It’s as if media organisations no longer have gruff chiefs of staff who teach young reporters how to write. Many years ago my boss was the redacteur-en-chef, but that was in Paris at Agence France-Presse. Nowadays, you’ll see the words redact and redacted everywhere. In English. The Latin root of the word means to bring things together, to shape something, usually a piece of writing … Editing is the right word for it. Somehow, though, the latest usages of redact …
I certainly grinned when I was told yesterday that I’d won the UK Fiction Factory’s 2019-2020 short story prize for my yarn Last Meal. At 150 quid, the first-prize money sure ain’t Nobel-sized, but I was thrilled to come out on top in an international competition. Read my story and learn more about the Fiction Factory competition at http://www.fiction-factory.biz/.
Commenting on the effects of COVID-19 on the housing market, a real-estate executive said yesterday that she thought there’d be ‘less transactions in the sales area’. I collapsed, of course. The word ‘less’ is wrong for a start. And ‘in the sales area’ is just inflated rubbish speech. What she should have said was that there’d be ‘fewer sales’. That’s all. No more, no less. Pedant! I hear you scream. Yes, but there’s more to it than that. My best …