Mea Culpa: President Bernie Sanders in an alternative universe

May and might, underestimating the risk of saying the wrong thing, and an Americanism in this week’s Independent

Might is right: Mr Sanders, not the President of the United States (Getty)

Bernie Sanders, the former presidential hopeful, condemned President Trump’s response to the hurricane damage to Puerto Rico last weekend. We wrote: “Mr Sanders, who challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic primary and who many believe may have beaten Mr Trump in the general election, said …”

That should have been “who many believe might have beaten Mr Trump”. Using “may” suggests it is possible that Mr Sanders had in fact beaten Mr Trump, presumably in a parallel universe, as Paul Edwards wrote to say.

The Oxford Dictionary says the distinction between may (present tense) and might (past) “is rarely observed today”. This may or even might be true, but “might” can also have a conditional sense. Here we need it to make clear that we are talking about something that could have happened if the Democrats had chosen a different candidate. It was obvious what we meant, if you stopped to think about it, but we owe it to the reader not to make them stop over something as straightforward as this.

Immeasurable loathing: If you drop words such as “underestimate” they are likely to land butter-side down, which is what happened in an editorial this week about the Foreign Secretary’s weaknesses. We said: “The loathing and contempt that the Europeans feel towards Mr Johnson (and cordially returned by him) cannot be underestimated.” As Anthony Slack pointed out, we meant “overestimated”.

This is a form of double negative, and the way to check the meaning is to reverse both negatives: “... can be overestimated.” But it is a formula that so often goes wrong it is best avoided. It would have been better to think of a metaphor, such as “... is wider and deeper than the English Channel.” (Incidentally, we should not have used “the Europeans”: the British are Europeans too, and some of them quite like Mr Johnson.)

Reach out from America: As a tolerant curmudgeon, and realising that half The Independent’s readers are in the US, I am relaxed about Americanisms in British English. Sometimes, though, an American usage can confuse a reader who isn’t familiar with it. For example, if our reporters are covering a breaking news story, they will on occasion write, “The Independent has reached out to” a person or organisation involved for a comment.

That makes me stop and read it again. John Schluter wanted to know what is wrong with “contacted”. The answer is nothing, and we should use that.