For some while, Telegraph staff have had to live without advice on correct usage from their learned and forthright associate editor, Simon Heffer, who began a sabbatical in December to complete some post-doctoral studies at Cambridge. But the length of an email he recently sent them all suggests he's making up for lost time. "We are quality media," he chides, "and quality media do not make such mistakes as these", before launching into a list of muffed cliches. (Quality media also insist that "media" remains a Latin plural, even when it makes their sentences sound odd.) But perhaps the most entertaining part of the performance is as follows:
"If you find yourself using a word of whose meaning you are unsure, do look it up in the dictionary. When we get a word wrong it is embarrassing. It demeans us as professional writers and shakes our readers' confidence in us. In recent weeks we have confused endocrinology – the study of the body's endocrine system – with dendrochronology, which is the study of dating trees. More embarrassing still, we accused the eminent broadcaster Sir David Attenborough of being a naturist – someone who chooses not to wear clothes – when in fact he is a naturalist..."
Sadly, however, it seems the Telegraph has given up posting Heffer's style notes on its website. That's short-sighted: all-staff emails always leak out, and so the traffic is simply going to Paul Waugh at the London Evening Standard.
