Mea Culpa: protesting (against) Donald Trump and other Americanisms

Questions of style and usage in this week’s Independent

Why is it ‘protest against’ and not ‘orbit around’? (EPA)

We were inconsistent in our use of “protest” as a verb last weekend. When Donald Trump was in London we had a headline: “More than 100,000 take to the streets to protest visit.” When he went to Scotland the next day we said: “Thousands protest against president’s visit to Scotland.”

Thanks to Henry Peacock for pointing this out. In British English, we usually say “protest against” and “appeal against”. Increasingly, young people here follow the Americans in dropping the “against”, but while that change is happening we ought to stick to the traditional form.

Whether or not we use prepositions seems arbitrary. For instance, this week we reported “scientists have found 12 new moons orbiting around Jupiter”. As Mick O’Hare commented, the “around” is not needed. But neither is the “against” after “protest”. These are matters of preference, so all we can do is try to be consistent in each case.

Hobgoblin dates: This I accept is pure pedantry. There is nothing strictly wrong with saying, for example, that Comic-Con in San Diego takes place “from 19-22 July”. The hyphen between the two dates is read as “to”, but that is why I prefer “from 19 to 22 July”. Ralph Waldo Emerson had a pop at “a foolish consistency” as “the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines”. He should have added “... and columnists who write about style and usage”.

Conditionitis: I feared the unusual weather in Britain, which has now lasted two months, would lead to an outbreak of “conditions”. But the only one I noticed this week was a news in brief item referring to “the ongoing hot, dry conditions” – although we did quote a Meteorological Office spokesperson who said: “There is an 80 per cent chance of heatwave conditions.” Admirable restraint all round.

We did less well on the “ongoing” front this week – “ongoing conditions” is a particularly dire abstraction – but that wasn’t entirely our fault. The prime minister’s plan for Brexit published last week commits the UK to “making an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods”.

That was a phrase quoted by Boris Johnson in his resignation speech, so we repeated it a few times this week. But we did also refer to a number of investigations and inquiries where it would have been clear, if the word “ongoing” had been deleted, they were in progress.

As for “upfront”, I am pleased to say that we haven’t used it this week, except when quoting the white paper and a minor error on the sports pages when we wrote about “leaving two men up front while being overrun in midfield” and had “up front” as one word.