Tuesday, 23 February 2010

Picky pants

Perhaps I was in a picky mood this morning - moi? Anyway, I noticed a couple of tricksy little bits of English.

This headline and standfirst in the Guardian:
BA boss needs to wear a velvet glove
Striking British Airways cabin crew are at fault but Willie Walsh needs to keep in mind they are key to the airline's success
I struggled to read the standfirst, because (prompted, presumably, by the velvet glove in the headline) I read 'striking' to mean 'attractive', or 'bold-looking'. Of course, it means 'on strike'. Duh. Maybe I just have a latent desire for striking velvet gloves... (by which I mean attractive velvet gloves rather than velvet gloves that refuse to perform their glove-like duties until I satisfy their pay demands, or a desire to commit violence towards velvet gloves). Still, it's worth bearing in mind that the word acts as an adjective as well as a verb.

And this sentence, over at The Times:
Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, insisted that nobody at No 10 would endure bullying as he defended the Prime Minister from allegations over his behaviour towards staff.
My issue here is with the word 'as'. It is being used to describe two things that are happening at the same time, but the problem is that there are three things going on here - not two:
  1. Lord Mandelson insisting
  2. People not enduring bullying
  3. Lord Mandelson defending the Prime Minister
    As a result, it reads somewhat clumsily. Nobody will be bullied during Lord Mandelson's defence of the Prime Minister? I should hope not.

I'd also question whether 'endure' is the correct choice of word - defined by the OED as: 'suffer [something painful or difficult] with patience'. Not quite what he meant, I assume, and the word 'suffer' or 'experience' would probably be more apt.

In fact, no more Mr Nice Guy. I hate this sentence! "Nobody would endure bullying"? Well have they in the past, then? Or not? They did but no longer? What are you telling me, Mr Mandelson? I don't understand!

Closer to home, we've got the usual compliment/complement and comprise/include problems... I feel a post coming on.

6 comments:

  1. That Times one scans a few different ways for me too. I read the "as" as "because" to mean that the act of Mandelson's defending the PM had prevented the bullying.

    I noticed this one in the DM the other day:

    "Back in the swinging Sixties, being mounted on a beige suedette sofa in a posh hotel by one of The Likely Lads was probably many women's dream."

    Although, in actual fact, the reporter /was/ mounted by the actor in a japesome manner.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1252389/Whatever-happened-likely-lad.html

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  2. I must confess that when reading the 'striking British Airways cabin crew' line I had a picture of a gentlemanly fight involving cabin crew and velvet gloves pass through my head.

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  3. Is there a phrase or expression alluding to velvet gloves? Rather obscure...

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  4. "Picky" sometimes makes all the difference.

    They enjoyed extra marital sex. They enjoyed extra-marital sex.

    That's the dog's bollocks. That's dogs' bollocks.

    My personal favourite: vice chancellor as opposed to vice-chancellor. Has anyone got a vacancy for a chancellor of vice? Imagine the edicts you could issue! "As undergraduates you must 'know' each other by the end of the freshers' week."

    Keep up the good work. Love the blogs. Very funny. Keep it up!

    PS Just remind me . . . how much influence has Mandelson got in the government and who voted for him anyway?

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  5. Haha, loving the 'vice' potential!

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  6. Until I got to 'are', I too thought the BA article referred to hitting the cabin crew, probably because of the iron fist/velvet glove inference in the headline.
    You are right that 'as' does not fit at all in the Mandelson excerpt and endure also causes problems. I thought it either meant 'tolerate' (ie nobody would be wimp enough to put up with it) or on the other hand 'have to tolerate' (ie some strong person like Mandy would step in and stop it) Quite different interpretations....

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Why did I turn out such a pedant? Well you'd have to ask my TV-banning, lentil-baking, library-enforcing, doctor-eschewing, beanbag-sitting, grammar-correcting, homeopathic, 2nd dan black belt, all-round no-nonsense mother. 'Cos me, I got no idea.