Mark my words: a lonely battle

In this week's edition of Mark my Words, as reproduced from The National on Saturday, I look at one of the ugliest sights in modern journalism - and no, I am not talking about Nigella Lawson ...

Nigella Lawson, the celebrity chef whose suggestive body language attracts as much attention as her recipes, is not the only high-flying offspring of the former British cabinet minister Lord Lawson.

Her brother Dominic was for 10 years the editor of The Sunday Telegraph, London. Anyone who regards me as a pedant should consider the role he found for my former colleague Chris Boffey.

Boffey, as well as being excellent company, is a versatile journalist who has worked for one of Britain’s trashiest tabloid newspapers and also four of its most respected broadsheets.

One of his duties as Lawson’s news editor was to comb all page proofs before the presses began to roll each Saturday. Whenever he spotted a particular sort of tabloid construction, he was required to eliminate it.

Thus, a sentence beginning “Journalist Chris Boffey ...” or “Celebrity chef Nigella Lawson ...” would be changed to “Chris Boffey, the journalist, ...” and Nigella Lawson, the celebrity chef, ...”, although he might sometimes have settled for the simple addition of a definite article, as in “the journalist Chris Boffey...”.

I share Lawson’s distaste for the practice of placing a noun or adjective, or both, in front of a name without the definite or indefinite article. The point is fully covered in The National’s style guide, which requires that staff should not write “teacher Peter Sixsmith ...” or “rock star Bono ...”, but “Peter Sixsmith, a teacher, ...” or “the rock star Bono ...”. In other words, the description should appear before the name only if it is a formal title (President Barack Obama, for example) or when preceded by a, an or the.

Most readers of English language newspapers will have come across the shorthand device that Lawson and I find so annoying.

The reason it irritates is that it not only reflects lazy use of English, but is unreal. No one actually speaks like that. If you doubt my word, try to remember the last time you heard someone talk about “Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto” or “England striker Wayne Rooney”. If such phrases sound foolish when spoken out loud, there is no greater justification for writing them.

Much as I try, I cannot prevent occasional incursions at The National. Most old habits die hard, and this one comes naturally to people who have previously worked for news agencies or tabloids. One colleague promised faithfully to observe our style rule, only to repeat the offence in his next article. “I spent too long at Reuters,” he explained, blaming the urgent style adopted by the international news agency. “Still trying to get it out of my system.”

Inevitably, the usage has spread from journalism to other forms of written English.
Lynne Truss uses at least one such construction in her paean to pedantry, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Advertisers and publicists would be lost without it.

Resisting it has become a lonely battle. But I hope I am being unduly pessimistic in fearing that most people do not notice, or do not care.
Perhaps the teachers of English who tell me they read this column, and others in positions of influence, will profess themselves equally opposed to linguistic vulgarisms.

But I look in vain for assistance from my favourite British newspaper, The Observer. Good as it is, The Observer would be a lot better if its news pages were not littered with such phrases as “documentary polemicist Michael Moore”, “property developer Sir Timothy Lipton” and even “performer Denise van Outen”.

Where is Chris Boffey when you need him? Alas, the gamekeeper has taken up poaching. He is now head of news at The Observer.

Comments

[Bill Taylor]

What's even worse (and I say this as a one-time tabloid hack who was guilty as charged) is when someone strings together several of these abominations, as in:
Peripatetic journalist, prizegiving philanthropist, pedant and aging skinhead Colin Randall.
In Gordon M. Williams' newspaper novel, The Upper Pleasure Garden, journalist hero Andrew Menzies (whoops) writed a story about a polio victim trying to live a normal life. An editor asks him why he hasn't explained how the woman walks.
His reply: "You mean I should have written 'two-legged Joan Dawbarn?' "

[GunnersideGill]

What gets right up my nose is when BBC news readers begin a sentence, "Government spokesman said today...." and omit the article.

They do it all the time and it drives me crazy!

[Keith]

We just have to keep fighting the good fight. But it is hard. Today I saw a headline that read as follows: "Cellar incest father horror trial starts". There are people out there who think this is good; there are people out there who are being taught to do things this way. I am not quite sure where to begin.

[Bill Taylor]

Headlines demand different criteria; elements that would be unacceptable in the body of a story. All the same, this one's a beaut. I suppose without the inclusion of "horror," readers might think it was quite a benign case and not bother reading on. The same goes, of course, for "brutal" murder. Who cares about a nice, gentle one?

[Ginger-haired National reporter Roland Hughes]

This beauty from the BBC a few months ago: "Fake penis drugs test pair guilty".