Daytime English

Being a pensioner I have lots of time to enjoy daytime TV which, besides making your brain leak out your ears, offers some lovely eye-watering use of English. F'rinstance...

From Under The Hammer, a daily look a house buying: "We have a handy local shop nearby."

From Grand Designs, a daily look at house building: "It's a great example of greenification."

From one of the may copdocs: "...the never-ending war against criminals and law-breakers..."

Much nicer was a phrase used by an American lady in a news report: "I was breath-taken."

And I was taken by a phrase coined by a cabaret singer during a documentary, Benidorm Unpacked, in which he bemoaned the total lack of job security with the warning: "That's why your name's in chalk - not lights!"

And while not strictly relevant to this blog, I have to add that it was heartwarming to see this guy, who had lost a leg and an arm aged 10 when he was run over by a train. His remaining leg's still broken and in a caliper. Sorry for himself? Not a bit of it. He's married to a charming and exquisite Swedish blonde who is clearly devoted to him. They have a couple of lovely kids and, with work being short in Spain, are heading off to, of all places, Bulgaria in search of work.

Cool or what?

Catholic Church updates list of mortal sins

I was quite amused by a recent story in London free paper Metro regarding the Roman Catholic Church's updated list of mortal sins:

According to the Catholic faith, they must be confessed to a priest and if not absolved or forgiven, will lead to a person's soul being condemned to hell.

But now genetic experimentation, tampering with the order of nature, pollution, social injustice, causing poverty, excessive wealth and drug abuse have been added.

There's something deliciously ironic about the Catholic Church speaking out against excessive wealth...

On another note, the new list of sins "was announced after a week-long confession refresher course for priests". Would that be a confesher?

BBC News: town sex assault 'allegation'

I am a little confused by a recent BBC News story entitled 'Girl victim of town sex assault'. It begins:

Police are investigating an allegation that a 17-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in County Down.

The teenager was the victim of a serious sexual assault on Friday at about 2330 GMT in the Greencastle Street area of Kilkeel.

The headline and the second paragraph are confident that the girl was the victim of a sexual assault, whereas the first par uses the don't-sue-us word 'allegation'. If the reporter is so sure of himself, why not write 'Police are investigating the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl'?

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that using the word 'allegation' here, if there is indeed no doubt that the assault took place, is offensive to the victim.

Coke: good for wellbeing and vitality

We've had an 'Occupational Health and Safety Wellbeing and Vitality Day' at work today. Catchy title, huh? Perhaps they should have just called it OHAS WAVD.

Among the attractions were free bottles of Diet Coke and Coke Zero (pictured right, with model), and a prize draw to win a hamper containing a big slab of chocolate. Mmm, healthy.

On the plus side, I had my blood pressure tested and it was found to be normal. That's got to be a first for a sub editor...

World's longest URL?

As part of my increasing involvement in the web side of things here at work I have been spending some of my time recently fixing mistakes and inconsistencies on our website. Unfortunately I work on a Mac and the less than perfect web-based system I need to access to make my corrections only runs properly on a PC.

Rather than running up and down the office between my Mac and the spare PC all day, I have been writing proof marks on a printout of the web page in question and giving this to a friendly PC operator to make the corrections for me. Very high-tech, huh?

As well as the usual typos and lapses in style, one unique element of subbing (or indeed, copy editing) for the web is fixing broken hyperlinks. Whenever I have found a broken link I have been writing the correct URL on the paper proof for the PC operator to tap in for me.

This was working well – until I came across a URL on a certain government website that went on... and on... and on. I copied it into Word and did a quick character count only to find that this web address was a whopping 362 characters long. That's definitely a personal record.

Anyone beat that?

Names: Mr Conman

We've blogged before about silly names, but today a press release came through at work written by a Mr Conman. Although I assume this name doesn't have a stress on the final syllable, unlike the word 'conman', it is still amusingly appropriate for someone who works in PR...

New media: JD is the Champion

I know it says at the top of the blog that I'm a sub-editor (copy editor if you like) on a weekly UK magazine, but that's not strictly true. We've had a restructure recently – which is how Apus managed to engineer his departure – and now I'm a sub editor on two weekly UK magazines (although much more on one than the other).

I am also spending an increasing amount of time working on our 'web publication'. Since the restructure each member of the production desk has been given 'championship' of a particular 'brand', and I am 'Web Champion'. I even have this written in the first paragraph of my job description. With initial caps, no less. And sorry about all the 'inverted commas', but I don't normally use these buzzwordy phrases.

As a result of my increasing involvement with the –ahem– web publication, I can imagine that this blog is going to be addressing new-media-related issues more and more. You may see this as a good or a bad thing, but if it does interest you I would like to recommend the blog Engagement 101. It even uses phrases like "the new journalism tools afforded by the Web 2.0 world"...

One of my duties as Web Champion is to write a daily blog post summarising the events of the day in a particular industry. So that makes me, sort of, a professional blogger. On a part-time basis, at least. Must have been all that practice here on The Engine Room...

Julie Walters: good message, bad timing

That fine thesp Julie Walters is featuring in a public safety TV ad (pictured below) reminding viewers to check their household smoke alarms. The message is direct: don't brew up during this ad break, check your smoke alarm instead... do it now or put your loved ones' lives at risk.

But should this ad be broadcast at 1am? Sometimes it's not what you say, it's when you say it.

Adverts: LEZ

The Engine Room isn't the only site to suffer from inappropriate context-sensitive adverts.

The magazine I work for has a sister website and today our web editor was complaining that, due to its ongoing coverage of the London Low Emission Zone (or LEZ – and I know you know where this is going), it has been displaying adverts for lesbian dating services. Among other things...