Mea Culpa: Fighting fire with fire

In a report on Ukraine’s massive drone attack on Moscow, we got confused by the kit. A line offered context by explaining the Russian strategy of attacking with drones in swarms to overwhelm Ukrainian defences. The Russians, we said, often send dummy drones that pose no threat but can lead Ukraine to waste “a multimillion-dollar anti-missile missile”.

Air defence often involves firing missiles at missiles (think Israel’s Iron Dome). Britain recently contributed to Ukraine’s missile defence capacity with the newly developed Gravehawk air defence system – but the projectiles it loads can also be fired at drones and other aerial threats. We had named them for only one of their potential targets. We weren’t wrong, in so much as we hadn’t said anything false, but we failed to acknowledge the versatility of the arms. They are usually called surface-to-air missiles.

Elsewhere, in a piece warning against a ceasefire that strengthens Russia’s grip over the four Ukrainian regions it has claimed, we said that “it will become increasingly impossible for Ukraine to ever be able to negotiate their return to Ukrainian control.” Something can’t be more impossible than impossible. It’s simply impossible.

Lowe bar: We said Rupert Lowe “was suspended from Reform UK late last week over bullying allegations, but he refutes the accusations and counterclaims that he has been smeared because Mr Farage saw him as a threat to his authority”.

As has been said before in this column, “refute” is usually understood to mean “disprove”. The police are investigating the claims, so Lowe has a chance to refute them. Thanks to Roger Thetford for flagging our mistake. He suggests we had mixed up “rebut” and “refute” and that “denies” might have been more suited.

In a jiffy: One of our headlines this week read: “Europe must deliver weapons to Kyiv at pace to fill US gap”. Richard Thomas noted our use of “at pace”, an unhelpful phrase that introduces pace as a factor but fails to explain further. Readers can assume that Europe isn’t expected to move slowly to fill the weapons gap left by America’s lapsed support. But we are in the business of telling people things rather than inviting them to guess.

“Urgently” would have worked instead.

Reform needed: In an article on the prime minister’s plan to abolish NHS England, we said: “Announcing the reform, which marks the death knell for the Tory reforms to the NHS more than a decade ago, Sir Keir said...”

There’s plenty wrong with this sentence. Death knells are sounded, for a start. “Marks” is an annoying bit of journalese that usually takes the place of the fine word “is”. Here, of course, it takes the place of “sounds”.

What follows is confusing. The Tory reforms to the NHS could be from a decade ago or more than a decade old. As it stands this part of the sentence makes no sense.

Sat back: In an article about a protester who scaled the Elizabeth Tower, home of Big Ben, we referred to “the ledge he was sat on”.

Mike McMorran points out that “sat” in place of “sitting” is an apparent Americanism that has taken hold in the last few years, in the same vein as “lay” instead of “lie”.

The creep of an Americanism is always distressing for anyone sensitive to language. It’s especially painful when the replacement word disregards the meaning of the original. As Mike says, this sentence poses the question: Who put him there?

Invisible tugs: We teased readers with the caption: “The Stena Immaculate remains at anchor surrounded by safety tugboats.”

Tugboats indeed surrounded the ruptured oil tanker but the photo accompanying this caption didn’t show them. Thanks to John Harrison for spotting what was missing.