Words and The Week

I wouldn’t willingly give up reading The Week: it enables me to update regularly my rather flimsy view of the world and what is going on it. What is more, it is a useful source of solecisms, much quoted on this blog. But since its paragraphs and sentences are necessarily condensed from articles printed in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, it is hard to be sure which of these solecisms derive from the original writing, and which may arise from the necessary editorial condensation. So, while it is fair to point out and to complain about some of them, it is not always clear at whose door to lay the blame.

The dreaded trove seem to appear rather frequently on this site. How about this for
extreme and unforgivable trovery ? “By setting clever computer algorithms loose on the vast trove of data, you can indentify all sorts of patterns.” This is The Week reporting an article that appeared in The New York Times: the trouble is that bad English, whether originating in Britain or the US or elsewhere, may become ‘standard’ by its very use in print. Ignorant journalists (or incompetent editors), whether working abroad or in our own country, are undoubtedly responsible for much of the corruption of our language.

Words and the Week