Pedants' Paradise

[Serial_Apologist]

Through a glass darkly?...

A bit of a pane...

[LMcD]

A bit of a pane...

These last few messages have left me feeling shattered.

[Serial_Apologist]

These last few messages have left me feeling shattered.

You've been framed!

(Time to get my coat and bid all goodnight!)

[LeMartinPecheur]

Dash it?

This from the AOL UK news service this morning:

Baroness Dido Harding, who is interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection – and oversees the NHS Test and Trace system, is due to give evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Am I alone in feeling the dash after protection is a) unnecessary, and b) plain wrong? Two dashes is one way to make a paranthesis, one dash can be useful for a big jump in the direction of a sentence. No good reason here!

[LMcD]

This from the AOL UK news service this morning:

Baroness Dido Harding, who is interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection – and oversees the NHS Test and Trace system, is due to give evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Am I alone in feeling the dash after protection is a) unnecessary, and b) plain wrong? Two dashes is one way to make a paranthesis, one dash can be useful for a big jump in the direction of a sentence. No good reason here!

Surely there should be two dashes or none, although the former could perhaps imply that she's got too much on her plate.

[Pulcinella]

This from the AOL UK news service this morning:

Baroness Dido Harding, who is interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection – and oversees the NHS Test and Trace system, is due to give evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Am I alone in feeling the dash after protection is a) unnecessary, and b) plain wrong? Two dashes is one way to make a paranthesis, one dash can be useful for a big jump in the direction of a sentence. No good reason here!

Yes: plain wrong.
If some sort of separation of roles is required, which they might have thought that the dash implied, they could have written:
... Harding, who is interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection, and who also oversees the NHS Test and Trace system, is due to give ...

[cloughie]

This from the AOL UK news service this morning:

Baroness Dido Harding, who is interim executive chair of the National Institute for Health Protection – and oversees the NHS Test and Trace system, is due to give evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Am I alone in feeling the dash after protection is a) unnecessary, and b) plain wrong? Two dashes is one way to make a paranthesis, one dash can be useful for a big jump in the direction of a sentence. No good reason here!

Confusion in the dash for testing, perhaps, and the need to be punctual - a comma might have served better!

[Padraig]

Dashing causes typos or plain bad spelling.

[LMcD]

What are the chances of anything Dido says satisfying Andy Burnham?

[french frank]

Money laundering in this country is becoming "vanishingly difficult to investigate" [quote on BBC News]. Does that mean it's getting easier?

[cloughie]

Money laundering in this country is becoming "vanishingly difficult to investigate" [quote on BBC News]. Does that mean it's getting easier?

Do you mean the laundering or the investigation?

[cloughie]

What are the chances of anything Dido says satisfying Andy Burnham?

Has she got a partner called Aeneas?

[french frank]

Do you mean the laundering or the investigation?

Money laundering therefore easier because vanishingly difficult to investigate

[Pulcinella]

Has she got a partner called Aeneas?

More pertinently, perhaps, does she possibly think that the wrongs she has done may create no trouble?
Of course, we don't yet know her fate.

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

[Pulcinella]

Polly Toynbee in today's Guardian:

Scientists are not gods, nor robots.

Surely better as
Scientists are neither gods nor robots
Scientists are not gods; nor are they robots
or
Scientists are not gods or robots

Her 'nor' looks (and sounds) odd to me.
It might almost give the impression that robots aren't gods either.