Tube 'too hot for cattle'

According to today's Evening Standard, the London Underground is currently "too hot for cattle":



That's a shame, because cows love travelling on the Tube.

Incidentally, a couple of the broadsheets ran a similar story back in 2002. At least The Guardian took the unusual approach of putting commuters in a cattle truck.

I'd still rather see cows on the Tube, though.

Thursday roundup: MasterChef, NUJ, old words

A Thursday roundup rather than the usual Friday one.

It's the final of cookery gameshow MasterChef tonight here in the UK, and anyone who's a fan of both the programme and language use might briefly enjoy the 'MasterChef: the best lyrics' gizmo on guardian.co.uk. Thanks for that one, Sarah.

Why would the chair of the National Union of Journalists' professional training committee write that "bloggers rejoice in low standards"? I'm still not sure, but you can track the discussion leading up to this comment on my colleague Adam Tinworth's blog, One Man and His Blog, or read the guardian.co.uk account. As an NUJ member and a fan of new and social media, I've been engrossed by the whole affair.

Lastly, another of my colleagues drew my attention to a BBC News article on the 'oldest English words'. All the talk of Indo-European languages made me flash back to my university days. Thanks, Ro!

Word of the day: indentikit

Spotted in yesterday's The Guardian Guide:

How did a clutch of arty female electro acts end up being tipped as the future of pop? Blame Scouting For Girls, the Pigeon Detectives and the slow death of indentikit guitar music

'Indentikit': it's an adjective, and presumably a portmanteau of 'identikit' and 'indie' (an abbreviation of 'independent music') . Synonyms used in the article include 'landfill indie' and 'pseudo indie'.

I like 'indentikit' because 'identikit' is itself a portmanteau, of 'identity' and 'kit'. The OED Online's first mention of 'identikit' is from the Observer in 1961:

About forty police forces in this country are now testing an American device called an ‘Identi-Kit’, which is used to translate witnesses' descriptions of a person into visual terms.

So originally a brand name?

But back to the more recent 'indentikit'. Interestingly, it appears in the standfirst of the article but not the body copy - was it the sub's choice of word rather than the writer's?

Googling 'indentikit' throws up more than 5,000 results, but most of them seem to be accidental misspellings of 'identikit'. Googling '+indentikit +indie' gives 345 results, most of which predate the article in The Guardian Guide.

So this is a word that is new to me, but not newly coined.

Friday roundup: odd book titles, scary comments

First thing in this week's roundup: a guardian.co.uk photo-feature on some of the oddest book titles of the past 30 years. The feature itself is titled 'Oddest book title prize'; is it really the book titles that are odd, or just the prize? Either way, thanks for the link, Sarah.

And when did the Guardian website stop calling itself Guardian Unlimited? Missed that one completely.

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Second, my new favourite website: spEak You're bRanes, otherwise known as www.ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com. It's "a collection of ignorance, narcissism, stupidity, hypocrisy and bad grammar" found amongst the comments made on the BBC's 'Have Your Say' site. Hilarious, yet highly worrying.

Thanks for this one, Gareth.

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Last but not least, another good linguistics blog find: Literal-Minded. I'm going to add it to the blogroll.

House style: job titles, positions and ranks

We're currently overhauling our house style so that it is consistent across two print publications and one online publication, and the issue of job titles has come up. Currently, on one of the print publications at least, we use lower case for job titles but initial caps for "positions of public office and police ranks", for example:

• senior reporter John Doe
• Prime Minister John Doe
• Police Constable John Doe

(I know, that John Doe has had a very checkered career...)

This approach has several drawbacks, notably a) it can look inconsistent to readers who don't understand the rules behind it, and b) it leads to interminable discussions as to whether local councillors really should get initial caps.

So we're thinking of taking the lead of The Guardian and using lower case for all job titles and positions of public office. However The Guardian does use initial caps for police ranks (I don't know how it treats military ranks, but I imagine it also gives them initial caps).

What do you think? And if you work for a publication, what approach does it take?


Incidentally, I really like The Guardian for putting its style guide online and making it so clear and easy to use. The guide also displays both wit and grumpiness, which I think are necessary components of any style guide (or sub)...