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
New media: JD is the Champion 2008-03-05 07:04:00 I know it says at the top of the blog that I'm a sub-editor (copy editor if you like) on a weekly UK magazine, but that's not strictly true. We've had a restructure recently – which is how Apus managed to engineer his departure – and now I'm a sub-editor on two weekly UK magazines (although much more on one than the other).I am also spending an increasing amount of time working on our 'web publication'. Since the restructure each member of the production desk has been given 'championship' of a particular 'brand', and I am 'web Champion'. I even have this written in the first paragraph of my job description. With a capital C, no less. And sorry about all the 'inverted commas', but I don't normally use these buzzwordy phrases.As a result of my increasing involvement with the –ahem– w Read more:media
Julie Walters: good message, bad timing 2008-03-04 05:26:00 That fine thesp JulieWalters
is featuring in a public safety TV ad (pictured below) reminding viewers to check their household smoke alarms. The message is direct: don't brew up during this ad break, check your smoke alarm instead... do it now or put your loved ones' lives at risk.But should this ad be broadcast at 1am? Sometimes it's not what you say, it's when you say it.
Adverts: LEZ 2008-03-03 11:42:00 The Engine Room isn't the only site to suffer from inappropriate context-sensitive adverts.The magazine I work for has a sister website and today our web editor was complaining that, due to its ongoing coverage of the London Low Emission Zone (or LEZ – and I know you know where this is going), it has been displaying adverts for lesbian dating services. Among other things...
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Nursing Times: sexual relationship poll 2008-02-29 07:12:00 It's misleading statistics time again today. A NursingTimes
poll reports that:Up to 16% [of nurses] said they knew of a colleague who had started a sexual relationship with a patient during the time that person was in their careThis was reported in one of the free London papers as "one in six nurses...". Somehow that makes it sound even worse (never mind the fact that one in six is actually nearer 17%).But however you present it, the figure is actually pretty low. After all, the poll isn't saying that one in six nurses has started a sexual relationship with a patient, but that one in six nurses knows of a colleague who has. And how many colleagues does a nurse have – 10? 20? 50? Over the course of a career, that figure must easily run into hundreds (after all, the poll doesn't specify '
Google search: the naked truth 2008-02-28 10:20:00 One of the unexpected pleasures of writing a blog is discovering the strange Google
searches that direct visitors to your posts.In the past few weeks I have written one post about the terms 'fire truck' and 'fire engine' and another about a possibly inappropriate Children's Society campaign featuring a naked Sophie Ellis-Bextor.Imagine my amusement when I discovered that visitors are now finding the blog via the Google search 'naked on a fire truck'. I do hope they're not disappointed.And I was going to take a screengrab of this particular search to see exactly where The Engine Room comes – but seeing as I am at work it might take some explaining to the IT department should they be paying attention...
Avoid consuming odorous cuisine at Barclays 2008-02-27 08:31:00 An Engine Room regular (and Barclays
Bank employee) has e-mailed us with the following:I was amused by a weekly work email that asks us to "be mindful of your fellow colleagues and avoid consuming odorous cuisine at your desks". What's wrong with 'avoid eating smelly food'?I also enjoyed the last line of the email: "Please show consideration to colleagues with disabilities and use the general toilet facilities whenever they are available." I'm getting fed up with using the toilet constantly and I'm not sure it's helping my disabled colleagues much anyway!
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Visitor Oyster card 'never runs out' 2008-02-26 08:16:00 Most people who have spent any time in London in the past few years will be aware of Oyster cards, small plastic cards which can be loaded with money and used to pay for travel on the capital's public transport system.Yesterday's free London paper Metro carried a story about Visitor
Oyster cards – much like regular Oysters but available at coach ticket offices throughout the UK, "which allows coach travellers to buy their Oyster card before they even arrive in the capital".The story continues:The Visitor Oyster card comes pre-loaded with pay as you go and is ready for passengers to use as soon as they arrive in central London.The pay as you go money on the card never runs out so people can use any money left over for future visits to London or pass it to friends and family visiting the c
BrazilName: I am Tildo 2008-02-25 09:13:00 Today we've all been mightily amused by the BrazilName website. Type in your real name and the site will tell you what your name would be if you played for Brazil (at soccer, my transatlantic friends). It even displays it on a Brazil shirt.Even more amusing, you can type in different versions of your real name (with and without middle names, for example) to get a range of Brazil names. One particular work nickname, which I won't mention here, gave me the nearly-rude Brazil name 'Tildo'.You may ask what this has to do with publishing and the media. File it under 'things that amuse journalists when they are supposed to be hitting their deadlines'...
