I then realised that although what I’d written in each review was to the point, parts of each of them made them a little too wordy overall and flabby, and we can’t have that, eh? Flabby book reviews?
Can’t have that, can we! Lord, where might it end? America electing a totally corrupt, cretinous paedophile as its president who then goes on to fuck the world economically by starting a pointless war and reducing American’s more or less respected world reputation to that of a male, balding porn star? Good Lord know!
So I hived those parts to become the ‘complementary posts’ off – shades of British industry of 50 years ago when ‘hiving off’ part of one company was believed to cure many ills (though it never did).
Here is a ‘complementary post’ to my most recent review, and, yes, I do keep repeating that word merely to prove that I do know that distinction between complementary and complimentary. It’s a crucial distinction – in that they don’t mean the same thing – I learned like much else about the English language, spelling, grammar and word by being repeatedly bollocked on various subs’ benches (‘sub-editors’ desks) until I did not get it wrong again.
One distinction I’ve never mastered, though is that between discreet and discrete, and yes there is one, though look elsewhere for an explanation ’cos . . .
For example, until the day I die, I shall never misspell necessary – one c and two s – for the same reason: incessant bollockings eventually becoming more of a pain than getting it right. It didn’t help, however, that often there is no definitive spelling: newspapers, especially the nationals, have a ‘style book’, which must be followed.
They are not a guide to ‘correct’ spelling and grammar and are not intended as such, just a simple ‘this is how we do it, guys and gals, and if you don’t do it the way we like it and don’t learn soon, consider slinging your hook and finding a berth elsewhere’.
So the Daily Mail for some odd reason never used or uses double quote marks as in “double quotes” but always just ‘single quotes’, except when a quote comes within a quote. Thus:
In the main address, the guest speaker reminded the meeting:
So I hived those parts to become the ‘complementary posts’ off – shades of British industry of 50 years ago when ‘hiving off’ part of one company was believed to cure many ills (though it never did).
Here is a ‘complementary post’ to my most recent review, and, yes, I do keep repeating that word merely to prove that I do know that distinction between complementary and complimentary. It’s a crucial distinction – in that they don’t mean the same thing – I learned like much else about the English language, spelling, grammar and word by being repeatedly bollocked on various subs’ benches (‘sub-editors’ desks) until I did not get it wrong again.
One distinction I’ve never mastered, though is that between discreet and discrete, and yes there is one, though look elsewhere for an explanation ’cos . . .
For example, until the day I die, I shall never misspell necessary – one c and two s – for the same reason: incessant bollockings eventually becoming more of a pain than getting it right. It didn’t help, however, that often there is no definitive spelling: newspapers, especially the nationals, have a ‘style book’, which must be followed.
They are not a guide to ‘correct’ spelling and grammar and are not intended as such, just a simple ‘this is how we do it, guys and gals, and if you don’t do it the way we like it and don’t learn soon, consider slinging your hook and finding a berth elsewhere’.
So the Daily Mail for some odd reason never used or uses double quote marks as in “double quotes” but always just ‘single quotes’, except when a quote comes within a quote. Thus:
In the main address, the guest speaker reminded the meeting:
‘We should always remember that there is no “typical human kind” and never was. So we should be prepared for all kinds of unexpected and often shocking, variation in human behaviour which might well surprise us. Perhaps to highlight those variations and the behaviour to which they might leads, Hamlet put it “What a piece of work is man!” ’.Note the double quote marks used, consisting of one set of single quotes encompassing what the ‘guest speaker’ said, and two sets of double quotes when he / she quotes.
But before I disappear entirely up my own backside, let me add the pertinent bit: to this day when I write I always only use single quote marks, except of course, if there is a quote in a quote like above. And, for no good reason at all except habit I follow Mail ‘style’ in other respects, too.
The Mail insisted and that all numbers from one to nine are spelled out, but from 10 however they are represented in digits. Why? The fuck only knows, but that is what I now do.
Another oddity of style I have adopted, though this is not exactly Mail style but the practice of a friend and from subs’ desk boss of mine (Peter B.) is my use of commas. Again, some might insist there are ‘rules’ but sadly no one can quite agree on what they might be.
For some, I might seem to use commas excessively, but I take the very simple and reasonable view that punctuation exists purely for a practical purpose: to aid the reader – a comma will slow down the reader and subtly – you hope, of course – dictate how she or he reads a sentence / paragraph and make a sentence or paragraph clearer.
