Mea Culpa: It’s about time

Chronology – that is, the matter of when things happened, or are going to happen – is often a nuisance to get right, and that’s just the nature of the beast. Journalists are familiar with the difficulties of wrangling a complex sequence of events into an accurate and readable report, and normally they manage it quite well. There are certain trends, however, that we should definitely attempt to discourage, and one of these is the wrongful use of “throughout”.

In a fascinating article about the benefits of vitamin D, we wrote that “omega 3 fatty acid supplementation did not have any significant effect on telomere length throughout follow-up”.

I’m still not quite sure what a telomere is, but regardless, this doesn’t really work: “throughout” is an expansive term that means “in every part of”, and as such sits awkwardly beside a negative. It’s a bit like saying “I didn’t like all of that programme”: no one can tell if you mean that you only enjoyed some of it, or that you hated the whole thing. It feels like trying to go backwards and forwards at the same time.

We said in another piece, about an actual programme: “It was praised by critics, received 18 Emmy nominations throughout its six-season run, and is commonly held up as an example of television’s golden age.” Again this was unclear, but for a slightly different reason.

The word “throughout” already suggests a profusion of something, in terms of either distribution or frequency, so if we try to use it in conjunction with a specific quantity, we create a conflict. In this case it’s clear enough what we mean, but in a sentence such as “Susan ate four puddings throughout the week”, we don’t know if that means she ate four every day for a week, or four in total. (Unless we know “Susan”, in which case the answer is a given. I digress.)

The point is that the right word to use in each of these examples would have been “during”, which is a much more modest one and carries no notion of extent or frequency, only confirming that the thing(s) we describe took place within a certain period. The use of “throughout” in its place can cause confusion, and it’s time we through it out.

Coming soon: I’m not talking about the imminent death of a national treasure: rather the launch on TV of his new documentary, which is already out in cinemas. It seems that David Attenborough is not just continuing to narrate superlative nature programmes, but is also alive and well – albeit we suggested, unintentionally, that this might not be for long. In an article last week we described the near-centenarian “standing on a deserted beach in Dorset, white hair blowing sideways” as he reflects on “his approaching mortality”.

The usual word is “encroaching”, and there is a subtle difference: to encroach means to intrude, so the term refers to a person’s growing awareness of the fact that they will not be here for ever. To talk about someone’s “approaching” mortality suggests that the end point is already in sight. Let’s hope the great man has a few more years in him yet.

The chips are down: We caused some bafflement in an interview with a Welsh actor this week, when we wrote: “It goes without saying, then, that Rhys does a great Yank accent. So much so that it’s a shock to hear him speak in the rolling consonants and round vowels of his birthplace when, on meeting him, he asks after a packet of crisps.”

It’s a strange term, “ask after”, with its curious preposition that has nothing to do with chronology. I’m not sure about its function in regional dialect, but in normal usage, it means to politely enquire about somebody’s wellbeing, with perhaps just the slightest connotation that the enquirer doesn’t necessarily care how they are (or didn’t really ask). In other words, it’s very English. In any event, no one asks after a packet of crisps in that sense, because crisps don’t really come under the category of things one can reliably say are enjoying life, or a wee bit despondent, or going through an untidy divorce. The word we wanted was “for”.

There was another problem with this sentence, as some (all right, all) of you will have noticed already, which was the participle – in this instance, not so much dangling as firmly affixed to the wrong person. “On meeting him” was replaced with “on arriving for our interview”.

Copy that: Talking of connotations, we used a peculiar word later on in the same piece when we quoted our subject describing an encounter with Anthony Hopkins: “‘I remember he invited me into his trailer, and he gave me three rules to follow: be on time; know your lines; be bold, and greater gods will come to your aid,’ Rhys says now in a gruff intimation of his hero.” To intimate means to hint or suggest, so I don’t think we can have meant that. We changed it to “imitation” as that seemed the most obvious solution.

I know why the beige curd sings: We published a recipe for “grilled halloumi and black honey” in which we described using charred aubergine skins to “impart a rich, unique and smokey flavour”. I’m not entirely sure why we specify that the word “smoky” should be spelt without the “e” except when we are writing about the famous singer Smokey Robinson (real name William, who has been in the news himself this month, though the less said the better). But we are not alone: most publications seem to feel it makes sense to spell it differently depending on the context, and we second that emotion.

Until next time.