Mea Culpa: use of journalese skyrockets by 46 per cent

Some journalese to savour in Business News in Brief on Saturday: “The number of City workers eyeing new jobs plummeted 46 per cent in December as political and economic upheaval took its toll on the employment market, according to a report.” I quite like “eyeing” as a shorter way of saying “looking for”, but the rest is silly, including “plummeting” – the journalese opposite of “skyrocketing” – by the spuriously precise percentage.

As we read on, we do not find out more about the “political and economic upheaval” – presumably a reference to the uncertainty of Brexit. On the contrary, we are told that the “slump” in job-hunting covered the Christmas period, “a traditionally quiet period when workers in the finance industry put off job-hunting until the new year”. Who would have thought it?

We went on: “The report said the City’s bonus season was likely to be a damp squib amid signs that financial centres across the globe are reining in hefty handouts.” A squib is an obsolete word for a firework that makes a bang, surviving only in the idiom coupled with “damp”, as in a banger that fails to go off. Can we really compare bankers’ bonuses to fireworks? Not when we call them “hefty handouts” in the same sentence: “Here is your bonus. It is about to blow up in your hand.” Handouts that are also being reined in like a horse. Still, at least we didn’t spell it “reigning in”.

The new Caligula: Talking of reins, we quoted Andrew Mitchell, the former International Development Secretary, on Wednesday: “The evidence for climate change is so clear that it is unlikely that the general thrust of the policy will be obliterated by the neigh-sayers around Donald Trump.” Thanks to Philip Nalpanis for spotting the unintended image of the new President surrounded by horses appointed to his cabinet. We meant nay-sayers.

It rather than them: We wrote about the richest member of the Cabinet, Jeremy Hunt, whose 48 per cent share in an educational listings company is about to be sold for about £15m: “The prospective buyer of Hotcourses is understood to be an Australasian company who operate in the education sector.” Our style is that companies are singular (hence “an Australasian company”) and impersonal, so it should have been “which operates”, as Geoffrey Peter wrote to point out. Although we didn’t really need the last five words anyway.

Unhappy outcomes: We also discussed Mr Hunt in his role as Health Secretary last week, and referred to his comment that “lifestyle choices” are increasing the pressure on the NHS. By which he means we eat too much and exercise too little (I assume he wasn’t referring to alcohol and tobacco, as the use of both is declining).

We commented: “As for lifestyle choices, health outcomes are directly correlated to socio-economic status so that the more affluent you are, the better your health is generally.” If “lifestyle choices” were not bad enough – and we were at least referring to Mr Hunt’s words – “health outcomes” is simply more public-sector management jargon. “Outcomes” is either a needlessly formal way of saying “results” or, quite often, a way of saying nothing at all.

Here we meant richer people tend to be healthier. We could have said that, and then I wouldn’t have needed to point out that the conventional form is “correlated with” rather than “correlated to”.