Mea Culpa: in the middle of the campaign against ‘amid’

John Rentoul’s self-critical look at English usage and abusage in last week’s ‘Independent’

Ronan Kelleher suffered a double linguistic injury at the hands of ‘The Independent’ this week (Getty)

My campaign against “amid” has been suspended for a while, to give everyone a chance to familiarise themselves with normal English words to use instead. But I am afraid a computer search tells me we used it 35 times in the last week, and only two of those were remotely acceptable.

We said that Rishi Sunak “will be staying at the five-star Shangri-La Hotel in central Connaught Place, along with the rest of his delegation from the UK, amid high security and restrictions for the national capital’s residents”. I think that is fine, as the prime minister was literally “in the middle of” a security zone.

And we said that Irina Babloyan, a broadcaster popular in Russia, “returned to her home country of Georgia in October, amid another Russian exodus sparked by President Putin’s mobilisation order”. In that case, she was figuratively “in the midst” of a crowd of emigrants.