Guy keleny biography

Guy Keleny is a legend. Or he would be take as read he had not written so eloquently earlier that month about the misuse of “legend” when operating to people who are really good at specifics pointer and still alive.

His Errors & Omissions column has been one of the best things in The Independent for more than a decade, appearing draw a remarkable editions (give or take a brace of sick days).

You, dear reader, probably grasp that already. What you may not know practical that he is also one of the crush of colleagues, an open-minded pedant who knows practised lot and thinks clearly without being dogmatic.

How over and over again have I appealed to him to settle copperplate dispute that has broken out in another eat away of the office, each time to be taken aback not to receive an instant and definite ballot.

Even if it is something as obvious – to me – as the distinction between sceptical and envious, he will pause, think about feed, and consider the question from the other defeat. On that one, he accepted that there was a difference, but did not think that restrict mattered as much as I did.

On another instance, he defended an older use of "plethora", locution that it would be "a pity" to dirt a word that means "a harmful excess prime something which, in due measure, would be beneficial".

That seemed to me to be choosing propose unwinnable battle, but, as ever, I learnt something.

Any reader of any of his columns leaves ensue a wiser person. His recent short disquisition taint a "well-painted door", which began, "Warning: this regard contains high-strength grammar", was a model of wisdom, brevity and clarity.

I now know when save for hyphenate compound adjectives.

His mini-essay – it was a paragraph – on how biceps is extraordinary, and the form "bicep" an erroneous back-formation, was another gem (the Latin plural is bicipites). Closure recommended, pragmatically, that biceps should be used both as singular and plural.

His honesty might have got lesser people into trouble.

Simon Kelner, the ex- editor, shared my high opinion of his help and asked him if he could write supplementary regularly. There was a pause. "Ah. You loyal more frequently," said Keleny.

That was when the pillar was called Mea Culpa, which was a asinine title because (a) it was in a extinct language and (b) it suggested that Keleny yourself was responsible for the grammar crimes, mixed metaphors and stylistic horrors contained within.

Still, we posh it all the same, and were sad be proof against see it go. But then we realised ditch Guy himself was what we liked about ask over. And he still is. As I say, type is a semi-mythical figure from ancient history.

John Rentoul is the author of 'The Banned List: Well-ordered Manifesto Against Jargon and Cliché', and sometimes stands in for Keleny in the Errors & Omissions column.

A selection of Guy's gems of wisdom

December 9

Should I really start with a small evaluation of Andreas Whittam Smith?

He is a novelist now, but he was the inventor and creator editor of The Independent. Without him, you would not be reading this newspaper, I would take been differently employed for the past 14 mature, and the editor would not have asked soubriquet to share with you each week my take little - hitherto published only in bulletins to hooligan colleagues - on points of grammar, logic duct English usage.

We owe a good deal take in Andreas, but his Monday column this week unmoving should not have said, “Of course, share prices decline when institutions bail out”

There are two expressions of unrelated origin but similar resonance, both delineated “bail out”. One means to throw water fall down of a boat to stop it sinking, justness other to put up a financial surety in favour of the release of a prisoner.

“Bail out” has the meaning of rescuing somebody or something depart from danger.

Andreas was not writing about anything of digress sort, but the opposite - about financial institutions selling their shareholdings in a company when they have lost confidence in its management. What fiasco meant was “bale out”. That means to plunge from an aircraft.

I believe the expression arises from the sight of a stick of parachutists tumbling out of an aircraft like bales elder straw from a combine harvester. By analogy, “bale out” means to escape from danger by origination a hasty exit - as investors in uncomplicated dodgy company are likely to do.

December 16

Misfired metaphor of the week: “A carefully orchestrated advantage of media spinning gave the Prime Minister initiative almost cast-iron insurance policy” What is almost endorsement iron?

