Mea Culpa: An epidemic of things that are not epidemics

Questions of style and grammar in this week’s Independent

Tracey Crouch is minister for loneliness, but it is not an ‘epidemic’ (Getty)

The epidemic of using “epidemic” to describe things that are not epidemics is abating. This week we used it only three times. We referred to an “epidemic of violence” in an article about the murder rate in Mexico. It is hackneyed, but at least the metaphor makes some sense because murder can spread like a disease by copying and the spread of social norms.

That does not apply to a “loneliness epidemic”. In a headline this week we said: “Replacing doctors with chatbots will only make the loneliness epidemic worse.” Loneliness is a problem, and it is good to see the government doing something about it, including the appointment of a minister, Tracey Crouch, to take responsibility for policy.

But it is not contagious and calling it an epidemic somehow diminishes it. If the headline had said “...will only make loneliness worse”, I think it would have been sharper.

At least we didn’t say – this time – that loneliness “has reached epidemic proportions”. This is a deadening phrase that gets everywhere, and is now used simply to mean any supposedly bad thing is getting worse. There was a headline on the US financial news service CNBC this week that said: “America’s labour shortage is approaching epidemic proportions.” How can the lack of something be like a plague?

To return to The Independent, Sean O’Grady used “epidemic” in his TV preview of Black Nurses: The Women Who Saved the NHS, one of many programmes shown (or in this case repeated) to mark the 70th anniversary of the health service: “It’s as much about social history as it is about the NHS, which is why it’s more watchable than most of the rest of the epidemic of celebrations.”

I rather like that. This is how a metaphor is supposed to work: it fits in a sentence about a service intended to deal with outbreaks of disease.

Sitting comfortably: Sometimes we can see language changing before our eyes. Norman Mills wrote to draw my attention to a report about Transport for London, which, we said, has accumulated a “‘cash mountain’ sat on dormant Oyster cards”.

Standard English would use “sitting” instead of “sat” here, so that sentence has been changed. Neither is right or wrong, but our reporting carries more authority if it uses the older, formal style.

Older readers will find that the new grammar, “I am sat on the sofa” or “We were stood at the bar”, puts their teeth on edge – which is a good enough reason for younger reporters to avoid it – but it is becoming widespread and one day it may become the norm.

Fly away: A caption in the Daily Edition last week said a new airline “will be based out of Vienna”. That suggested to Mick O’Hare that the airline’s base will be anywhere in the world but Vienna. “Based in” or “operating out of”, I think.