The hoary example I always use are these two sentences:
For some, I might seem to use commas excessively, but I take the very simple and reasonable view that punctuation exists purely for a practical purpose: to aid the reader – a comma will slow down the reader and subtly – you hope, of course – dictate how she or he reads a sentence / paragraph and make a sentence or paragraph clearer.
The hoary example I always use are these two sentences:
‘The doctors who live in the town make a better living’
and
‘The doctors, who live in the town, make a better living’.
Those two sentences, identical but for two commas have two distinct meanings. The first sentence informs us – its main point – that those doctors who live in the town make more money – by implication – than those doctors who don’t live in the town.
The second sentence with its two commas informs us of two things:
1) all the doctors live in the town
2) those doctors make more money than folk who are not doctors
I’m sure I’m not the only one who reads a sentence or paragraph in a book, online or in a newspaper (remember them?) but doesn’t quite ‘get it’ – what’s this dude trying to say, it’s not clear?
So you read it again, possibly twice or even three times more until the penny drops. A comma inserted at one point will have slightly slowed you down in our reading and made the sentence very clear from the off
You might think me a boring old fart for writing all this and that I should long ago have been put out to pasture. Who knows? Nevertheless punctuation, as in commas and semi-colons – which perform more or less the same task as commas, but create a longer pause – help to clarify what we write. And depending upon what you are writing, clarity is the key to communication.
You might, of course, be writing something where ‘mood’ or ‘sentiment’ or ‘action’ are more important than ‘clarity’, and in that case where you stick your commas will not be as crucial. Up to you.
But one last point: I am one of those guys, though certainly not ‘of the right’ (which I do hope you have finally realised of you have read my blog before) who believes ‘rules’ are intended to assist us and socially keep discord, disruption, disagreement to a minimum and to promote harmony. They should be observed for those reasons, not as some believe because ‘they are the rules’.
To put it succinctly, rules began life as ‘descriptive’ are not necessarily ‘prescriptive’. Yes, they do evolved from the once state to the other but only by our consent. But I’ll leave it there as it is a topic which deserves more space and I am already way, way of track on what this blog post was intended to be
You might think me a boring old fart for writing all this and that I should long ago have been put out to pasture. Who knows? Nevertheless punctuation, as in commas and semi-colons – which perform more or less the same task as commas, but create a longer pause – help to clarify what we write. And depending upon what you are writing, clarity is the key to communication.
You might, of course, be writing something where ‘mood’ or ‘sentiment’ or ‘action’ are more important than ‘clarity’, and in that case where you stick your commas will not be as crucial. Up to you.
But one last point: I am one of those guys, though certainly not ‘of the right’ (which I do hope you have finally realised of you have read my blog before) who believes ‘rules’ are intended to assist us and socially keep discord, disruption, disagreement to a minimum and to promote harmony. They should be observed for those reasons, not as some believe because ‘they are the rules’.
To put it succinctly, rules began life as ‘descriptive’ are not necessarily ‘prescriptive’. Yes, they do evolved from the once state to the other but only by our consent. But I’ll leave it there as it is a topic which deserves more space and I am already way, way of track on what this blog post was intended to be
Which is . . .
This might not be the best example but in my early days of working casual subbing shifts on the nationals, I was often on the features subs’ desk of the right-wing Daily Express and, for example, if subbing the letters’ page
 |
| Rogues gallery (from left): David English, Paul Dacre and Kelvin Mackenzie |
delighted in coming up with the most rabid, ra-ra British Empire, cypto-fascist and all things white headlines I might get away with. And I was good at it.
I had and still have what can only be described as a love-hate relationship with newspapers: terminally appalled by their cynicism, hypocrisy, dishonesty, double-dealing, inconsistency and callousness – and please include the Guardian and New York Times as I don’t and never shall believe in saints – but am at the same time in love with, full of admiration for, delighted by, envious of and tickled pink by their utterly outrageous behaviour.
. . .
This post began life as a short catalogue of anecdotes about oddities I’ve come across, though not necessarily personally in my 28 years serving in the ranks of Her Majesty’s Press (and as Brenda was still alive after I retired I’ll stick with Her Majesty’s Press).
