Jobless recovery

I spotted this on the Conservative Party website recently:

The phrase "jobless recovery" was new to me. At first I thought it was just a synonym for "return to high unemployment", but it turns out that a jobless recovery is something more specific. Wikipedia defines it as:

Recovery from a recession, where "recovery" is defined as growth in gross domestic product (GDP), which does not produce strong growth in employment

Wikipedia also points out that the phrase is "used by economists, especially in the United States" - I'm not sure whether it has entered common use in British English (although here's a Times Online article from February that uses it prominently).

Anyway, perhaps the Conservative Party article should have clarified what Theresa May meant by "jobless recovery". I certainly didn't know.

'Donate second hand clothes for food items'

"Donate second hand clothes for men and women and food items"? I didn't realise that food items needed second hand clothes...

A very gluggable red whine

Apologies for the lack of posts recently - I've been really busy at work.

On the plus side I now own an iPhone, which makes it much easier for me to take and upload photos. Here's the first:

This bottle of wine (sorry: whine) has been sitting on my kitchen worktop for the past month, waiting to be blogged. I can't remember whether it had "boiled sweet characters", and if so, whether they were a good thing. Somehow I doubt it.

Roger Boyes byline goes viral on Twitter

Yesterday morning our head of content pointed out to me a Times Online story titled Vienna Boys’ Choir Caught up in Sex Abuse Scandals - written by Roger Boyes:

Not exactly a case of nominative determinism (Roger Boyes doesn't himself roger boys, as far as I know), but pretty good nonetheless.

Later in the day - and before I'd had a chance to blog - I spotted #timesbylines as a trending topic on Twitter. Tweets included '"It Was Stephen Gately's Lifestyle That Killed Him" by Gabe Asher' - thanks to @TheLakePoets for that one.

Apparently #RogerBoyes trended as well.

Oh, and Boyes' Wikipedia entry has already been updated to read:

In March 2010, an article he wrote for The Times about paedophile priests became a viral hit on Twitter because of the apparent appropriateness of his name for the subject matter; "to roger" being a British slang term for having sexual intercourse.

So The Engine Room is slower than both Twitter and Wikipedia. Sorry about that.

Spoof letter in the Daily Mail?

Gareth has sent in this scan of a letter that was recently published in the Daily Mail:

Gareth writes:

Even disregarding the letter's content, the name at the bottom clearly shows this up as a spoof letter – although I fear this may be lost on many of the newspaper's readers.

The question is: is this letter something that the Mail has made up themselves, or is it a parody that someone has sent in that has been mistakenly published as genuine?

In fact, working as you do in the publishing industry, can you confirm my long-held suspicion that the majority of printed letters in newspapers and magazines are simply made up by bored staff members?

Thanks, Gareth - what a brilliant letter. However, Googling "Derek Hartopp" suggests that it is not a spoof, as unlikely as that seems.

From my experience on consumer and business magazines, I can say that a minority of letters are made up.

I certainly haven't met many journalists with moral qualms about faking readers' letters.

That said, the primary reason for making up letters is need rather than boredom. Magazines often commit to running a letters page every week or month and then fail to receive enough suitable letters before the next issue goes to press. Of the letters received, some will be incomprehensible, some irrelevant, some libellous, some unoriginal, and some simply unprintable.

The present inebriated

Carl Jackson has written in to say:

I just thought your readers might appreciate this passage on grammar and usage from an SAT parody book called The BSAT: http://www.bsatworld.com/lookInside/grammarUsage

Thanks, Carl. I especially liked this par:

Compare "I drank too much" to "I have drunk too much." Drank is the simple past tense; drunk is the past participle. Don't confuse the two. (Also don't confuse with "I am drunk too much," the present inebriated.)

What Apus did next: Motorcycling Memories

I began this blog back in April 2007 with Apus, who was then chief sub to my sub editor. In February 2008 Apus retired, although he continued to contribute to the blog until the summer of 2009. So what has Apus been doing since then?

Apart from sitting on the beach and eating bacon sandwiches, he has put together a website called Motorcycling Memories, "a miscellany of motor cycling musings, milestones and memorabilia". Apus used to work on Motor Cycle Weekly, you see, and motorcycling remains one of his great passions.

Just thought some of you might be interested to know.

To be kept locked when not in actual use

What, as opposed to metaphorical use?

I also love how the text is left-aligned (ragged right, if you prefer to call it that) rather than centred. It gives the sign a certain poetical quality.

Daily Mail columnist resents her online readership

Columnist Bel Mooney had this to say in yesterday's Daily Mail and Mail Online:

To be honest, there are times I faintly resent the fact that people read newspapers for free online, instead of buying a real paper. [...]

If you're reading this online and you live in the UK, tell me why you can't be bothered to fork out a measly 50p for a proper paper you can take with you, cut things out of, etc? I don't see why people should expect something for nothing.

That's great, Bel. A lot of respect for your web audience there. And it's not as if Mail Online is a charitable endeavour...