In between “Liberation Day” (Donald Trump’s name for the occasion of his announcing a global tariff regime) and “Capitulation Day” (The Independent’s name for the occasion of his rowing back from it), we said: “Trump’s tariffs will result in a major geo-political shift”.
We didn’t need the hyphen. The Independent’s style council advises us to avoid hyphens that separate a prefix from the root word, with some exceptions. A hyphenated prefix can be added to avoid confusion, as in re-sent, which doesn’t mean resent, or to avoid an uncomfortable meeting of letters, such as in re-elect. “Geopolitical” doesn’t run close to either of these hazards.
We got into more trouble with hyphens when attempting to detail the environmental credentials of modern housing. We said “new homes are fitted with the latest insulation and designed to be ultra-fuel efficient.” This suggests the homes will be good at processing “ultra-fuel” – an energy source that, as Roger Thetford attests, our readers aren’t familiar with.
With another hyphen we could turn “ultra” into a prefix for “fuel-efficient”. This would have delivered our intended meaning but used an unwieldy double hyphenation to do so. So we should have just replaced “ultra”.
Roger suggests “extremely”, which would allow us to do away with hyphens altogether.
Bean and gone: A “news in brief” item included Tesco’s explanation for a recent bean shortage that didn’t explain much. We said the beans’ absence from shelves was “partly the result of a supply issue”. A shortage is, by definition, a supply issue, as Dr Alex May points out, so our sentence was tautological.
It would appear to be a case of business jargon making its way into a report but the direct quote from Tesco was “availability issues” – meaning “supply issue” was our own phrase. I don’t find the source phrase or our translation particularly edifying. We hadn’t been given enough information to be more specific than “shortage”, so we looked silly trying to act like we had anything more to pass on to our readers.
No marks for effort: A journalistic tic that has been covered in this column found its way into our reporting once again. Unsurprisingly, I suppose.
In a report on Elon Musk’s enthusiastic backing of the conservative candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, we said: “Musk alone poured in an estimated $25m into the race, which marked the most expensive judicial battle in US history.”
We could simply have said it “was” the most expensive judicial battle in US history. Or Musk’s contribution could have “made it” the most expensive. There was no good reason to use “marked” here.
Frustratingly, we know how to use this word properly and often show it. This week, we reported that Charles and Camilla “marked” their 20th wedding anniversary with a portrait from their trip to Italy. I can’t think of a better verb to use in this case. The problem isn’t with marked but with its confounding use in place of verbs that don’t need replacing.
Going overboard: The caption for one of our pictures of the day on Tuesday claimed we were offering “an aerial view of cargo ships docked along the Singapore Strait”. This was inaccurate. If there was a dock in this photo (see above), it was very well hidden. As Philip Nalpanis notes, the ships are riding at anchor.
