Owner: The Engine Room URL:http://engineroomblog.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 06:53:16 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A blog about English language use, misuse and abuse, as well as words in general. Brought to you by two sub-editors on a weekly UK magazine. If you have a grammar or spelling conundrum, why not ask us? Site statistics:Click here
Friday roundup 4: AmE, writing blogs, low pay... 2008-04-18 10:11:00 Another Friday
roundup:***The first of this week's additions to the blogroll is Separated by a Common Language, "observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK". So it addresses some of the issues I look at in The Engine Room, albeit from a different perspective. And the linguist in question is Lynneguist, who you may have noticed commenting here from time to time. I wrote earlier this week about a misunderstanding I had regarding the spelling of the word 'cemetary', and Lynnguist picked up on this for her own blog, so I am glad to see my foolish error making its way round the internet.***If you have an interest in linguistics, you may be familiar with my second addition – Language Log. It's got a crisp new template and sorted out its own blogroll so I tho Read more:writing
A pensioner writes 2008-04-21 07:27:00 Having been languishing on the Costa Brava (it's a hard life as a pensioner) I missed the Engine Room's anniversary but wanted belatedly to congratulate JD on the way it's developed. While my esteemed colleague let me join him on the blog it's always been his baby and I've really enjoyed catching up on his entries and the comments from our fellow enthusiasts of English as she is writ. Having spent so long in the engine room holding the line against manglers of the mother tongue it's nice to know we're not alone.Enough with the valedictions already; here's a warning spotted at Gatwick Airport on the way back from Spain: "Dogs must be carried on the moving pavement". Which led Mrs Apus to wonder where we could borrow a pooch apiece because clearly we wouldn't be allowed in without one.
The former Eastern Europe 2008-04-23 12:55:00 This sentence recently came up in some copy submitted to the production desk:The former EasternEurope
and Russia is a particular target of current expansionUm, what happened to Eastern Europe – why is it 'former'? Have all the countries been relocated elsewhere – and if so, where? I think the writer has been dazzled and distracted by phrases such as 'the former Soviet Bloc'.Oh, and don't get me started on subject-verb agreement...
Pro rata, pro ratad, prorate 2008-04-22 10:49:00 One of our members of editorial staff wanted to use the adjective 'pro rata' as a verb, and asked the subs' desk how the past participle should be spelt. As far as I could see, there were three contenders:pro ratadpro rata'dpro rataedI considered them all, but they all seemed ugly and potentially jarring, so I advised the staff member to recast the sentence: for example, instead of writing 'the company pro ratad the salary', she should write 'the company paid the salary pro rata' (or, '...on a pro rata basis'). However is this a sufficient reason not to verb something – because it looks 'ugly' when written down?And what would I have done had 'pro ratad' been used as a verb in a direct quote?NB I see in my Oxford English Dictionary that there is a verb 'prorate': "allocate or assess pro r
Half the country hasn't an NHS dentist 2008-04-24 07:25:00 Gareth sent in this scan of a recent Daily Mail front page with a question about the sentence construction used in the headline, but I'd been meaning to blog about this story for a different reason.If you can't see the scan, I should tell you that the headline reads "Half the country hasn't an NHS dentist
"; the web version of the same story explicitly states what the headline implies, namely that "Half the country can't get an NHS dentist". And perhaps for some of our foreign readers I should explain that the NHS is the National Health Service – the role of which is to provide health care, often free, to anyone normally resident in England (Scotland and Wales apparently have their own Health Services).In contrast to the headline, the story itself states only that:In total, 23,161,368 peo
Redundancy: long-term personal friend of mine 2008-04-28 08:32:00 The publication I work for recently ran an interview with a certain individual who described his business partner as:a long-term personal friend
of mineI love this phrase for being such a great example of redundancy in spoken language. After all, aren't friends usually personal? And can't the 'of mine' be inferred from the context? And why say 'long-term friend' when 'old friend' will do? In fact, you could replace the whole phrase with 'old friend' and be done with it.Not that I did, of course.PS Sorry there was no 'Friday roundup' last week but I was enjoying a long weekend at the seaside...
