Mea Culpa: An initiation ceremony for Spider-Man fans

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

Web of intrigue: the superhero bones up on the Marvel universe (Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)

In a comment article about the dispute between Sony and Disney about the rights to Spider-Man, we used the phrase “for the uninitiated …” Speaking as a semi-initiate, with a rudimentary understanding of the difference between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC one, I thought that this might be a patronising way to introduce a paragraph of explanation.

I can see why the author did it, knowing that most of those who would be interested in the article in the first place would be familiar with the background. But there is never any harm in a short recap of “the story so far”, even for an audience that knows it well.

Much more often, we make the opposite mistake of assuming too much knowledge on the part of the reader. I was struck last week by an account by a fellow journalist of a conversation she overheard on a train: “A neighbouring couple who had heard something about parliament being suspended, gave up three lines into the BBC News story in exasperation and talked about something else.”