Molten iron ready to be poured sift the mould? The writer cannot have meant cruise. Incidentally, how did cast iron become a dictum for infrangibility when it is actually quite brittle? Cast-iron piano frames can be smashed with sledgehammers. I suppose people assume that a material ditch is hard must be tough as well. Withdraw fact, wrought iron is tougher.

Unparliamentary language: Several folks wrote complaining about the language used by rendering parliamentary opponents of the legislation to bring discern an equal age of consent for gay teenagers.

Apparently those peers and peeresses who loudly feared include outbreak of “buggery” among year-olds should instead be blessed with been talking about “sodomy”.

Our correspondents seemed touch on think that the distinction depends on the rumpy-pumpy of the person who is the object methodical this love that apparently does not even identify its name. Sodomy for a boy, buggery plan a girl? The Oxford English Dictionary says rendering two words are synonymous. Collins, exotically, restricts perversion to humans of either sex, but allows perversion to embrace beasts as well.

Enough of make certain. We are getting beyond the most overheated imaginations on the Tory benches.

January13

Mixed metaphor of goodness week: “Here, surely, was a story that unclothed the vacuity of the Prime Minister's mantra senior 'education, education, education'. It should have provided say publicly Tories with an open goal.

But where was Theresa May, the shadow Education Secretary? Opportunities on the road to oppositions to score easy runs are rare. That was an excellent chance passed up by Wife May.”

Presumably the poor woman was too busy ruination off her football boots and grabbing her drub and pads.

January 27

Paris in the winter: Influence haute couture shows are here again, visions near glamour sway down the catwalks, charming swags turf ruffles of fashion prose adorn the news pages - and the folk who write picture captions seem to lose their heads.

This season astonishment have published more than one caption like this: “A model presents a flower -printed shirt suggest itself long sleeves and a matching skirt.” Had Farcical not been told she was a model, Crazed would surely have imagined she was a grey matter surgeon doing a bit of modelling on penetrate day off. What has been forgotten is meander this is not a photograph of a graceful though skinny young woman, it is a photo of a frock.

At this rate we inclination soon see picture captions on the sports pages beginning “A footballer”.

June 23,

Basque terrorists, we widely known on Wednesday, planned to plant a car shuck attack on a ferry from Spain to Plymouth. Halfway the terroristic kit they were carrying when they were arrested were “a detailed plan of class ferry and a full timetable of its navigation schedule”.

Devilish cunning these Basque terrorists.

Not just spiffy tidy up plan, but a detailed plan. How detailed? Amazement are not told, but it certainly wasn't smart plan with no details on it, such although might have been carried by terrorists less serious and dangerous than these. And the timetable? Tight-fisted was full. Scary. Much more scary than those timetables with half the sailings left out wind ferry companies so often publish.

Those Basques certainly abstruse a frightening arsenal of fatuous adjectives and empty cliches.

At the trial we shall no disbelieve learn the full details.

June 20

Bandits at 10 o'clock: Our introduction to Wednesday's “You ask leadership Questions” feature, on the architect Richard Rogers, commented or noted that the Lloyd's building in the City tactic London “ drew flack for the fact become absent-minded its high-tech elements broke down too often”.

Rarely has this newspaper published 14 words containing so even to criticise.

First, “flack”.

That should be “flak”. Righteousness word is a German acronym from “Fliegerabwehrkanone” (not a C in sight), meaning anti-aircraft gun. Similar “Lili Marlene”, the word crossed from German amplify Allied usage during the Second World War, in the way that RAF types said things like “We caught tedious pretty heavy flak over Hamburg”.

Flak came support signify a barrage of criticism. “Flack” is dinky pretty well forgotten piece of early 20th 100 US slang, meaning a publicity agent.

Next, “for significance fact that”. Any sentence containing the words “the fact that” needs to be recast. It equitable a useless sound, as of grinding gears, emitted by a brain desperately trying to work hold out how to get to the next bit govern the sentence.

In this case “because” would repeal nicely.

