Mea culpa: the widespread spread of ‘widespread’ has spread too far

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent

Why use a dull word like ‘utilities’ in descriptions of Corbyn’s nationalisation plans? (AP)

The use of the word “widespread” was widespread in The Independent last week, and needlessly so. In our report on the person on the BBC who refused to accept that his £80,000 salary put him in the top 5 per cent, we said: “Question Time audience member prompts widespread bewilderment.”

The spreading of the bewilderment was one of the fascinations of watching the programme, as you could see and hear the ripple of surprise through the audience around the indignant man, until it reached Fiona Bruce, the presenter, who tried to clarify that he did actually think what we thought he thought.

But the word didn’t add anything to the headline. The extent of the bewilderment was sufficient for us to be writing a news story about it. So “Question Time audience member prompts bewilderment” would have been sufficient.

Unutilisable: Elsewhere, we wrote of Labour’s “widespread plans for nationalisation of key utilities”, when we meant “plans for widespread nationalisation”, but again we didn’t need the word. We certainly didn’t need it as well as “key”. If we wanted to convey the scale of Jeremy Corbyn’s ambition, we might have written of “plans for sweeping nationalisation of utilities”, although I think it would have been better to have listed them briefly – “rail, energy and water companies, Royal Mail and part of BT” – rather than use the dull word “utilities”. It always reminds me of my friend’s old kitchen, which he calls the futility room.

Red pen: In an excellent assessment of the power struggle in Ukraine that is the backdrop to the possible impeachment of Donald Trump, we asked if Oleksiy Honcharuk, Ukraine’s new prime minister, would pursue allegations of corruption against his own allies as aggressively as against Petro Poroshenko, the former president. Mr Honcharuk assured us that, “of course”, he would. Our report concluded: “Time will tell on that front.”

We should know better. “Time will tell” is an automatic red pen offence. Even “We shall see about that” would have been better.

Headline of the week: “Leaf blowers contributing to ‘insect apocalypse’, German officials fear.” For some reason, the longer version of the headline called it an “insect armageddon” instead. Either is fine, although Armageddon is strictly the place where the last battle between good and evil, which I think is part of the apocalypse, is foretold by the Bible to take place – from Hebrew har megiddon, “hill of Megiddo”.

After such a dramatic beginning, I was disappointed by the opening sentence: “Leaf blowers are fatal to insects and should not be used unless absolutely necessary, the German government has told citizens, days after a disturbing new report warned that an ongoing ‘insect armageddon’ threatens all life on Earth.” What is “ongoing” doing in there? This is the end of the world we are talking about, not just for insects but for all life on Earth.

I can see that we need to say that the bad thing is already happening, but we want something a bit better than such ghastly bureaucrat speak. Something like: “a new report warned that an ‘insect armageddon’ is already threatening all life on Earth”.