Word of the day: churnalism 2008-02-22 06:28:00 I came across the word 'churnalism' in this month's issue of the National Union of Journalists' magazine the Journalist. It was coined by union member Nick Davies, and it signifies 'the practice of regurgitating material, rapidly and under pressure, from outside sources without checking'. Davies says:"Where once journalists were active gatherers of news, now they have generally become more passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material."Not journalists, but churnalists. An industry whose primary task is to filter out falsehood has become so vulnerable to manipulation that it is now involved in the mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda."Putting aside the irony of me copying this almost verbatim from another source, I can completely relate to Davies' comments. On the
Headline: 48PT HELVETICA BOLD HEADING 2008-02-21 07:12:00 Spotted a bit of a blooper on the thisiscornwall.co.uk local news site. If you can't see from the picture below, the headline of this news story reads:48PT HELVETICA BOLD HEADINGOops. Looks like somebody forgot to supply a headline...
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Lofty aspirations 2008-02-21 05:22:00 Like most pensioners, much of my time is spent watching property programmes on daytime TV; I just heard a hyperactive presenter describe a bungalow with a dormer window as a bungle-high.Clever or excruciating, you decide.And JD, here's one for the glossary: executant – one who performs an action. Clearly if one can execute an order (as distinct from a felon) there has to be an executant; this is one more example of a theoretical word that you never hear.So next time one of JD's charges has failed to deliver copy on time I'm sure he'll be able to baffle him or her with a sentence including the word executant. There's a challenge for you.
Word of the day: dirigible 2008-02-20 06:43:00 Dirigible (noun): An airship.Dirigible (adjective): Capable of being steered or guided.Does this mean that an airship capable of being steered or guided is a dirigible dirigible?Upon posing this question to the office, the web guy sitting opposite me asked whether a desert rodent capable of being guided was a 'dirigerbil'...A risible dirigible dirigible
Tuesday tautology round-up 2008-02-19 09:27:00 A few tautologies and otherwise interesting phrases that have snuck into our magazine engine room recently:"continues to remain"Um, just 'continues' will do. Or failing that, 'remains'."enquired verbally"That would be 'asked'..."closely scrutinise"As opposed to what, casually scrutinise?"the tunnel prevents vehicles having to retrace their steps"Vehicles with feet – brilliant!
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, Tuesday
Acronyms: WAGs and CHAPs 2008-02-18 11:11:00 We've written before about the phenonemon of WAGs – the wives and girlfriends of the English national football team. It's an acronym much loved by the tabloid press over here, and Wikipedia has quite a good entry on the term WAG.It occurred to me recently, however, that although collectively these wives and girlfriends can be referred to as WAGs, it is somewhat difficult to have one WAG, for one cannot simultaneously be both a wife and girlfriend (of the same football player). One would be a wife OR girlfriend.Wikipedia also mentions the acronym CHAPs: celebrities' husbands and partners. One CHAP would surely be a CHOP, which is also amusing but much less offensive than calling someone a WOG...
Google: fit truckers 2008-02-15 10:03:00 One of our reporters just showed me that if you search for "fit truckers" in Google
it asks you whether you mean "fat truckers". Looks like the search engine is finally developing sentience...
Malapropisms: mother cuddled 2008-02-14 08:29:00 We've had an email from a 'secret admirer' (well, it is Valentine's day). She says:I heard a good Smithism (or malapropism) the other day: a friend at work referred to somebody as having been mother
cuddled as a child. I think the word he was looking for was mollycoddled!Very nice.But I wonder whether there is a connection between 'cuddled' and the 'coddled' of mollycoddled. The Concise OED says on coddle: C16, origin uncertain; in the sense 'treat in an indulgent or overprotective way', is probably a dialect variant of caudle (obsolete), 'administer invalids' gruel'.On cuddle, all it says is: C16, of unknown origin. So I wouldn't be surprised if they were cognates. Anyone know?