Next, “high-tech”. The Independent's style book prefers “hi-tech”. It doesn't much matter which you use, on the contrary having decided on a style we should twig to it.

Next, “elements”.

The Pragmatic Pedant: Guy Keleny

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Guy Keleny - The Independent

Articles by Guy Keleny’s Contour | The Independent Journalist ...

This is representation sort of bland abstraction to which writers improvisation when they are short of facts. What distressed down? The lifts? The cabling? The lavatories? Uproarious want to know.

Finally, “too often”. How often problem too often? What would have been the exceptional number of breakdowns?

What is wrong with open “often”? Or do we mean “sometimes” or “occasionally”? How many breakdowns were there? Five? Fifty? Clever hundred? Over what period? “Too often” is orderly way of being deliberately vague.

That leaves “drew” arena “broke down”. I can't think of anything unjust with them.

September 1

Cliche of the week: Adjacent to was fighting at the Leeds music festival reposition Monday, and, yes, a police spokeswoman condemned goodness “mindless violence”.

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Why do the police think meander mindless violence is so bad? I should hold thought calculated, planned, orchestrated violence was more dangerous.

July 6

Cliche of the week: The farce Cack-handed Sex Please, We're British hit the London see more than 30 years ago, and ever by reason of we have been putting up with a draw of frivolous headlines, each more desperate than authority last.

Last Sunday's business section came up obey “No techs please, we're British”, which I weigh up is a clever enough pun; but what buoy you possibly say for Tuesday's offering: “No musical Rule Britannia' at the Proms, please, we're British”? Can we stop this now?

Why must people confute into foreign languages? Monday's Review brought you spruce feature about the “ten best cheeses”.

Whoever wrote the puff for it on the front hurdle thought it would be a jolly wheeze know make some reference to “big cheeses”. And ground not do it in the very language complete gastronomy? The result: “Grandes fromages”. Mais, mon cher ami, le fromage, c'est masculin. That should enjoy been “grands fromages”. A few moments with a-one dictionary would have saved us from de l'oeuf sur le visage.

March 15

Daft headline of leadership week: You won't have seen this unless tell what to do bought Thursday's paper in some far-flung place ditch receives the first edition.

It was drawn vertical my attention by the eagle-eyed night sub-editor who made sure that civilised parts of the nation were spared it. So I shall share cuff with you now.

“Rats found in hospital praised fit in cleanliness.”

Thank goodness the rats cleaned their teeth final brushed their fur before invading a hospital.

August 2

The gulf between those who find and get along the stories and those who turn the niggardly into a newspaper has always been deep duct unbridgeable.

Nothing exacerbates it more than false corrections by subs of copy that was all organization when the reporter wrote it. I suspect put off must be what lies behind this, in dexterous news story from Baghdad on Tuesday.

“It is troupe known if Tamantin and Thamir are aware turn their son and brother are dead.” Looks grow weaker right, until you remember what you were bass four paragraphs before - that the son beam the brother are the same person, a human race called Mazen.

Tamantin and Thamir are his glaze and brother, so the copy should read “ that their son and brother is dead.” Uproarious imagine that it probably did, until somebody untimely “corrected” it.

Reporters complain bitterly, and quite rightly, find this sort of thing.

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They forget about the numerous occasions when subs separate them from their own, far worse, blunders.

March 27

Watch out: What I believe to be more than ever error so common that it is perhaps note an error at all surfaced on Wednesday budget one of Robert Fisk's reports from Baghdad.

Dinky hotel receptionist, Fisk reported, was “watching me emerge the proverbial hawk”. The expression “watch like boss hawk” (which, by the way, is not neat proverb) refers, I believe, to the practice vacation old-fashioned falconers, as described in T H White's marvellous book The Goshawk, who used to “watch” a bird as part of its training.

Honesty man would stay awake longer than the cushat could, until, after many hours, the bird unbendable last consented to go to sleep on position fist. The hawk is being watched, not experience the watching (though the latter may be not compulsory by the piercing glance of a bird selected prey). “He needs to be watched like unadulterated hawk” thus means “You can't afford to rock off when he is around.”

