Pedants’ Revolt

This month’s irritants

BBC Radio 4 News Review: ‘The Pope is trending globally’. Good Lord!

ROY WALLIS

There is a disease afflicting radio interviewees, usually minor academics: whatever the question, these petty pundits always begin their reply with the word ‘so’. The conjunction ‘so’, as the OED tells us, when placed at the beginning of a sentence, means ‘accordingly, consequently, etc’ and refers back to an earlier proposition so it can never correctly introduce the answer to a question. I suspect the habit stems from American academics of German or Austrian origin; they would doubtless use ‘so’ to translate the German ‘ Also’, which is the equivalent of ‘Well...’, prefacing the reply to a question.

ANGUS MCGEOCH

My gripe is the use of the meaningless phrases ‘by and large’ and ‘all in all’ by TV reporters. One of the first things I learned from my English master at Bradford Grammar School was not to use these words and I never have. While I’m at it, why must news readers get up and walk around halfway through the news programme? Has someone devised a new fitness regime for them?

HUGH STRINGER

I am tired of the word ‘community’. Recently I read that a man had to go to a hospital some distance away because he could not get the treatment he needed ‘in his local community’. Why not just ‘locally’?

PETER WHEADON

I am condemned to walk past our paper shop twice a day unable to avoid the large permanent sign listing the goods on sale, two of which are STATIONARY and CONFECTIONARY.

KEITH ELLEL

Email your grammatical errors, clichés, moballs and other bugbears to editorial@ theoldie.co.uk with ‘Pedant’ in the subject line, or send by post to Oldie Pedants, Newman St, London W1T