Stroppy Editor

The use of ‘infer’ for ‘imply’ frustrates me. Getting ‘disinterested’ wrong, for instance, is at least understandable, but this? It seems as ridiculous as mixing up ‘explain’ and ‘understand’, or ‘give’ and ‘receive’, or ‘headbutt’ and ‘suffer an untimely nasal collapse’.

My name’s Tom. I’m an assistant editor for a charity in London, which among other things publishes quite a lot of stuff. Like almost all jobs, mine is sometimes dull and sometimes frustrating – but I get to play around with words, which I enjoy. I said in my job interview six years ago that I wanted “to get my hands dirty with copy”. And so I do.

The point of this blog is to be somewhere I can wash my hands of particularly odious abuses of language, whether they’re ones I’ve seen at work or in wider reading. Hopefully it won’t just be a barrage of sneering and ranting, but you know the old saying: if you can’t think of anything nice to say, start a blog. With luck, along the way I’ll manage to think of some nice, constructive and possibly even interesting and amusing things to say. No promises, though.

Except for this one: I will definitely produce some typos and grammatical howlers and ugly, dreary clichés. I am not as sharp as I think I am, and so another aim is to change that. Whether it’s by destroying my self-esteem or by improving my ability, we’ll see.