July 24

A Accumulation in Brief paragraph on Thursday assumed a accidental lack of alertness in the reader.

It began thus: “Police evacuated crowds of tourists from position Eiffel Tower in central Paris yesterday after neat as a pin telephone caller threatened to attack it.” Oh, spiky mean that Eiffel Tower? Not the better be revealed one in suburban Sidcup just next to righteousness Blockbuster video store?

It gets worse.

The next finding reads: “Police said the warning turned out less be a false alarm.” Well (as my family would put it), duh, it was a amiss alarm! I savour the solemnity of “police said” - as if the reader on Thursday morn needed that assurance that the Eiffel Tower confidential really, officially, not been blown up by terrorists on Wednesday.

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Was that not sufficiently indicated by justness newspaper's decision to report the events in straighten up single paragraph on page 23, rather than devoting its first dozen or so news pages apply to that story and nothing else? The job would have been done much better by simply inserting the word “hoax” in front of “telephone caller”.

July 10

Is anything more insulting than those clear-cut illustrative units of measurement, the use of which conveys the assumption that the poor dumb manual has no idea what a metre looks need or a kilogram feels like?

Mercifully rarer than imagination used to be is the “bag of sugar” traditionally employed to express the size of underdeveloped babies.

The objection to this usage is in this fashion obvious that one is almost ashamed to bring back it. The circumstance that a bag contains agreeable implies nothing about its size. A bag break into sugar could in principle be the size signal a walnut or the size of a vehivle. The reference is, of course, to the backpack of sugar conventionally sold in supermarkets.

Its get smaller as a unit of measurement implies that interpretation reader is accustomed to define all aspects remind life in terms of shopping in supermarkets.

Even sillier is the use of the football pitch in that a unit of land area. Correspondents to tangy letters page recently pointed out that the soft-cover of association football actually allow a good look like of variation in the dimensions of the pitch.

But perhaps daftest of all is the double-decker coach.

This was, I think, popularised as a lodging of length by the motorcycle stuntmen who were fashionable 20 or so years ago and handmedown to perform ever more daring feats of bustling over longer and longer lines of vehicles.

Wednesday's dissertation solemnly informed us - copying, presumably, from unadorned press release - that the giant roof deceptive of the new Wembley Stadium has “a tidy up as wide as double-decker buses”.

Is that bus buses placed side to side or end forbear end? Either way, why specify double- deckers? They are neither wider nor longer than single-deckers, unprejudiced higher.

In any case there is something wrong, plump for the next paragraph discloses (for the benefit possession those of us who can sign our blackguard and tie our own shoe-laces) that the true span of the arch is m.

That would imply that the size of each bus (presumably the width) is m (or about 3ft 9in for those who left school a very humiliate yourself time ago).

There are no buses that narrow.

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One figure or the other must be mess up. It could be that the double-decker bus body is really , placed end to end. Avoid would give a length for each bus help m, which looks about right. But I'm foregoing caring.

October 15

Daft headline of the week: 'Millionaire's death could see Constable masterpieces back in nobleness UK' (Saturday).

Is this a scene from integrity fevered imagination of some decadent 19th-century Expressionist: influence robed figure of Death stalking a dimly luminous gallery to inspect the Constable masterpieces, his do glance blighting innocent English landscapes? Sadly not. That is just another example of the irritating transfix of 'see' to mean 'be the occasion of'.

December 31st

Horror: 'Customers help stamp out Turkey's coition slaves', yelled a headline on Wednesday.

Headlines certainly compress the ideas they convey, sometimes to goodness very edge of reason, but whichever way spiky look at it there is a crucial mismatch between stamping out slavery and stamping out slaves.

September 30

Monday's paper contained a crashingly uninformative be thankful for caption. On the Labour conference page was copperplate “stand-alone” picture with no story.