My first concerns David English who was one of those bods – and I was not – you hear about who had wanted to be ‘a newspaperman’ from a very young age. He started at 16 and made remarkable progress,
In his mid-twenties he edited his first national paper, the Daily Sketch, and moved into the Daily Mail editor’s chair after the Mail merged with – as in took over and killed off – the Daily Sketch in 1971. He was still editor when I began working shifts on the Mail in 1990, but unlike his successor, English was not ‘hands-on’.
That successor, Paul Dacre, coincidentally exactly one year and one week older than me (and another Scorpio), was on the floor every evening, keeping an eye on pages as they went thorough the production and would certainly change headline he didn’t like it and often redesigned a page on the hoof (with a layout designer taking care of the details his changes). English? In the two years of his editorship I was shifting, I did not see him on the floor once and only say him about three times.
Another of English’s quirks, which might give an insight into his character, was that regularly pitted his senior editors against each other, giving both the same task to undertake and, crucially, making sure both new the other was in the game. This, English is reputed to have believed, kept them both on their toes. Well, perhaps it did, but it did not create a happy or pleasant working atmosphere.
My favourite David English story was told me by a Mail colleague and sadly – his decision – former friend Willie B, who for for many years held down to two full-time jobs, one on the Mail and the other on the Mail’s sister paper the Evening Standard.
One morning he turned up for work at the Mail’s office, then still in Carmelite Houe in Caremelit Street, two blocks south of Fleet Street, and found a long, long queue of readers at the Mail’s main entrance snaking down the street and round the corner. They – all of them! – had won a toaster as a top prize in the Mail’s most recent competition.
There has had obviously been a cock-up on a grand scale: instead of the usual ten or so winners, there were thousands through Britain, all of whom were know owed a ‘Mail toaster’ and were legally due to get one. But a crisis is always an opportunity and canny David English smelled an opportunity.
His paper was in need of several thousand toasters to hand out to winners and that same day (presumably through his staff and lawyers) he tracked down a factory in South Wales that made toasters, bought it – with his own money – then did a deal with the Daily Mail for his factory to supply the prizewinners each with toaster. So not only could the Mail honour its prizewinners, but English made a tidy sum for himself.
Here are two stories bout Paul Dacre, not yet a knight, but I don’t doubt sooner or later a peerage will come his way. English became ‘Sir David’ in 1982 and was due to take the ermine just three days before he died at an early age of a massive stroke.
Dacre lived and breathed: because I worked double shifts and turned up for work before 10am and was there until 10/11pm, I can vouch the Dacre turned up around 10.30am and did not leave until the first edition was ‘off-stone’. In the days of ‘hot metal’ it was literally ‘off the stone’ but now with new digital technology most people would better understand it as ‘off to the presses’.
The following two anecdotes have been verified by me by two execs (Roger W. and Jackie A.) who were present on each occasion:
In 1995, the Daily Mail’s Femail section carried a feature on one Ffyona Campbell who had apparently walked around the world between 1983 and 1995. As it later turned out she had cheated in some ways and hadn’t quite ‘walked around the world’ but that is here irrelevant.
The day after the Femail feature appeared, at the first morning conference, Dacre ruthlessly tore into the Femail editor and described the piece as the ‘worst piece of journalism [he] had ever read’. The Femail editor was baffled.
‘But why, Paul, why, I thought it was an excellent read!’
‘Well,’ says Dacre, ‘it commits one of the worst journalistic sins possible!’
‘What’s that, Paul?’ asked the very bemused Femail editor.
‘Well, in the stand-first [a brief par or two introducing a feature] it says that Campbell “went around the world on Shanks pony”. Yet you read on and there is not a single further mention of that fucking horse!’
The jaw of every exec in Dacre’s office hit the floor.
‘But Shanks’ pony, Paul!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s an expression that means to ‘walk, go by foot.’
‘Well,’ says Dacre, thereby drawing a line under the matter, ‘I’ve never heard it, ever!’
Another Dacre story which still makes me laugh is at another conference, this time only involving two or three Femail execs. Dacre had come across a reference in a Femail piece of a ‘toilet duck’:
‘What’s this, a toilet duck?’ he demanded.
‘Well, a toilet duck, Paul,’ Jackie A. told him.
‘What do you mean! What’s a toilet duck!’
‘Well, you know, a toilet duck.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, no one keeps a duck in their toilet!’
