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 0 132 3968

Articles from The Engine Room

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 our publication is likely to have. That seems fitting. It's always good to go out on a high.Thanks for everything, comrade.Look carefully, and you might spot Apus. Lucky bugger. ... 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! ...

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 BudapestBefore 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 upon reading the story did I learn that the headline referred to a presentation given in Budapest by employees of a banking publication – the title of which could, at a push, be shortened to B ...

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-arboreal interface might be an impressive replacement for a dog barking up the wrong tree.Would anyone out there care to come up with more silly versions of common phrases? ...

Phobias: fear of long words 2008-02-06 06:30:00 We've had an email from one of our regulars saying that she recently came across the word 'hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia', rather ironically the fear of long words.This seemed like a spoof or a joke to me so I looked into it and the best information I found was on Wikipedia:Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia — fear of long words. Hippopoto- "big" due to its allusion to the Greek-derived word hippopotamus (though this is derived as hippo- "horse" compounded with potam-os "river", so originally meaning "river horse"; according to the Oxford English, "hippopotamine" has been construed as large since 1847, so this coinage is reasonable); -monstr- is from Latin words meaning "monstrous", -o- is a noun-compounding vowel; -sesquipedali- comes from "sesquipedalian" meaning a long word (literally "a foot and a half long" in Latin), -o- is a noun-compounding vowel, and -phobia means "fear". Note: This was mentioned on the first episode of Brainiac Series Five as one of Tickle's Teas ...

Idioms: cut the mustard 2008-02-05 07:09:00 A great quote in some recent copy:"Our economic regeneration team has been sitting down and figuring out how to get this application to cut mustard"Well, you could always laminate the application form – which would make it sturdier and possibly also mustard-proof. Or else you could print the application directly on to a knife or other cutting tool.Seriously, all it took was for the idiom to be used slightly unusually ('cut mustard' instead of 'cut the mustard') and on first glance I read it literally rather than idiomatically. That's the danger of idioms – apart from totally confusing non-native speakers, of course.And if you are interested in the origins of this idiom, the World Wide Words page on 'cut the mustard' is a good place to start – or else check out Yahoo! Answers for some alternative explanations. ...

Double meanings: baby bits 2008-02-04 05:54:00 Seen on our work intranet:Baby bits for saleI hope this is referring to toys, clothes, cots and such because otherwise it's just disturbing.Hey, journo, leave those kids alone ...

Learn your roots: verbiage 2008-02-01 10:22:00 Our delightful and erudite news editor sashayed through the engine room hatch t'other day chortling over a newly arrived press release. Not the first time I've heard her react in this was to a press release, of course, but in this case the cause of her mirth was the heading: "VERBIAGE".No doubt someone at the PR agency thought verbiage means 'words' from the Latin verbum. Not so. It's from 19th century French and means "excessively lengthy or technical speech".Oh, the perils of neglecting a classical edukashun. ...

Channel 4: Embarrassing Illnesses 2008-02-01 07:54:00 One of our contributors has e-mailed in the following ad spotted on her work intranet:Channel 4’s Embarrassing Illnesses are doing a series of shows including a programme focussing on men's health.They are interested in hearing from men who find discussing issues with their doctors embarassing.If selected, your condition will be treated by professionals and you will receive top quality surgery and treatment. Your involvement will raise awareness about your condition, helping other sufferers to seek the treatment they need.Please contact [details withheld]So... you are a man who has an embarrassing illness. You find discussing this issue – or perhaps all issues – with your doctor also embarrassing. So what do you do? Volunteer to take your illness on national television of course. That's much less embarrassing.(I also like the way that 'embarrassing' is spelt wrongly in the second par. Everyone makes spelling mistakes, but the show is called 'Embarrassing Illnesses' for good ...