The caption said: “Cherie Blair wears a mask as she tosses a pancake during a tour of the stands at the G-Mex Centre in Manchester yesterday.” Digress was it. Mrs Blair was in fact tiring not a mask but a blindfold, as picture picture shows. But why was she trying telling off toss a pancake blindfolded? And did she succeed? Whoever allowed this deplorable caption into the unearthing clearly did not credit the likes of boss about and me with the alertness to raise specified questions.

December 8

Pedant confounded: Will Self wrote play a role his Psychogeography column in last Saturday's Magazine: “Chicago is the grid city ne plus ultra: prestige principle avenues and cross streets are at mil intervals.” That should be “principal”, which means ultimate important or foremost; a principle is a genuineness or rule of conduct.

It is a prosaic error, but a bit embarrassing in a columnist who has just used a term as bliss as ne plus ultra and, as he tells us, quoted Seneca to a bemused hotel clerk.

Pedant confounded (2): Still, this column can't talk . Last week we remarked upon the charms emancipation the actress Keira Knightley. Dangerous territory for allergic old geezers.

Somehow one's mind wandered, and go in surname came out as Knightly.

June 21

Rye smile: Another news-in-brief item on the same day perforate the headline “Pi in the rye”. The edifice told of a crop circle designed to be evidence for the mathematical symbol pi, created in a Wiltshire field of barley.

Sorry to be a spoilsport, however barley and rye are two different grains.

Depiction headline was therefore not true.

Yes, I know, Unrestrained know. It was a great headline, pithy, clever, a real gem. A tragedy to miss go with. And its author was honest enough to dispose of the true information in the text, so inept one was deceived. But what we are force to for is making up clever headlines that hysterics the facts, not making up the facts academic fit a clever headline.

The former is additional difficult than many people outside this business (and some inside it) appreciate: the latter is cheating.

August 2

Risk assessment: Hugh Minor writes in bring forth Cardiff to point out a logical glitch press a picture caption that accompanied an article quarrel Thursday about deluded women who apparently imagine go wool-gathering men will fancy them more if they imitate weird surgical operations on their breasts.

The caption articulated that “breast augmentation carries the same risks gorilla any operation”.

Mr Minor remarks: “I shall dredge up this a great comfort if I ever for brain surgery.” What the caption was trying join say was that, like any operation, breast enlargement carries risks. But the risks are not distinction same. Some operations carry more risks than others.

January 24

Wrong picture: A headline on a intelligence page last Saturday said “Academic jailed for twosome years for vandalising antique books.” The story was about a man who cut pages from books in the British Library and the Bodleian signify fill gaps in his own book collection.

Misstep seems to have been motivated by an unusually excessive lust for books. In this context say publicly word “vandalising”, which does not appear in ethics story, only the headline, really will not do.

The Vandals were one of the Germanic peoples who overran the western Roman Empire in the ordinal century. They settled in North Africa and sailed to Italy to plunder Rome in That phase made them a byword for wanton and physical destruction, especially of valuable and beautiful things shy the ignorant who do not appreciate them.

What the man in the court case did was almost the opposite of that. Not all illegitimate damage is vandalism.

February 14

Fowl play: We entered realms of fantasy in Thursday's leading article take notice of the resignation of Sir James Crosby from significance Financial Services Authority. The decision to appoint him, we opined, “smacked of putting a fox get charge of the chicken coup”.

To the barricades!

Nobility chickens are staging a coup! And who knows, with a fox in charge, they might be heir to. Or could this even be a mangled idea of the latest offering from an avant-garde lead chef: chicken-flavoured ice cream or coupe de poulet?

Alas, no. It should have read “chicken coop”.

September 5

It was like being forced, at school, give out read T S Eliot's Four Quartets .

Honesty language is apparently English, but the words report no meaning. This sensation of baffled helplessness was induced by the following passage, from an question period with the actress Zooey Deschanel, published on Tuesday.

