The Engine Room A blog about language use, misuse and abuse, brought to you by two sub-editors (copy editors) on a weekly magazine. If you have questions about words, grammar, spelling etc, why not ask us? Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 4516

Articles from The Engine Room

Trains, tickets, tannoys and tautologies 2007-09-11 04:05:00 Announcements on trains and at railway stations have been irritating me more than normal recently.I was warned the other day to "prepare for a full ticket examination" – whatever happened to ticket inspections? I am sure the person checking my ticket would rather be called an inspector than an examiner.Another phrase I dislike is 'final destination'. A train has 'stops' on the way to its 'destination' – 'final destination' is just tautological.And don't get me started on being referred to as a 'customer' rather than a 'passenger'... especially when my local railway doesn't even do so consistently. It offers me a 'passengers' charter' but calls me a 'customer' over the speaker system. Why? ...

Trademarks: Velcro 2007-09-10 05:03:00 As subs, Apus and I have to be careful about the use of genericised trademarks in our publication. For example, our writers shouldn't refer to 'hoovers' when they mean vacuum cleaners in general - the manufacturer Hoover is liable to get cross at this misuse of its trademark and write us a stern letter.Leaving these genericised trademarks in the magazine is unlikely to get us sued, but it could damage our relations with the companies in question. And we get enough stern letters as it is.One genericised trademark that had me stumped recently was Velcro – if we can't refer to 'velcro' as a generic, what should we call this type of product? The OED, for once, wasn't much use. The answer came via Wikipedia - Velcro, apparently, is a specific brand of "fabric hook-and-loop fastener".Wikipedia also has a comprehensive list of genericised trademarks – many of which are country or region-specific. ...

Flexicurity 2007-09-07 06:49:00 A rather unpleasant portmanteau word dropped into the engine room yesterday, as part of a feature on European employment law.A Eurocrat (whoops, there's another portmanteau word though not the one I'm referring to) promoted the concept of 'flexicurity'; presumably a merging of 'flexible' and 'security'. He explained that flexicurity "shifts the emphasis from 'job security' to 'employment security' and from 'security with a job' to 'security of a job'."Well that seems clear enough... ...

Headlines: gay toilet sex scandal 2007-09-06 07:07:00 Gingerous Humerous Maximus has emailed in the following headline from Sky News: Washington rocked by gay toilet sex scandalHe asks: "Can you get a gay toilet?"I was thinking about how this headline could be recast to avoid the unfortunate attribution of 'gay' to 'toilet'. Something like 'Gay sex in toilet' scandal rocks Washington is shorter, clearer, and active rather than passive, but it does have to rely on inverted commas - and relegates Washington to the end of the headline.Of course, the simplest solution would be to hyphenate 'toilet' and 'sex': Washington rocked by gay toilet-sex scandalAny other suggestions? ...

The kettle's ebullient 2007-09-05 08:44:00 Erin McKean's remark about the serendipitous nature of printed dictionaries struck a chord.As JD says, he and I maintain a glossary for the benefit of the writers in our charge and regularly include interesting words we come across by chance (which explains why the first words in the glossary is 'absquatulate'). The fact that none of our charges has challenged us for including such an obscure word indicates that they pay as much attention to the glossary as they do to the magazine house style book.Recent serendipitous discoveries added to our glosssary that deserve wider recognition include otiose (which means useless) and ebullition (which means boiling).I've already had the pleasure of assuring one of our more challenging writers that his latest submission is otiose and look forward to JD's assurance that the kettle is in a state of ebullition, it being his turn to make the tea. Could a kettle be said to be ebullient? I wonder. ...

Erin McKean: redefining the dictionary 2007-09-04 07:51:00 Today I'd like to plug this video presentation by Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of the Oxford American Dictionary. It's about the future of the dictionary and takes about 15 minutes to watch.McKean make the interesting point that one advantage of a print dictionary over current online dictionaries is 'serendipity': "When you find things you weren't looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult."Apus and I have discovered many of our favourite words through serendipity - from absquatulate (chiefly North American; 'leave abruptly') to covin (archaic; 'fraud, deception').Incidentally, the TED website has a number of other talks that might be of interest; speakers include Al Gore, Bono and Richard Dawkins among many others. Makes a change from watching YouTube videos of people being stupid. ...

More corporate speak 2007-09-03 10:06:00 The company that employs JD and I has, we learned via e-mail this very day, appointed a senior human resources executive (oh for the simple days of personnel departments).The e-mail was disappointingly straightforward until the closing sentence when the writer slid into corporate-speak and revealed that Ms A "will have a dotted-line HR reporting relationship to" Mr B.Huh? ...

