Channel 4: Embarrassing Illnesses

One of our contributors has e-mailed in the following ad spotted on her work intranet:

Channel 4’s Embarrassing Illnesses are doing a series of shows including a programme focussing on men's health.

They are interested in hearing from men who find discussing issues with their doctors embarassing.

If selected, your condition will be treated by professionals and you will receive top quality surgery and treatment. Your involvement will raise awareness about your condition, helping other sufferers to seek the treatment they need.

Please contact [details withheld]

So... you are a man who has an embarrassing illness. You find discussing this issue – or perhaps all issues – with your doctor also embarrassing. So what do you do? Volunteer to take your illness on national television of course. That's much less embarrassing.

(I also like the way that 'embarrassing' is spelt wrongly in the second par. Everyone makes spelling mistakes, but the show is called 'Embarrassing Illnesses' for goodness' sake...)

Collective nouns: subs and designers

As you may be aware, Apus is soon leaving for pastures new and he is currently enjoying a round of leaving dos.

Yesterday it was the turn of our esteemed freelancers to be taken to lunch – and I thought at the time that never before had I seen so many subs in one place. That led me to wonder what a good collective noun for a group of sub editors (or copy editors, if you prefer) might be. A proof of subs, perhaps? A correction of subs?

I don't want to leave our design colleagues out, so perhaps we should come up with a collective noun for them too. A scribble of designers? A scrawl of designers?

I'm sure your ideas will be better than mine...

Childhood memories: Sophie Ellis-Bextor naked

UK charity The Children's Society has launched a campaign to gather "hundreds and thousands of childhood memories that will contribute the Good Childhood Inquiry, the UK’s first independent inquiry into what makes a good childhood. This will help us understand how to make childhood better today."

Fair enough, but to promote the campaign the charity has photographed elfin pop singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor naked in a tonne of multi-coloured 'hundreds and thousands' sprinkles (pictured).

Does this strike anyone else as slightly inappropriate? I assume the charity would want to associate childhood with wholesomeness and innocence – not virtues that the promotional photos really convey to me.

I'm not complaining too strongly, mind.

Feeling puntillious: Shakespeare

This post was a race between my esteemed colleague and me as the following snippet, culled from a column in New Scientist magazine, was sent to both of us by a fellow galley slave in the adjacent engine room:

Sign spotted at a camping shop in Beverley, East Yorkshire: "Now is the Winter of our Discount Tents". No doubt they're designed to withstand a Tempest – as long as the guy ropes are nice and Titus Andronicus.

PS: What did the barman at the Globe say when Will Shakespeare misbehaved? "You're barred!" Homophonic levity... JD will be impressed.

Phabulous frases

Here are a few phrases that have brightened up life in the Engine Room over the past few days – all from our charges, who never seem to notice that JD and I have made any changes to their prose. Which is as it should be, of course… I mean, why should a sub (or copy editor) mind that we do the work and they get the awards? At least it's never made me bitter.

• "it is, so far, the first of its kind"

• "imminent in the near future"

• "orders were worth nearly £12.7bn in value"

• "registrations are up by 76% year on year compared with last year"

• "the plight of a midlands company hangs in the balance"

Webcams in the workplace

Slightly off-topic, perhaps, but here goes:

Today I discovered that the company Apus and I work for has set up two webcams in our building: one in the staff restaurant, and one in the coffee shop franchise on the ground floor.

The feed can be viewed live via the company intranet, although is only by chance that I came across the link to do this: it hasn't been advertised at all. And it is intranet only, I'm afraid, so I can't give you the link.

But in effect this means I can sit at my desk, subbing copy, and spy on my workmates as they buy a latte or eat a sandwich. The truth of this has already been brought home to me: as I returned to my desk this lunchtime after buying a cup of soup in the staff restaurant, a colleague whom I had earlier told about the webcams remarked that I had been a "bit heavy on the croutons".

Trivial stuff, but slightly disturbing nonetheless. If nothing else, it lets my line manager see whether I really am 'just popping downstairs to get some more milk'. Again.

And being mature, sensible journalists, we already have a bet going to see who will be first to moon at one of the webcams...

Fire engine, fire truck, fire brigade vehicle

I was subbing some copy recently that used the uncomfortable phrase "fire brigade vehicle". I changed this almost automatically to "fire engine" but then started wondering whether I'd done the right thing. Two issues were on my mind:

1. 'Fire engine' might be a totally or predominantly British English phrase. The Concise OED doesn't say so, although Googling 'fire engine' throws up a suspiciously high proportion of UK pages. I know that Americans might refer to a 'fire truck' but I don't know what the difference in usage is between 'fire truck' and 'fire engine' Stateside. 'Fire truck' doesn't appear in my Concise at all.

(Of course, the publication I work for is aimed at a British readership so really this isn't a big factor, but it's still interesting – and might explain why the writer shied away from using 'fire engine' in the first place.)

2. I don't know enough to say, but it could be that "fire brigade vehicle" is a more general term than "fire engine", covering vehicles other than those used to carry "firefighters and their equipment" (OED again). There was no way to tell from the story what type of vehicle was being referred to, so perhaps I should have played it safe.

My questions to you are: was I right to make the change? And what do you personally consider the difference is between 'fire engine', 'fire truck' and 'fire brigade vehicle'? Thanks!

Malapropisms: execrators

Roz has emailed us the following job advert which contains a "lovely malapropism":

Opportunities exist for skilled people to undertake roles within the Mining industry in Regional WA. Our company is currently seeking individuals who have the following abilities: Machine operation tickets such as Dump Trucks, Execrators, 992 Loaders, Drills Graders, Dozers and Water Karts with 6 wheels and also able to undertake a Manager or Supervisory role.

Roz adds: "For much of the day thereafter, I daydreamed about what it would be like to actually be paid for cursing mine sites..."

(We seem to be having a glut of malapropisms recently. For anyone not in the know, a malapropism is "the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one" (OED). The term itself comes from the character Mrs Malaprop in an 18th-century play. Hence the title of Apus' blog post the other day...)

Prehistoric giant salamander!

Free London paper Metro recently published an article about the Zoological Society of London's Edge project – which seeks to protect 'evolutionary distinct and globally endangered' species.

The print version of the story carried the following caption (you'll have to imagine the pictures here, I'm afraid):

Freak show: Some of the creatures on the Edge list – the olm (top), a blind amphibian which hunts using electric pulses; the Chinese giant salamander, a pre-historic creature (left); Darwin's frog (below left); and the Gardiner's Seychelles frog, which is smaller than a fingernail

Disregarding the hyphen, why refer to the giant salamander as prehistoric? The OED says 'prehistoric' is "of or relating to prehistory", 'prehistory' being "the period of time before written records". So this particular species predates writing – which has been with us for around 5,000 years. In evolutionary terms, that's not long at all.

The OED does give a second definition of prehistoric: "very old or out of date (informal)" – as in, 'Wow man, that salamander is prehistoric."

Here's a web version of Metro's Edge story, obviously without all the pictures and the caption above. The Metro site did include a gallery of 'ugly amphibian pictures', but that doesn't appear to be working at the moment. So instead here is a photo of a Chinese giant salamander (he's the one on the right):