It's bloody sloppy: carnage and damage 2008-04-29 04:56:00 Heard last night while dozing through yet another fly-on-the-wall cop-doc:Despite the carnage
he caused no one was seriously hurtOuch! Carnage, as any working hack should know, means widespread slaughter (indeed the word's roots can be traced back to the Latin for flesh). You can't cause carnage without killing people; the miscreant in this case had merely smashed up a few cars while being chased by the police, so what he caused was damage, not carnage.Is it me, or is this kind of sloppy English becoming the norm as an increasing number of TV stations seek to fill our waking hours with low-rent programming?
Read more:bloody
'Friendly young woman, always sliming' 2008-04-30 11:17:00 Spotted this great typo in free London newspaper thelondonpaper's "personal dating column". I'm assuming that the word is supposed to be 'smiling', although it could possibly be 'slimming'. Or perhaps the youngwoman
in question is indeed "always
sliming".And I should point out that I was looking at this column purely for professional purposes. Really!
Read more:Friendly
The Apprentice and the apostrophe 2008-05-01 08:06:00 I know that I blogged about The Apprentice
only very recently, but today I'm going to do so again – after all, it's not often that you see a debate over the positioning of an apostrophe on prime-time television.For those who had the misfortune not to see yesterday's episode, the teams' task was to design greetings cards based around a new 'special occasion' of their choice. One of the teams decided to designate February 13 as a national day for single people, but had trouble deciding on the correct punctuation to use (see poll on the right).At one point during the three or four hours of apostrophe-related debate (which, fortunately, was edited down for the benefit of viewers), team leader Michael Sophocles even attempted to phone the editor of national paper the Telegraph to ask his opin
Friday roundup: bank holidays, Hackney, URLs 2008-05-02 12:02:00 A brief Friday
roundup today because I want to go home and start enjoying the bank holiday weekend. After all, everyone on the production desk here has had to do six days' work in just the five days this week so I think we've all earned a rest. And if I haven't been replying to everyone's comments on this here blog with quite my usual alacrity, that's why.The only recent addition to our blogroll is Baroque in Hackney, which one of our regulars recommended. It's written by a London-based poet and touches on all sorts of topics. And through Baroque in Hackney I've discovered Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, which quite frankly brings back too many memories of school for my liking but is certainly a labour of love. And what a great title.I've also added the Tiny URL service to the Engine Room's
I can't shake off Embarrassing Illnesses 2008-05-06 10:38:00 I mentioned on Friday that last week was the most popular in the blog's history for an 'embarrassing' reason. Here's why.Back in January one of our regular contributors emailed us about an advert she had spotted on her work intranet regarding an upcoming Channel 4 TV show called 'Embarrassing
Illnesses'. I then wrote about this on the blog – and as well as mocking the central premise of the show, I also pointed out that the intranet advert at one point spelt the word 'embarrassing' with one 'r'. As I wrote at the time, everyone makes spelling mistakes, but come on – the word 'embarrassing' was in the name of the show...So far, so ordinary. But on Monday last week, Channel 4 aired the first episode in the series (now going by the title 'Embarrassing Bodies') and the blog started receivi
Boris Johnson versus the travellers 2008-05-07 11:03:00 So here in London we have a new mayor, the floppy-haired Conservative BorisJohnson
(pictured below). I didn't vote for him. And yesterday's London Lite gave a good reason why I was right not to do so:The Mayor has already announced plans to ban travellers from drinking alcohol on the Tube and to begin installing airport-style scanners in stationsI dunno, he's only been mayor two minutes and he's already picking on the Pavees...
