Eggplant, zucchini and an Australian

Continuing on the 'North American' theme: one of the dishes available in our staff canteen today is the American English-sounding eggplant and zucchini pasta bake – that's aubergine and courgette pasta bake to Brits like me.

Actually I believe our head chef is Australian, and that 'eggplant' and 'zucchini' are the favoured terms in Oz. Either our chef is unaware of some of the differences between Australian and British English, or he is trying to stamp his authority (and nationality) on the menu...


(Read my other staff canteen-related posts: pan-fried cat and fine herbs.)

Word of the day: sidehill

Some copy I was subbing yesterday kept making mention of a certain vehicle's performance on sidehills. Thinking 'sidehill' was a technical term, or at least a specific type of hill or slope, I was surprised to find that the Oxford English Dictionary just defines it as North American for 'hillside'.

We say 'hillside'; they say 'sidehill'. Let's call the whole thing off.

And now I'm off to have a wichsand.


(Incidentally, I'd love to hear from any North American readers as to whether they use 'sidehill', 'hillside', or both).

Use TLAs carefully!

TLAs (three-letter acronyms) have become an established feature of the English language, but until an acronym becomes universally recognised it should be used with care.

That's why I didn't assume Engine Room readers would recognise 'TLA', and why JD and I give our readers the full version of even a well established TLA the first time it appears in a story. This is clearly not a universal policy.

The following headline and sub-head graced the front cover of today's Western Mail, the Papur Cenedlaethol Cymru ('National Newspaper of Wales', as if you didn't know), below a photo of a Welsh rugby player:

Where's our missing £21m? Fears WAG has plundered cash intended to help disabled people

Readers of British tabloids will be all too familiar with the TLA WAG – it stands for Wives And Girlfriends; particularly when associated with highly paid sportsmen like the stalwart pictured over the WAG headline. In tabloid terms WAGs are known more for their polished appearance and high spending habits than their intellect, but stealing cash from the disabled? A new low even for the most dissipated WAG, I thought.

Not until the 20th paragraph did I learn that to the Western Mail headline writer, if to no-one east of the River Severn, WAG stands for Welsh Assembly Government. A Welshman on our writing team was as confused as I was; it seems WAG has yet to catch on as a TLA for the Assembly, even west of the border.

The moral? It's better to tell your readers something they already know than to baffle them by assuming knowledge they don't have. Mind you, it would have been a great story...

Untimely cliches banned!

It seems that even the great and good who write for the Times Literary Supplement need to be brought to heel on occasion – their engine room has issued a list of words and phrases that are not to be used in that august organ:

• iconic

• ironically
  

• carbon footprint

• time poor

• black/Muslim/literary community

and

• any reference to sex beginning in 1963, in conjunction with Philip Larkin

Other engine rooms, other gremlins

One of our cherished freelancers spotted the following headlines on holdthefrontpage.co.uk:

• Arranging the death of a loved one isn't easy

• 12 die in 30 minutes as car bombers target Shite area

• Child sex field at family fun event

• Shoreham wind turbine talks

and, every sub's nightmare:

• Think of a headline
  56pt bold headline
  

Not to be left out, I must own up to a memorable typo at the end of a motor show preview some years ago: "See next week for a dull report". Yes, 'd' is right next to 'f' on the keyboard and spellcheckers, as we all know to our cost, don't pick up typos that make real words – but did that get me of the hook? Of course not.

Get those shoes out of here!

Spotted at the security desk of Gatwick Airport: "Footwear repatriation area".

I know security has to be tight nowadays, by throwing a chap's shoes out of the country seems a mite harsh.

Shoes: go back home

The strange case of Megan Thomas, 20

Quite amused by a story in today's Daily Mail about "a 20-year-old secretary at a private club [who] won a landmark discrimination case after claiming she was sacked for being too young for the job".

The secretary in question, Megan Thomas, had this to say:

I was upset to lose my job. I was told I was too young and if they had met me a few years later there may not have been a problem.

They also said that I was deceitful, sly and lacked integrity, which was hurtful and untrue.

So there "may not have been a problem" with Megan working at the club if she had been slightly older, even though she was – in the club's opinion – deceitful, sly and lacking in integrity. A great approach to recruitment there...

Think before you write: recruitment ad

A magazine in the group that employs JD and I includes a recruitment ad that is well written and tempting (the job offers 56 days' annual leave, for a start).

The role, we are told, involves managing sites at a number of remote locations. Fair enough.

But someone at the advertising agency must have been having a bad day when they wrote the headline: 'Camp Managers'.

Not compelled but required

Today a story thudded onto the engine-room floor which had me reaching for the OED.

It refered to a driver who was prosecuted for failing to take regular breaks which the law 'compelled him to do'. A moment's thought and a quick definition check confirmed that the author should have written 'required him to do'.

Why? Because the OED tells us that compel is 'to force or oblige [someone] to do something' and the whole point of the story was that the individual concerned hadn't.