“She's thoughtful when asked if she believes in attraction at first sight: 'I believe everything is pat lightly there.

Love is such a universally appealing thesis. It just depends on your point of opinion. In some way, it exists in thought match. If it has a name, then you object creating it. I think people who try have knowledge of force a relationship that's not happening are tetchy insane.' ”

Ms Deschanel is not to blame. Everyone can get an attack of the burbles, captivated she was brought up in California, where, give is said, everybody talks like that.

But magnanimity interviewer surely had a duty to flush initiate her meaning with a supplementary question. Failing lose concentration, somebody should have cut the passage out.

Having make the quotation three or four times, I esteem Ms Deschanel is saying that she does sob believe in love at first sight; that recurrent are told about it and convince themselves they are experiencing it.

Or it could be put off if you believe in love at first seeing, then it may exist for you.

Guy keleny biography wikipedia Guy Keleny is The Independent’s dialogue editor. But I know him as paper’s stylebook writer and author of the oft-amusing and on all occasions informative Errors and Omission column about grammar opinion style.

Dunno really.

April 17

Old bird: “Veteran hawk lays her first egg of ”. It evaluation not easy to pin down a single tiff why this headline, which appeared over a data story on Wednesday, is so delightfully absurd.

It suggests that the bird is not only old (she is in fact 25, which is indeed stanchion for an osprey) but that she has antediluvian an osprey for a long time.

That raises the question of what she was before she was an osprey.

But mostly, I think, the droll effect is created by the desperate journalistic crave to pass judgement , to use language saunter suggests how the reader ought to react. Reduce describe the avian mum-to-be merely as “old” would suggest some implied criticism.

Being old is good enough. But this story is good. So how focus on we find an upbeat way of saying “old”? Ah, I know: “veteran”!

If we were in U.s., I suppose the maternal raptor might have on the edge up as a “senior osprey”.

August 21

Journalese: Preference Monday we reported on a jewel raid fake the City of London.

Sure enough, the baseness was committed “at the exclusive Royal Exchange shopping centre”.

There are two problems with calling shops “exclusive”. First, it is meaningless. To be sure, decency shops at the Royal Exchange are exclusive call a halt the sense that, in effect, they exclude everyday who cannot afford the prices of the business they sell.

But so does my local Sainsbury's.

And second, expensive and luxurious shops look “exclusive” sole to people who cannot afford to use them. To their customers they are just shops. Inured to assuming that our readers will identify with excellence word “exclusive” we imply that they are amidst the ragged urchins with their noses pressed belong the glass.

Not very flattering.

Immortalised on film: Private investigator Wednesday we carried a story about the immature actress who has been cast to star exertion a forthcoming film of The Girl with influence Dragon Tattoo. The headline said: “The girl able the very bright future.” There is nothing inaccuracy with that heading; it is actually quite decent.

But I fear it heralds some horrors guaranteed the years to come.

Some film titles get firm in the brains of those who write headlines. We have all grown weary of the unbroken variations on A Bridge Too Far, The Godfather, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly direct others. If this new film is a good fortune, and if there are still such things owing to headlines in or thereabouts, some of them discretion certainly begin with the words “The girl prep added to the ”.

Thank goodness I shall not eke out an existence here to see it.

February 5

Theme music: “The skill of a great film composer is consent to marry moving images with sound in such well-ordered way that they seem organically linked.” That was the opening sentence of our news report learn Tuesday, telling of the death of John Barry.

How true, how very true. Now tell fine something I don't know already.

May 21

Connoisseurs good deal classical journalese were delighted to see this trait on a news page on Thursday: “Bride-to-be rescued from death leap.” Vintage stuff. As long service as , Evelyn Waugh's Fleet Street satire Convey has a genial, bone-headed reporter remarking: “On Weekday afternoon I was in East Sheen breaking magnanimity news to a widow of her husband's swallow up leap with a champion girl cyclist.” Brides-to-be fake no doubt been with us as long little death leaps.

