usual, and concomitantly, slightly more might go wrong. Thus I was braced for a winter storm of letters this week, and have not been disappointed, though I suppose it means there is more to write about.

Our coverage of the terrible weather in North America has been both compelling and frightening to read, but in our eagerness to convey vividly the events of the past week, we have been a little careless in other respects. Henry Peacock noted a series of errors in one report, including the part where we mentioned Southwest Airlines’ unique business strategy “in which staff and aircraft rotate fly continually between smaller regional airports”.

The image of a plane going round in circles while its crew perform pirouettes in the aisle is wonderful, but that isn’t what it means. In aviation, rotation is a thing, and not just in the context of taking off. Basically, it describes the logistics of operating a fleet of aircraft between different bases. I suspect we intended to use one word or the other and left them both in by mistake, but in these instances it is usually best to use a familiar term; we don’t want our readers to have to go and look things up. Thus “fly” would have covered it.

Marginal gains: We are not often guilty of using too much jargon in our articles, but on occasion we can forget that not everyone is an expert in a given subject. Regular readers will know about my terminal incomprehension of the Sports section, but last week we got a bit carried away while writing about the fall in value of Tesla shares. “The losses leave the electric car maker’s market cap below $350bn,” we said, noting the speculation among analysts that “Mr Musk will be forced into a margin call”.

As Paul Edwards pointed out, that seems to have been written “in the technical language of City insiders rather than for the general reader”. I suppose people who follow such matters might understand what it means, but I don’t, and as such it seems wrong to expect anyone else to. Again, we should try to keep our copy as comprehensible as possible if we want people to read it.

Premisory note: We published a picture caption last week that read: “Brothel-keeping laws make it illegal for more than one sex worker to operate from a premises.” Thoughtful reader Iain Brodie wrote in: “I think premises has to be considered a plural noun,” he said. He is right: it is indeed a plural noun. But that doesn’t necessarily exempt it from taking the indefinite article. It can do so in a legal context (though this isn’t always an excuse to use something in a non-legal one), for example in licensing law or the rules relating to the supply of electricity, which sometimes refer to “a single premises”.

Having said that, we do appear to have struggled with the concept in the article in question, which aside from its dubious caption quoted a source who thought the law should be changed “so that sex workers could work from the same premise”. This introduces an ambiguity: “premise” here could be taken to mean a basis or reason for doing something. I think “the same premises” would have been the best construction in both the caption and the quote, and in fact that’s exactly what was used in the opening sentence, so we should have stuck to it throughout.

Mangling modifiers: The headline on our Letters page one morning last week read: “As a former doctor, striking staff have my full support.” It was the faithful Mr Peacock, again, who wrote to alert us to the plight of the initial clause, which was not so much dangling as hang-gliding over a lake full of hippos. He suggested that we could have avoided the error, and attributed the sentiment to its correct owner, if we had simply put: “As a doctor, I fully support the public sector strikes.” Sadly it was too late to rescue this one, but we will know better next time.

Near miss of the week: In an exclusive report about public attitudes to the current outbreak of industrial action, we nearly wrote: “A Santa ComRes poll found that almost two in three voters would back NHS nurses taking more strike action next year.” In the midst of correcting it to Savanta, I did wonder whether the company had had a seasonal change of ownership.

Thanks to all those who have taken the trouble to write in this year. We hope you will continue to do so.