When we moved from being a print newspaper to a digital one, we naturally had to let go of conventions that worked on paper but didn’t translate to the new medium. Some that were kept are curious even to those in the newsroom.
The pull-quote – a line reprinted in the body of its parent story, in larger font than the main text – is one such curiosity. I think it was an effective tool in print, where it could jump off the page and draw a reader into a story. It can’t do this in a digital story, where it is hidden until a reader scrolls down the page to a point where they can see it. Not to mention they have already clicked on the story.
But the pull-quote still has its advocates, who say it can break up a wall of text and draw attention to a line that might have been skimmed over. The latter argument was pushed to an extreme in a recent feature, where we placed a pull-quote directly above the same words in the body of the text. Thanks to Mick O’Hare, who did not skim over this shoddy placement.
I spy: Poor Greenland is back in the news for its trouble with the US president. A headline for a news in brief item read: “Denmark recalls US ambassador over Greenland spying report.”
This suggests that Denmark was calling back its ambassador from Washington. Denmark was actually summoning Washington’s ambassador to report to the foreign office in Copenhagen. We managed to get this right in the article.
As Richard Thomas notes, only the US has the power to recall its diplomats. If it were to do so at this time, Denmark would have to wait.
New direction: In a report on a murder trial involving a body buried under concrete we wrote: “A forensics officer said he became suspicious after he noticed poured concrete that looked different and newer to other cement on the ground under the stairs [of the house]…”
We’ve used “different to” interchangeably with “different from” for years – not without controversy – but “newer to” wouldn’t be correct even if we swapped in “from”.
In the US it would be acceptable to keep the pooled positional by writing “different and newer than” but this would be unsightly to some readers in Britain. We could have gone with “different to and newer than”.
But there was a simpler way: to say “it looked different and newer” and allow the context to tell the reader that we meant this was in relation to the other concrete. Thanks to Paul Edwards for flagging this one.
Messing about in boats: Speaking of things that would be acceptable in the US, we once again used “careened” in place of “careered”. “Careening” used to mean turning a boat on its side to clean it and, understandably, does not get used much in this sense.
As has been said before in this column, “careen” has been misused as “career” enough that it is now widely accepted to mean “moving swiftly and in an uncontrolled way”. But there are many who prefer “careering”. We have repeatedly pledged to stick with the original to keep everyone happy. Roger Thetford held us to our word.