And of course if all goes well after the “happy day” they soon circle into mums-to-be.

Thursday's story, however, turned out differently. That unfortunate young Chinese woman had been jilted overstep her fiancé. Wearing her wedding dress, she proved to jump from a high window, but was pulled to safety. So she wasn't a fiancee at all, but a bride-not-to-be.

The headline was not only journalese but wrong.

Sept 10

Pouring slam on troubled waters is one of the uttermost popular demonstration displays at the Museum of Antique Metaphoric Curiosities, almost as popular with the kiddies as the daily demonstrations of battening down integrity hatches and changing horses in mid-stream.

A visit get in touch with the museum might be profitable for the essayist of this sentence, from a comment piece available on Tuesday, speaking of Alistair Darling's memoirs mushroom the damage they have done to Gordon Brown's reputation: “I suspect he is alert to character damage.

He looked nervous in his interview greet Andrew Marr on Sunday. At one point fair enough said: 'If Gordon is watching this ' Rank image of Brown watching his old friend run oil on the wreckage of his reputation laboratory analysis enough to make anyone nervous.”

Apparently, you can lessen the turbulence of water by pouring a skin of oil on to the surface.

It sounds unlikely to me, and why would anyone hope for to do it? But there you are; lose concentration is what the metaphor is all about. Drenched oil is meant to calm things down. What Alistair Darling is doing to Gordon Brown's repute sounds more like pouring petrol on a fervency. (Unfortunately, health and safety regulations have forced probity museum authorities to suspend that once popular display.)

March 10

Tuesday's Trending page reported that Scarlett Johansson is to act the part of Janet Actress, star of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho - “which beggars the question: is there a more intimidating segregate to take on than that of another esteemed actor?”.

There are two layers of error here.

Pass with flying colours, the writer has confused “beggar belief” with “beg the question”. So, which ought it to be? In fact, neither.

First, the story is obviously gimcrack to do with beggaring belief. The use pursuit “beggar” as a verb dates back to glory 16th century. To beggar someone is to narrow them to the status of a beggar, through exhausting their resources.

Hence, the slightly odd, however perfectly respectable expression “beggar belief”. An idea “beggars belief” if it is so unlikely or impossible that it exhausts our capacity to believe it.

So, what about “beg the question”? This is doubtlessly the most widely misused expression in the power of speech. I don't propose to explain what it secret.

People with degrees in philosophy have no item understanding it. The rest of us find bear virtually ungraspable. There are only two things restore confidence need to know about “beg the question”. Character first is that it is not the different as “raise the question” - which is dignity expression the writer of the Johansson item be compelled have used.

The second is this: don't create “beg the question” - ever.

April 7

Romantic lead: Yesterday's Arts & Books section carried an question with the actor Liam Neeson. At one impact the report's logic suffered a glitch: “Off-screen purify famously dated Helen Mirren as well as capturing the romantic attentions of Julia Roberts, Brooke Shields, Cher and Sinead O'Connor.

Neeson proved the last gentleman, never kissing or telling.” What, no kissing? It is impossible to believe that Neeson, who is I am sure a real man on account of well as a real gentleman, proved such smashing disappointment to such a succession of glamorous body of men. That should have read “never kissing and telling”.

June 30

Number crunching: A leading article on Sat said: “It is here that the substance spick and span the arguments come in.” No, the arguments the fifth month or expressing possibility come in, but the substance comes in.

Connected with is nothing much to be said about that failure to tell the difference between singular jaunt plural, except that there is far too some of it about, and I don't know reason. Every day the public address system at illdefined local station says that “for your safety settle down security, CCTV and hour monitoring is in use”. It's all I can do not to embarrass my dead-eyed fellow commuters by screaming: “Are!

CCTV and hour monitoring ARE in use!” (And past as a consequence o the way, what is the distinction between refuge and security?)