Read more:versus
Word of the day: rifty 2008-05-08 10:24:00 A strange word of the day today, in that I'm not sure who uses it, what it means or where it comes from. This copy was submitted to the subs' desk earlier this year by an English journalist based in the States:It’s mid-morning on a bleak January Sunday in Detroit, Michigan, a city much favoured by producers of disaster films because they don’t need to spend much on dressing the set. It’s a rifty old place, boasting an ambient temperature somewhere south of very freezingThe context seems to suggest that rifty means 'cold', but I haven't come across it elsewhere before or since. My Concise OED and Google aren't much help either. Anyone out there use 'rifty' at all? Or did our writer just make a typo?Detroit in winter is, apparently, rifty
A Ten Hut! 2008-05-09 18:08:00 When you live at the seaside you expect to find beach huts (in the UK at least, where small sheds on some exclusive beaches change hands for many thousands of pounds). But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that in sunny Sandown a breed of hutter has evolved with a yen for hut-related punning. F'rinstance: Broken Hutted, next door to Romeo and Juliehut; It Ain't Half Hut Mum; Some Like it Hut; M'hut M' Sandy; Mad Hutters; Chalet Shan't I?; Hutterly Fabulous; Hut Tricks; Cornhutto; Home Is Where The Hut Is; Fly Emir Huts; Pos Hut Tive; Hutty Jaques; and (my favourite) Pier Huts of the Caribbean. As well as names the huts are numbered, which might explain: Phawphawza, Arfafirty, FreeFreeza and, right next door, Sir Len [Hut Ten].Not to be left out, the alleys between the huts are named t
Friday roundup: typos, typos, typos 2008-05-09 07:52:00 This week's Friday
roundup is all about typos.Copy editor Tim Stewart has been commenting on this blog recently, and his own blog, Typos in Print, might be one to watch – although it's too soon to say. Anyway, it's good to see another sub blogging.One of our regulars, Garik, emailed in to point out this post on Language Log. Not quite the Log's usual bag, but there are some interesting comments about if and when it is acceptable to "make fun of people who make spelling mistakes".Oh, and if you want to play 'spot the typo', check out the Priden Engineering website – but you'll have to be quick.
These cops don't play bagpipes! 2008-05-12 01:16:00 Mistakes inevitably creep into even the best run publications but few corrections have the whimsical charm of the following, spotted in the latest edition of the local paper that serves my seaside hideaway:A fundraising concert by the band of Hampshire Constabulary, at Cowes Yacht Haven, did not feature bagpipes, as was stated in last week's Weekender.No doubt the error was beyond the control of t
Word blindness: H2Origin 2008-05-13 07:11:00 I had a momentary attack of word blindness
recently when subbing a news story about a Peugeot hydrogen fuel-cell van called the H2Origin
. Obviously the name of this vehicle is a combination of 'H20' and 'Origin'; however looking it I could only think: "I know what H20 is, but what on earth's a rigin?'The H20 rigin. I mean H2Origin.
In which JD was right about stagflation 2008-05-14 08:11:00 Has anyone read The Independent today – or even just seen the cover? I'm not known for my predictive powers but in a 'Word of the Day' post back in February I wrote:I think 'stagflation' is a word we'll be hearing more of in the next 12 monthsAnd this afternoon I spotted this:Tune in tomorrow for more glimpses of the future...