Collective nouns: subs and designers 2008-01-31 07:01:00 As you may be aware, Apus is soon leaving for pastures new and he is currently enjoying a round of leaving dos.Yesterday it was the turn of our esteemed freelancers to be taken to lunch – and I thought at the time that never before had I seen so many subs in one place. That led me to wonder what a good collective noun for a group of sub editors (or copy editors, if you prefer) might be. A proof of subs, perhaps? A correction of subs?I don't want to leave our design colleagues out, so perhaps we should come up with a collective noun for them too. A scribble of designers? A scrawl of designers?I'm sure your ideas will be better than mine... ...

Childhood memories: Sophie Ellis-Bextor naked 2008-01-30 06:19:00 UK charity The Children's Society has launched a campaign to gather "hundreds and thousands of childhood memories that will contribute the Good Childhood Inquiry, the UK’s first independent inquiry into what makes a good childhood. This will help us understand how to make childhood better today."Fair enough, but to promote the campaign the charity has photographed elfin pop singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor naked in a tonne of multi-coloured 'hundreds and thousands' sprinkles (pictured).Does this strike anyone else as slightly inappropriate? I assume the charity would want to associate childhood with wholesomeness and innocence – not virtues that the promotional photos really convey to me.I'm not complaining too strongly, mind. ...

Feeling puntillious: Shakespeare 2008-01-29 03:11:00 This post was a race between my esteemed colleague and me as the following snippet, culled from a column in New Scientist magazine, was sent to both of us by a fellow galley slave in the adjacent engine room:Sign spotted at a camping shop in Beverley, East Yorkshire: "Now is the Winter of our Discount Tents". No doubt they're designed to withstand a Tempest – as long as the guy ropes are nice and Titus Andronicus.PS: What did the barman at the Globe say when Will Shakespeare misbehaved? "You're barred!" Homophonic levity... JD will be impressed. ...

Phabulous frases 2008-01-28 10:45:00 Here are a few phrases that have brightened up life in the Engine Room over the past few days – all from our charges, who never seem to notice that JD and I have made any changes to their prose. Which is as it should be, of course… I mean, why should a sub (or copy editor) mind that we do the work and they get the awards? At least it's never made me bitter."it is, so far, the first of its kind""imminent in the near future""orders were worth nearly £12.7bn in value""registrations are up by 76% year on year compared with last year""the plight of a midlands company hangs in the balance" ...

Webcams in the workplace 2008-01-28 07:47:00 Slightly off-topic, perhaps, but here goes:Today I discovered that the company Apus and I work for has set up two webcams in our building: one in the staff restaurant, and one in the coffee shop franchise on the ground floor.The feed can be viewed live via the company intranet, although is only by chance that I came across the link to do this: it hasn't been advertised at all. And it is intranet only, I'm afraid, so I can't give you the link.But in effect this means I can sit at my desk, subbing copy, and spy on my workmates as they buy a latte or eat a sandwich. The truth of this has already been brought home to me: as I returned to my desk this lunchtime after buying a cup of soup in the staff restaurant, a colleague whom I had earlier told about the webcams remarked that I had been a "bit heavy on the croutons".Trivial stuff, but slightly disturbing nonetheless. If nothing else, it lets my line manager see whether I really am 'just popping downstairs to get some more milk'. Aga ...

Fire engine, fire truck, fire brigade vehicle 2008-01-25 07:56:00 I was subbing some copy recently that used the uncomfortable phrase "fire brigade vehicle". I changed this almost automatically to "fire engine" but then started wondering whether I'd done the right thing. Two issues were on my mind:1. 'Fire engine' might be a totally or predominantly British English phrase. The Concise OED doesn't say so, although Googling 'fire engine' throws up a suspiciously high proportion of UK pages. I know that Americans might refer to a 'fire truck' but I don't know what the difference in usage is between 'fire truck' and 'fire engine' Stateside. 'Fire truck' doesn't appear in my Concise at all.(Of course, the publication I work for is aimed at a British readership so really this isn't a big factor, but it's still interesting – and might explain why the writer shied away from using 'fire engine' in the first place.)2. I don't know enough to say, but it could be that "fire brigade vehicle" is a more general term than "fire engine", coveri ...