Mea Culpa: no reason for a crooked walk – it will only cause delay

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

Putting things on the long finger didn’t make ET a prevaricator (Universal Pictures)

In an editorial on the resurgence of coronavirus cases, we said that in the early stage of the epidemic in March, “vital time was lost somewhere in the Downing Street machinery”. Our conclusion was that “there can be no reason for prevarication now”. 

Thanks to Paul Edwards for pointing out this example of language changing. Prevarication has been confused with procrastination for so long that for many people it means putting off until later something that should be done now. As ever, though, The Independent should be wary of using a word in a new sense while there are many readers who think that usage is an error. 

To prevaricate used to mean to speak or act evasively, from the Latin for walking crookedly or deviating. While we often accuse the prime minister of prevarication, that was not what we meant this time. We were worried that he would delay taking the necessary action to curb the spread of the virus – “there can be no reason for hesitation now” might have been a better way of putting it. 

Confirmation bias: Another editorial was headlined: “It’s confirmed: no-deal Brexit will be worse than we feared.” This doesn’t strictly make sense. The first part suggests that new information has come to light that confirms what we expected. As The Independent has long feared that a no-deal Brexit would be really bad, the headline should have read: “It’s confirmed: no-deal Brexit will be as bad as we feared.” 

With and without: We reported that Dido Harding, the head of the NHS Test and Trace system, “suggested that asymptomatic people may have to pay to be checked under the government’s Moonshot programme to deliver 10 million tests a day”. 

Thanks to Nigel Fox who pointed out that an asymptomatic person is a carrier of a disease who shows no symptoms. It does not mean just someone without symptoms. “What was meant here was that those who don’t exhibit symptoms face the prospect of being charged if it turns out they are not asymptomatic,” he said.

That will teach us to use a medical word when “people without symptoms” would have been simpler in the first place. 

Phasers to stun (again): In a report of a Donald Trump rally in Florida, we said his supporters appeared “unphased” by his refusal to say he would respect the result of the election. Thanks to John Schluter for pointing this out. We meant “unfazed”, but a lot of people have watched too much Star Trek.  

Word junk: In an article about the International Space Station having to move to avoid a large piece of debris, we said there were “at least 8,000 metric tonnes of space debris orbiting Earth”. Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for pointing out that tonne is the spelling of a metric tonne; and that the imperial or US measure is spelt ton, so we did not need the word “metric”. 

At least we didn’t say “orbiting around”, as we did the previous week.