Friday roundup: blogs and Dilbert 2008-05-16 10:01:00 You may or may not have noticed, but this week I've divided up my blogroll (over on the right) into 'editingish blogs' and 'lingy/langy blogs'. The first category comprises blogs that are written by or for sub editors, and those with a slightly more prescriptive feel generally; the second category comprises linguistics, language-learning blogs, and those that are more descriptive.Some blogs didn't Read more:Friday
, Dilbert
'The most miserable, put-upon job in media' 2008-05-15 10:07:00 Yesterday my line manager forwarded me on a link to a Guardian Unlimited blog post by Roy Greenslade regarding the future of subs ('copy editors', for those Americans out there). In it, Greenslade says: "I can see that they will be the first journalistic victims of the digital revolution."Although I was a little disturbed that my line manager sent this on to me – is he trying to tell me somethin Read more:media
Iron Man uses moderate language 2008-05-19 07:17:00 We recently received the following email from Neil:The Iron Man
film trailer – which seems to give away WAY too much plot and is too long – says at the end in usual disclaimer-fashion: "Contains moderate violence and moderate language
.”All I have is visions of the so-called Iron Man talking in moderate English language like a Conservative politician: “Sorry to blow you up old chap”, “G
Daily Mail and Liz Goddard's 10-year-old baby 2008-05-21 07:12:00 A rather unfortunate choice of pullquote and photograph in a Daily
Mail anti-abortion story today. As you can hopefully see from the scan below, the photograph is of a mother with a baby; the adjacent pullquote reads:'Doctors said he'd die in ten minutes. Now he's ten years old.'So that baby's 10 years old. Huh? Such a severe case of arrested development doesn't exactly strengthen the anti-abortio
Typo of the week: allow wheels 2008-05-20 08:10:00 Great typo in a vehicle specification submitted to the subs' desk:Optional extra – allow wheels £2,900Um, I would have thought that for a vehicle to be allowed wheels was more of a necessity than an optional extra.It should of course read 'alloy wheels £2,900'...
Commentator: 'It doesn't get better than that' 2008-05-22 07:40:00 I'm currently on a two-day 'web design masterclass' and rather busy as a result, so today's post comes courtesy of an email that Chris Frumplington sent us a few weeks back. He wrote:Here's something that amused me recently.Snooker player, Ali Carter, beat Peter Ebdon on Wednesday. For the first time ever, Carter is through to the semi-finals of the World Championships.The commentator (Clive Evert Read more:Commentator
, better
Headline: Lorry Hijackers Sought 2008-05-28 07:01:00 Our news editor has drawn my attention to a news story on Northern Ireland web directory 4NI which has an amusing if slightly worrying headline:Lorry Hijackers SoughtIt appears that criminal masterminds are becoming bolder in their recruitment techniques...
Read more:Headline
Monday round-up: web resources and Peanuts 2008-05-27 09:09:00 I didn't manage a Friday round
up last week because I was still on my web design masterclass, so this is either a much delayed Friday roundup or a one-off Monday
roundup depending on your preference.Firstly, some web resources that were mentioned in my class and that could be useful to webmasters, web production staff or bloggers:Image*After – a free image library, with no need to register. I usu Read more:Peanuts
I say, let the puppy die! 2008-05-29 10:48:00 Vegetating happily at the seaside I no longer have to deal with butchered English on a daily basis (cheer up JD, the first 20 years are the worst*). But my torpor is occasionally disturbed by TV adverts. No doubt charity appeals have to be powerful if they are to do their job but one animal charity has taken the theme of "give us the dosh or the puppy dies" to a new low. Showing viewers a series o
Teachers, doctors, pupils and statistics 2008-05-29 10:21:00 I love the ambiguity in this clipping taken from Personnel Today magazine (and sorry it's wonky, that's just my usual inability to cut and/or scan things straight):Does this mean that 12% of teachers who have been attacked by a pupil subsequently needed to visit a doctor, or that 12% of teachers have been attacked by a pupil and subsequently needed to visit a doctor?If you can't see or don't care
Friday roundup: more blogs, Flickr, Nemi 2008-05-30 10:38:00 So our blogroll is starting to settle down but we have a couple more additions.North Downs and Beyond isn't related to language but it's written by my line manager and shows that it's possible for journalists to have lives outside their publications. Plus, even if you don't have much interest in "thoughts and reports of the natural world from north Surrey", the photography is nice – as you might Read more:Friday
, Flickr
Right aim, wrong target 2008-06-01 15:35:00 For the best part of 35 years I earned my daily bread as a writer and latterly as a sub so, like JD and his fellow engine room denizens, I take the nuts and bolts of English pretty seriously. But there are limits. Over the weekend my eyebrows went in search of a rapidly receding hairline as I read, in The Daily Telegraph, the story of a veteran Bournemouth taxi driver who was refused a new licence Read more:Right
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