Portmanteaux: safe-tergent, Britishstani 2008-02-13 09:00:00 Following JD's reference to portmanteau words, here are a couple I encountered last night.First, from a TV ad for a soap powder called Woolite (pictured right) is safe-tergent - for which the copywriter responsible should have his/her knuckles rapped.But rather more interesting was the portmanteau coined during a BBC Radio 4 feature by a Brit whose grandparents came to the UK from Pakistan. Feeling equally alienated from his family's culture and 'mainstream' British culture, he referred to himself as Britishstani.Not a portmanteau but a neologism that I predict we'll hear more of comes from the illustrious lips of our Prime Minister, who told Radio 4 listeners: "I've always been an Atlanticist". Meaning, I assume, that he takes great stock in the UK's 'special relationship' with our Engli
Acronyms: my company is ASS 2008-02-13 07:59:00 House style at the publication I work for is to shorten long, multi-word company
names to an acronym after first use (if possible). For example, 'Jonathan Smithson International' will be called 'Jonathan Smithson International (JSI)' on first use and after that just 'JSI'. This saves space, is easier to read and reduces the risk of typos.Today I was subbing a story about a firm called Appropriate Scaffolding Services and was just about to shorten its name to an acronym when I realised that referring to it as 'ASS' throughout the feature possibly wouldn't be appreciated by its directors.... although it might have given readers on both sides of the Atlantic a chuckle.
Can a building be 'based' somewhere? 2008-02-12 08:21:00 Free London paper Metro today carries a news story with an interesting boxout on the 'Diamond Light Microscope'. It starts:This building, based in Oxfordshire is a giant microscope and is as big as five football pitches. It can produce the brightest light in the known universe – 10billion times brighter than the Sun.No, I'm not going to talk today about the use of commas, or about proper nouns. Instead I want to ask: is it possible for a building to be 'based' somewhere?People, businesses and organisations can be 'based' somewhere, using that base as a "centre of operations" (OED). But buildings? Surely there are 'located', 'situated', or just 'are'.Of course Metro could have steered clear of verbs entirely, and simply written "This Oxfordshire building" or "This building in Oxfordshire"
Word of the day: stagflation 2008-02-11 09:09:00 The American Dialect Society recently chose 'subprime' as their word of the year, and on a similar note I think 'stagflation' is a word we'll be hearing more of in the next 12 months.A portmanteau (blend) of 'stagnation' and 'inflation', as you might imagine it describes a situation when inflation is high but the economy is stagnant. The word has been around since the 1960s, and the phenomenon occurred throughout the world in the 1970s, but I'd never heard of it until recently.I particularly like it because it makes me think of those giant inflatable reindeer that people put outside their houses at Christmas – see picture.The Wikipedia page on stagflation is informative, but heavy reading if you're not really well up on macroeconomics.
End of an error – or, goodbye Apus 2008-02-08 06:46:00 So it is Apus' last day in the engine room – although not here in our online Engine Room – and we have completed the ceremonial handing over of the OED and the ceremonial eating of the doughnuts.As Apus said yesterday, he will keep blogging from his island retreat on what I hope will be a regular basis. The blog was originally Apus' idea, which I hijacked, and it wouldn't be the same without him.However we are gaining two new recruits to the desk, the first of whom has already joined us, and I am hopeful that one or both of them might contribute to the blog as well. One of our designers has even threatened to write something, so watch this space.I'd also like to say that, in the real world, Apus has been the Chief Sub to my Sub, and due to a staff restructure will be the last Chief Sub Read more:error
Scion of Cerberus 2008-02-07 09:11:00 JD just asked me for my view on this sentence, from our micturating correspondent:Of course Chrysler is now a scion of Cerberus
as opposed to a stain on Stuttgart's P&LsBy dint of some determined research he managed to translate it, but as a fine example of sub-baffling copy I felt it deserved preservation.And, tomorrow being my last day in the engine room we share, I feel it is only right to embarrass JD by mentioning that I couldn't have asked for a finer colleague with whom to end my days at the coalface. He's invited me to keep blogging, which I hope to do from my seaside hideaway at Whitecliff Bay on the Isle of Wight (look it up on line, overseas chums; it's ever so pretty).And JD – remember our motto: eschew solecisms!
