1 Extraneous (and unnecessary)
Words such as both, new, very, ongoing and controversial are often unnecessary. Tautologies and pleonasms gobble up space. Sometimes a whole sentence can be killed because it simply goes without saying. “An investigation is currently under way to establish what happened,” is a fine example of a sentence deleted wholly from a recent story on a road accident. It was replaced by facts.
2 Inelegant variation
Nicknamed popular orange vegetables, or Povs, in the Guardian after a ludicrous reference to carrots. Recent examples of gratuitous synonyms for Donald Trump include “the bombastic billionaire” and “the controversial president”.
3 Misleading phrases
This sentence (edited out of a story recently) also carries a Pov: “May was challenged about the controversial businessman’s previous comments during her first TV interview of the year.”
The “controversial businessman” in question was indeed President Trump. It was changed to: “In her first TV interview of the year, May was challenged about Trump’s previous comments.”
4 Hotly disputed hyphens
With new concepts our style veers towards one word rather than hyphenation: chatroom, email etc. No hyphens are needed in most compound adjectives unless ambiguity would otherwise prevail: so fine-tooth comb is fine. Hotly debated decision but silly-hatted person (as the hyphen brings clarity). We take care with unfortunate word breaks at the end of a line of text; neglecting such matters leads to leg-ends and peo-ple.
5 Once bitten
Dangling participles are dangerously misleading. This one nearly appeared in a news story: “They have the fastest bite in the animal kingdom, but scientists have now discovered that the trap jaw ants’ explosive mandibles also serve a less violent purpose.”
6 Which is which?
Confusing words such as (not “like”) which/that, may/might, compared to/with, refute/deny, fulsome/full, like/as if, enormity/size are all problematic. We don’t spot every misuse; sometimes we even introduce them into headlines and captions.
7 Who said what?
We try to locate the attribution as close to the start of a quotation as possible to inform the reader. Keeping the tenses uniform in reported speech is also crucial to distinguish between editorialising and revealing what someone has said.
8 All our yesterdays ...
“I yesterday went to the shop to buy the Guardian.” Not many people would say this. Not because they don’t buy the Guardian, of course; just because it’s journalese and sounds odd when read aloud. The time element should be located in a sentence where it sounds best. That’s if it’s necessary at all.
9 Cliches/tabloidese
We try to crack down on bids, boosts, storms, controversies, flagships and landmarks. Similarly, prime minister Theresa May syndrome is frowned upon. Lower case, yes (we love lower case on the Guardian), as it’s a job. But she is the only one – and therefore her role requires commas: the prime minister, Theresa May. When she was a lowly MP she would have been the Tory MP Theresa May because she was one of many.
10 Homophone corner
No matter how much we pore over the copy, the reader complaints still seem to pour in. Other regular entrants into the corrections column include chords/cords (error: “vocal chords”), peak/peek, affect/effect, trouper/trooper, defuse/diffuse, baited/bated, draft/draught, pole/poll, navel/naval, rite/right, reign/rein, palate/palette and principal/principle.