No, indeed they don’t, but many use a toilet duck.
That successor, Paul Dacre, coincidentally exactly one year and one week older than me (and another Scorpio), was on the floor every evening, keeping an eye on pages as they went thorough the production and would certainly change headline he didn’t like it and often redesigned a page on the hoof (with a layout designer taking care of the details his changes). English? In the two years of his editorship I was shifting, I did not see him on the floor once and only say him about three times.
Another of English’s quirks, which might give an insight into his character, was that regularly pitted his senior editors against each other, giving both the same task to undertake and, crucially, making sure both new the other was in the game. This, English is reputed to have believed, kept them both on their toes. Well, perhaps it did, but it did not create a happy or pleasant working atmosphere.
My favourite David English story was told me by a Mail colleague and sadly – his decision – former friend Willie B, who for for many years held down to two full-time jobs, one on the Mail and the other on the Mail’s sister paper the Evening Standard.
One morning he turned up for work at the Mail’s office, then still in Carmelite Houe in Caremelit Street, two blocks south of Fleet Street, and found a long, long queue of readers at the Mail’s main entrance snaking down the street and round the corner. They – all of them! – had won a toaster as a top prize in the Mail’s most recent competition.
There has had obviously been a cock-up on a grand scale: instead of the usual ten or so winners, there were thousands through Britain, all of whom were know owed a ‘Mail toaster’ and were legally due to get one. But a crisis is always an opportunity and canny David English smelled an opportunity.
His paper was in need of several thousand toasters to hand out to winners and that same day (presumably through his staff and lawyers) he tracked down a factory in South Wales that made toasters, bought it – with his own money – then did a deal with the Daily Mail for his factory to supply the prizewinners each with toaster. So not only could the Mail honour its prizewinners, but English made a tidy sum for himself.
Here are two stories bout Paul Dacre, not yet a knight, but I don’t doubt sooner or later a peerage will come his way. English became ‘Sir David’ in 1982 and was due to take the ermine just three days before he died at an early age of a massive stroke.
Dacre lived and breathed: because I worked double shifts and turned up for work before 10am and was there until 10/11pm, I can vouch the Dacre turned up around 10.30am and did not leave until the first edition was ‘off-stone’. In the days of ‘hot metal’ it was literally ‘off the stone’ but now with new digital technology most people would better understand it as ‘off to the presses’.
The following two anecdotes have been verified by me by two execs (Roger W. and Jackie A.) who were present on each occasion:
In 1995, the Daily Mail’s Femail section carried a feature on one Ffyona Campbell who had apparently walked around the world between 1983 and 1995. As it later turned out she had cheated in some ways and hadn’t quite ‘walked around the world’ but that is here irrelevant.
The day after the Femail feature appeared, at the first morning conference, Dacre ruthlessly tore into the Femail editor and described the piece as the ‘worst piece of journalism [he] had ever read’. The Femail editor was baffled.
‘But why, Paul, why, I thought it was an excellent read!’
‘Well,’ says Dacre, ‘it commits one of the worst journalistic sins possible!’
‘What’s that, Paul?’ asked the very bemused Femail editor.
‘Well, in the stand-first [a brief par or two introducing a feature] it says that Campbell “went around the world on Shanks pony”. Yet you read on and there is not a single further mention of that fucking horse!’
The jaw of every exec in Dacre’s office hit the floor.
‘But Shanks’ pony, Paul!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s an expression that means to ‘walk, go by foot.’
‘Well,’ says Dacre, thereby drawing a line under the matter, ‘I’ve never heard it, ever!’
Another Dacre story which still makes me laugh is at another conference, this time only involving two or three Femail execs. Dacre had come across a reference in a Femail piece of a ‘toilet duck’:
‘What’s this, a toilet duck?’ he demanded.
‘Well, a toilet duck, Paul,’ Jackie A. told him.
‘What do you mean! What’s a toilet duck!’
‘Well, you know, a toilet duck.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, no one keeps a duck in their toilet!’
No, indeed they don’t, but many use a toilet duck.
The fact was that for man who edited in time the world’s most successful ‘middle-brow’ mid-market aspirational national newspaper, and seemed instinctively to know what his readers felt and believed, Dacre never met any of them.