Read more:Scion
Headline: Diligent Bankers' present in Budapest 2008-02-07 07:14:00 One of the news stories on our intranet has a highly ambiguous headline:Diligent Bankers
' present in Budapest
Before you read on, I invite you to guess the main thrust of the story using only the headline as guidance. If it helps (which it doesn't), the headline was accompanied by a picture of a smiling woman.Ready? OK, here are my own wrong guesses and then the correct answer:At first I thought the headline might be referring to a gift given to or by a group of bankers. But why are they diligent? And why do they deserve a capped-up 'B'? Perhaps there is an organisation called 'Diligent Bankers'...My second interpretation was that the same group of bankers (or organisation) is simply present in Budapest, for some unknown reason. And of course, that would fail to explain the apostrophe.Only Read more:Headline
I think I need to micturate 2008-02-06 13:27:00 Like all engine room stokers JD and I like our English plain and simple. But sometimes you have to admire writers who play with the language, even in ever-so-'umble trade magazines.Our wittiest contributor recently came up with:a case of micturation ‘twixt scapulae masquerading as precipitationI recognised scapulae as shoulder blades and knew precipitation is a grown-up word for rain. But I confess to looking up micturation, which is when I realised he was telling our readers: "don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining".Sadly it had to go because we can hardly expect our long-suffering readers to refer to their dictionaries simply to understand what they're reading, but it did make me smile.Only a similar note, it occurs to me that an erroneous vertically delineated canine-arborea Read more:think
H bombs are out of date 2008-02-06 13:02:00 In the London freesheet which JD and I read a minor war has broken out in the letters page under the rather witty heading 'Dropping an H bomb on the word warriors'.Furious pedants have been using unparliamentary language on each other over what they see as a life-or-death struggle over the form of indefinite article to be used before words beginning with an 'h'. One correspondent asserts that "an hotel is correct because the word is French and you are not supposed to pronouce the h but rather say an 'otel".Turning to the very first page of Fowler's I immediately found that 'an' which I have always called the indefinite article, is known to grammarians as a central determiner. Which would be a great fact to use at a cocktail party, were I ever to be invited to one.But on the use of a/an bef
Catholic Church updates list of mortal sins 2008-03-12 09:42:00 I was quite amused by a recent story in London free paper Metro regarding the Roman CatholicChurch
's updated list of mortal
sins:According to the Catholic faith, they must be confessed to a priest and if not absolved or forgiven, will lead to a person's soul being condemned to hell.But now genetic experimentation, tampering with the order of nature, pollution, social injustice, causing poverty, excessive wealth and drug abuse have been added.There's something deliciously ironic about the Catholic Church speaking out against excessive wealth...On another note, the new list of sins "was announced after a week-long confession refresher course for priests". Would that be a confesher?
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Coke: good for wellbeing and vitality 2008-03-10 12:09:00 We've had an 'Occupational Health and Safety Wellbeing and Vitality Day' at work today. Catchy title, huh? Perhaps they should have just called it OHAS WAVD.Among the attractions were free bottles of Diet Coke and Coke Zero (pictured right, with model), and a prize draw to win a hamper containing a big slab of chocolate. Mmm, healthy.On the plus side, I had my blood pressure tested and it was found to be normal. That's got to be a first for a sub editor...
World's longest URL? 2008-03-07 11:11:00 As part of my increasing involvement in the web side of things here at work I have been spending some of my time recently fixing mistakes and inconsistencies on our website. Unfortunately I work on a Mac and the less than perfect web-based system I need to access to make my corrections only runs properly on a PC.Rather than running up and down the office between my Mac and the spare PC all day, I have been writing proof marks on a printout of the web page in question and giving this to a friendly PC operator to make the corrections for me. Very high-tech, huh?As well as the usual typos and lapses in style, one unique element of subbing (or indeed, copy editing) for the web is fixing broken hyperlinks. Whenever I have found a broken link I have been writing the correct URL on the paper proo Read more:World
Names: Mr Conman 2008-03-06 08:01:00 We've blogged before about silly names, but today a press release came through at work written by a Mr Conman. Although I assume this name doesn't have a stress on the final syllable, unlike the word 'conman', it is still amusingly appropriate for someone who works in PR...
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