Mea Culpa: Building a bridge over troubled water

Questions of language and style in last week’s Independent, reviewed by Olivia Fletcher

A near Ms: we called the prime minister’s wife ‘Mrs Johnson’ when we should have used ‘Ms’ (PA)

Sorry to be a party pooper (it is the long weekend, after all) but I’ve spotted an error. In a story we wrote on Monday about more Partygate revelations, we mentioned the time “Mr Johnson lawfully met with siblings outdoors in his garden”. Of course he met with them outdoors. He was in his garden. Which almost certainly is outside.

Mrs the point: In the same story about Partygate, we referred to the prime minister’s wife, Carrie, as “Mrs Johnson”. This just won’t do. The Independent’s style is usually to go with “Ms” for two reasons: firstly, whether or not they are married, for the sake of simplicity; secondly, because we don’t always know their marital status. I prefer “Ms” because I think it is less sexist – but perhaps this is a matter of personal taste.

Pinning it down: Roger Thetford wrote to us this week to defend the original spelling of “linchpin”, which is now usually written as “lynchpin”. He pointed out that in a story about the Indian Premier League final, we described cricketer Shimron Hetmyer as a “middle-order lynchpin”. Either is fine according to the Oxford English Dictionary, but as this column has pointed out before, the original spelling makes more sense.