Marketing gets saucy: HP 2007-09-03 09:28:00 Today's award for marketing hyperbole goes to HP Foods, maker of HP Sauce. According to the label on the bottle, HP Sauce is a "legendary and uniquely distinctive taste sensation" and also "everyone's favourite".I love this for a number of reasons.1. Everyone's favourite. Just not true.2. Legendary. I'm not aware of any legends surrounding HP Sauce. If anyone else does, please let me know as I would love to hear them.3. Taste sensation. Not just a taste but 'a taste sensation'! This sounds impressive, but remember that sensations can be unpleasant as well as pleasant. (I think HP Foods is hoping for association with 'sensational'.)4. Uniquely distinctive. If it is unique, surely it is also distinctive. Or does HP Foods mean the sauce is distinctive in a way that no other distinctive taste sensation is distinctive? Perhaps - but what does that mean?(Incidentally, the HP website says the firm has been "providing the nation's sauce solutions for over 100 years" - one for Private ... Marketing

Solihull Spontaneity Day 2007-09-02 16:11:00 On 28 September, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council is holding a Spontaneity Day with "impromptu poetry performances and impulsive inspiration sessions".There's something that amuses me about a Spontaneity Day being planned weeks in advance... ...

A loud favourite 2007-08-31 11:22:00 Further to JD's post on eponyms and the interesting comments it attracted, I see that stentorian (no capital letter) features in a recent newspaper feature on favourite words.It was cited by playwright, poet and author Peter Mortimer who points out that "it's almost impossible to say quickly" – and he's right; it seems to demand to be uttered slowly and with emphasis, as is only right for a word defined in the OED as "very loud and far reaching".The newspaper in question published some favourite words as part of the run-up to Literacy Day on 8 September. It reports a list of favourites is being assembled by the charity Education Action International, which works in war-torn communities to "rebuild lives through education".If you have a favourite word you'd like to share JD and I would be delighted to hear from you – you might also care to submit it to Education Action International.And for what it's worth I have not a favourite word, but a favourite phrase: "Breakfast's ready ...

Corporate speak 2007-08-31 11:10:00 JD and I work for a large company which, despite being in the communications sector, is beset with corporate-speak. A recent example was an e-mail to all staff welcoming the arrival of an IT security specialist. We were told that "he has coupled the tools and techniques for security with compliance and risk management functions... enriched the information technology practices relating to policies and standards... introduced programs that balanced the evaluated risk to the business". Let me through... I'm a sub! ...

AdSpeak 2007-08-30 06:05:00 Like most people I do my best to avoid, or at least ignore, TV adverts, but a couple of adman phrases never cease to irritate me.Manufacturers of painkillers regularly use the phrase: "No headache pill is more effective than..." Translation: "There's a legal limit on the active ingredients we're allowed to put into our pills and, like our competitors, we've complied with the law so apart from the packaging and the price they're all about the same."And insurers regularly promise: "You could save up to £xxx." Translation: "You might not save a penny; all this advert promises is that there's an upper limit to the potential saving. And that potential saving is the most extreme case we could justify to the Office of Fair Trading."In the first example the key word is "more" which to Joe Public might be synonymous with "as" but isn't. In the second example the key words are "could" and "up to".But presumably most people don't pay close attention to the exact meaning of words, which is ...

Bread-making factory 2007-08-29 05:33:00 A recent news story by one of our writers made reference to a "bread-making factory". My first thought as a sub was to change this to 'bakery', but before I did so I checked with the writer who had submitted the story.His reasoning behind using 'bread-making factory' rather than 'bakery' was that 'bakery' might make readers think of a shop rather than a large manufacturing operation – a high-street baker's, perhaps.An interesting point, but Apus made an executive decision and we went with 'bakery'. Not before he had pointed out that 'bread factory' would have been pithier than 'bread-making factory' in any case...Googling "bread-making factory" does throw up some hits from UK sites, so it's obviously a dilemma other subs have faced. The Telegraph & Argus hedged its bets and used both.... ...

Daily Mail and the typist's sore thumb 2007-08-28 08:02:00 An interesting example of a national newspaper twisting the truth today.In its front page standfirst, the Daily Mail is outraged over a severely injured paratrooper getting only "a fraction of the £1/2m given to an RAF typist with a sore thumb". While the paper may have a strong argument, it lets itself down by using the phrase "sore thumb".The woman in question, who was only in her 20s, actually developed a permanent repetitive strain injury (RSI) which left her unlikely ever to be able to return to full or part-time work. She also developed associated depression. A bit worse than "a sore thumb"...Oh, one more thing. The typist's award included unspecified legal costs - so I don't know how much of that £1/2m was even compensation.I also note that the Daily Mail's online version of the story uses the phrase "typing injury" instead of "sore thumb" - a little more accurate, but hardly conveying the full truth. ...

Word of the day: rexy 2007-08-27 13:28:00 I came across a nice portmanteau today: rexy. It's a blend of 'anorexic' and 'sexy', used to describe the kind of heroin chic look championed by model Kate Moss (pictured).Interestingly, the word seems to be a fairly recent coining by Kate Moss herself - one for the South London Massive then. Or rather, not massive, but alarmingly underweight...Appears to be primarily an adjective but also a noun (as in, 'what a bunch of rexies'). ...