Mea Culpa: a couple of geographical errors in the Gulf

John Rentoul on questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

Princess Latifa: confusion over her whereabouts (Princess Latifa/BBC)

A couple of readers got in touch about a double error in our report of Princess Latifa’s plea for help. We said: “The daughter of the ruler of Dubai says she is being held ‘hostage’ in a villa in the UAE capitol, two years after her attempted escape from the wealthy emirate was foiled by her father.” Someone had probably been writing so much about the storming of the US Capitol that they got their spelling mixed up. We changed it to “capital”, but it was still wrong, because the capital of the United Arab Emirates is Abu Dhabi. Dubai is the capital of Dubai, one of UAE’s seven constituent emirates.

Spanner in the works: The trouble with some metaphors is that the reader cannot tell whether we are writing about the real thing or the figurative. That is why this opening sentence might have been confusing: “A 22-year-old climate campaigner has been arrested after allegedly sharing a toolkit shared by Greta Thunberg in support of Indian farmers.”

Apart from the double use of “sharing”, Steven Fogel wrote to say he might have grasped the point faster if it had said something like: “A 22-year-old climate campaigner has been arrested after allegedly editing and passing on a document supporting protesting farmers which she had picked up from Greta Thunberg on social media.” That is much better, and a good demonstration of why “toolkit”, except when referring to something with spanners in it, is on the Banned List.