Never say that Monkey doesn't get results. On Wednesday, we expressed regret that the Telegraph seemed to have given up publishing Simon Heffer's Style Notes emails on its website. Yesterday, the paper's special projects editor, Emma Firth, tweeted:
"1st task of day comes courtesy of @paulwaugh and @mediaguardian pointing out the Heff's style notes not going on Tel site. Three guesses..."
And this morning, the long-dormant Style Notes address has a trove of new material. It turns out we were unjust in thinking that Heffer would permit a mere sabbatical to deprive the Telegraph team of his guidance; he has addressed them every month except April – "I blame the general election," says the apology at the start of his May missive – June and July. Monkey is very glad to have assisted in making the Heff the high-engagement viral Twitter meme that he has doubtless always dreamed of being. To celebrate, here are some highlights…
January: "There are many reasons to avoid using long sentences when writing. An obvious one is that the message is transmitted to the readers most easily when it is concise. Another is that an array of clauses can sometimes cause confusion. When we wrote that 'on Thursday, the body of 45-year-old darts fan Philip Hughes, from Slough, was recovered from beneath ice in a frozen lake in Fimley Green, Surrey, where he had been watching the BDO darts world championships' we reported something not only tragic but also remarkable."
February: "Lay is a transitive verb (I lay down a case of claret every month; she laid the table), lie an intransitive one (he lies over there; she lay in bed until noon). Do not confuse them." More colloquially, lay is also a transitive verb as in "She laid one on him for being sexist."
March: "I would not normally note literals but there have been some horrors lately... The 'Large Hardon Collider' was taken off the web quickly, thank God: but describing the murdered toddler James Bulger as James Bugler was around much longer, and was exceptionally embarrassing."
May: "One of our journalists aged dramatically overnight when writing the sentence: 'Although now 80, I hear that she…', making himself the subject of the sentence in which he actually meant to describe an octogenarian. He should have written 'I hear that she, although 80…' We wrote a piece laughing at Birmingham city council for spelling 'its own name wrong'. Fortunately, the council does not seem to have retaliated by laughing at us for not knowing when to use the adverb 'wrongly' instead of the adjective 'wrong'."