Commuting during the week from his Knightsbridge mews home, chauffeur driven to Northcliffe House in Kensington, always entering and exiting using the Young Street back entrance, spending all dayon the third floow though now doubt taking the lift to the sixth floor where ‘Jonathan’ Lord Rothermere worked and where the board met, then being driven back to Knightsbridge at about 9pm, there was really no chance to meet them.
And if he did, Dacre, a tall and quite shy man (I who I like and liked though he would not known me from Adam) would not have a clue what to say to them. I am a million miles away from the politics and values of the Daily Mail, but I enjoyed every minute of my 28 years working there (except now and again when I was waiting for another bollocking from the chief sub) and can honestly say it was then the most professionally produced and – in industry terms – the best national newspaper in Britain, if not the world or, at least, sharing that distinction with the Sun. Care to disagree? Well, fuck off!
This is getting too long and I’ve decided not to split it in two, so just two last anecdotes, this time concerning one Kelvin Calder MacKenzie (I looked up the middle name), another legend in his own lunchtime and in his way something of a tabloid genius.
I did not work on the Sun half as much as the Mail and only in my first six years in ‘Fleet Street’ (so to speak – but then there were no nationals at all on Fleet Street). But I did work on the feature subs desk and later on the news subs’ Irish edition.
Mackenzie, like his fictional counterpart Jack Strap in The Silly Season, was another very, very hand-on editor. One day he happened to be want to talk to the Sun news desk but the guy he wanted to speak to was on the phone to someone. Kelvin took that phone out of his hand, found himself listening to a whingeing reader for a few minutes, then to cut the call short told the reader:
‘Right, you’re banned from reading the Sun!’ and hung up.
Ten minutes later a news editor knocked on his door and informed him a woman had called in saying her husband had just been banned from reading the Sun, and she wanted to know whether that meant she was also banned as she liked doing the bingo.
Then there’s the time Kelvin was off-for a day or two or a week or whatever and the paper was being edited by his deputies. He came back to find the Sun had launched a campaign agains some high-up City bigwig.
‘Why are we doing this, what’s he done,’ he asked.
‘He’s a cunt, Kelvin!’ he was told.
‘Right,’ says Kelvin, ‘let’s get him!’
Commuting during the week from his Knightsbridge mews home, chauffeur driven to Northcliffe House in Kensington, always entering and exiting using the Young Street back entrance, spending all dayon the third floow though now doubt taking the lift to the sixth floor where ‘Jonathan’ Lord Rothermere worked and where the board met, then being driven back to Knightsbridge at about 9pm, there was really no chance to meet them.
And if he did, Dacre, a tall and quite shy man (I who I like and liked though he would not known me from Adam) would not have a clue what to say to them. I am a million miles away from the politics and values of the Daily Mail, but I enjoyed every minute of my 28 years working there (except now and again when I was waiting for another bollocking from the chief sub) and can honestly say it was then the most professionally produced and – in industry terms – the best national newspaper in Britain, if not the world or, at least, sharing that distinction with the Sun. Care to disagree? Well, fuck off!
This is getting too long and I’ve decided not to split it in two, so just two last anecdotes, this time concerning one Kelvin Calder MacKenzie (I looked up the middle name), another legend in his own lunchtime and in his way something of a tabloid genius.
I did not work on the Sun half as much as the Mail and only in my first six years in ‘Fleet Street’ (so to speak – but then there were no nationals at all on Fleet Street). But I did work on the feature subs desk and later on the news subs’ Irish edition.
Mackenzie, like his fictional counterpart Jack Strap in The Silly Season, was another very, very hand-on editor. One day he happened to be want to talk to the Sun news desk but the guy he wanted to speak to was on the phone to someone. Kelvin took that phone out of his hand, found himself listening to a whingeing reader for a few minutes, then to cut the call short told the reader:
‘Right, you’re banned from reading the Sun!’ and hung up.
Ten minutes later a news editor knocked on his door and informed him a woman had called in saying her husband had just been banned from reading the Sun, and she wanted to know whether that meant she was also banned as she liked doing the bingo.
Then there’s the time Kelvin was off-for a day or two or a week or whatever and the paper was being edited by his deputies. He came back to find the Sun had launched a campaign agains some high-up City bigwig.
‘Why are we doing this, what’s he done,’ he asked.
‘He’s a cunt, Kelvin!’ he was told.
‘Right,’ says Kelvin, ‘let’s get him!’
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