“Universal errors are correct” — Arabic proverb
Some of you, when you write to me to complain of a factual inaccuracy or grammatical lapse, add a note lamenting a general decline in standards perceived in many years of reading the paper, beginning in its days as the Manchester Guardian. Occasionally you demand that the offender be taken out and shot.
It is clearly true, to me anyway, that there are more mistakes of one kind or another in the paper of today than in the paper of 20, 30, 50 years ago. The vast acres of the modern paper provide a much greater opportunity for them, and as you may see for yourselves in the daily corrections and clarifications column, we have not hesitated to seize it.
To point out that the golden age of unblemished prose and unimpeachable fact is mythical is not to be cruel or complacent. It is to be accurate. Some of you, triumphantly and accusatorially, invoke the memory of CP Scott, the great editor of the Manchester Guardian whose stern, bewhiskered face gazes over the morning meetings of the present editor. Your point is that the things of which you complain would not have happened in Scott’s day.
They did, alas, and Scott was involved in the same frustrating struggle, on a scale in his case that held out a tantalisingly closer prospect of success. WP Crozier, who was editor from 1932 to 1944, in a chapter he contributed to a biography – CP Scott of the Manchester Guardian by JL Hammond, 1934 – described Scott’s way with error and correction.
“He desired to bring the niceties of correct usage to the general notice, but not to do anything which might pillory an individual. ‘Could one suggest,’ he asked, ‘any easy method by which correction of the little errors could be made generally available without offence?’” So, no taking out and shooting. Crozier, a little wearily perhaps, noted that a method was suggested to Scott and accepted by him in principle but never applied in practice. The path of error is littered with unapplied principles.
Crozier says Scott’s preferred method of censure was “to send little notes, pinning the cutting at the top of a scrap of paper”. Today we wash our dirty linen in public, but in the great majority of cases still allow the journalist the saving grace of anonymity.
But how did CP Scott himself respond to correction. Not, apparently, with great enthusiasm. Crozier writes: “Unless plain error was discovered, it was well to resist suggestions that ‘CP’s’ words should be improved. It is known that Homer nodded, but not what Homer said when he was told about it.” However, he adds, “For reasonable corrections ["reasonable", presumably, by his own definition] ‘CP’ sent down a note of thanks. ‘I’m glad you did,’ he would say, ‘very stupid of me!’”
Scott was particularly attentive to the paper’s use of English. “The man who passed ‘seaward journey to the great metropolis,’ and when the copy came back to him, found written in firm blue pencil ‘voyage to London’ knew what sort of English ‘CP’ liked.”
Scott disapproved of foreign words (“Why do they say ‘portfolio’ when they mean an English ‘ministry’?”); Americanisms (“showdown” for example); puns (“Tragedy in reel life”); and any laxity in usage. “Look at this,’ he said, ‘Blank died literally in harness’. He didn’t.”
A colleague of Scott’s, William Haslam Mills, observed in an essay to mark the centenary of the Manchester Guardian in 1921 “[Scott] is the only member of his own staff who understands clearly when the conjunction should be ‘nor’ and when it should be ‘or’, and when one follows the other, what happens next.” Crozier says a running debate about the placement and purpose of the comma was ended only by the onset of the summer holidays.
This all sounds very familiar. Neville Cardus (in Conversations with Cardus by Robin Daniels, 1976) recalled how Scott had told him off for allowing Ernest Newman, the music critic, whom Cardus revered, to use the phrase, “The concert commenced . . .” rather than “began”.
Long after Scott had departed Cardus recalled how in the 60s he telephoned a review from Edinburgh which included the sentence, “In spite of the difficulty of this music, she was quite eloquent.” This came out the next day as, “She was a white elephant.” A clean sheet is simply a dream.
To conclude with a Spanish proverb: He is always right who suspects that he is always making mistakes.
